Recently I went down the street to a local CVS pharmacy and bought one of the one-time use camcorders, the ones you can hack to get your videos onto your computer. I actually have a videoblog that I recorded with the camera about hacking the camera, for a nice bit of recursion. I documented the process of getting the cables, doing the soldering and then using the programs to extract the files. Just today, I used the program that lets you change the resolution and record time on the camera, which as you buy it are both set artificially low.
However, it will be a little bit of time before I can have the video posted. I edited it in iMovie but because I made some rookie mistakes (and because the default settings blow) I need to get it redone. The biggest mistake I made was not changing the setting that requires it to be fully downloaded to start playing. I joined OurMedia to post it, and uploaded the first cut but it was a really painful and slow process. I’m not so sure about using this service. You create an OurMedia account and an Internet Archive account and tie them together. At this point, I have an OurMedia username, an associated email address and a password, plus an email address and password for the IA. Doing practically anything was a confusing mess of figuring out which of these sets of credentials were required at any point. I think 3 was the minimum tries to log on to do anything substantial. Then, after I finally got it uploaded it was unbelievably slow for anyone else to try to download. As someone said to me about it – you get what you pay for. Just this morning, I got an email asking videobloggers to not upload anything to OurMedia for the next week. Sigh.
I’m worried about the hosting, because this runs the potential to get slashdotted or Make-dotted or name-your-inadvertant-denial-of-service-via-blog. I don’t want to use up the bandwidth on my regular box on this, I don’t want to put it on a system where bandwidth overage charges will cost me money, yet I also want it to be downloadable in under 17 hours. I suppose I could just put up a torrent of it and let it ride, which also will not be zippy at least at first. What to do, what to do. Any suggestions?
