video viewing/downloading help

[1776ers]

Hi,

In case you need to see it the website is www.1776ers.com (http://www.1776ers.com)

We are just starting out. :):) We are using Wordpress

The plan was to have pages of movies that could be viewed in for free. The movies would be long and high quality. Also, we don't want the viewer to have to download a program to view the movie. Just click play to see.

When I downloaded a wordpress plugin to play videos no icons ever showed up on my panels. I did figure out how to upload my videos using FTP to my server... but could never show them on the website because of plugin issues.

So we went to plan B:
Link to long videos already posted on youtube and then make a link so if someone wants to download a very high quality version they can. The high quality download would be from the movies I uploaded onto my server.

I have two problems-
1. I can't figure out how to link to the uploaded movies for people to download

2. Eventually viewing youtube videos isn't going to be an option because youtube is doing away with LONG videos and google video is also shut down. So I am going to have to figure how to let people view the videos I upload.


I was told to get a thing to change my wmv files to flv files. I downloaded one free program called Riva but it didn't work to change the files... maybe because my documentaries are so long??? I don't know.

Anyhow, cheap or free is best because our organization is just starting out and we are not going to be making any money. This is just about giving away free DVD's :D about what is happening to our country and how we are losing our rights. However I am so frustrated at this point I have almost thrown in the towel and called the website quits. I have been at this ONE issue for like two weeks. :(

[sasquatsh]

I've been playing around with similar video issues for the past several months. I can't say that I have found answers to all my questions, but what I have found may be of some help to you.

I have found the following freeware/donationware to be most helpful:

Free Video Converter (http://www.koyotesoft.com) easy to use but limited.

Media Coder (http://www.mediacoderhq.com/index.htm) good, but seems to be some controversy regarding open source usage.

SUPER Video Converter (http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html) powerful converter.


Video Editor:
AVIDEMUX (http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/)


To play FLV and many other video formats on you local PC:
VLC Media Player (http://www.videolan.org/)

Show codecs needed to play a video:
GSpot (http://www.headbands.com/gspot/)



For integrating an FLV video into a WP post this WP Plug-in is helpful:
FLV Embed (http://www.channel-ai.com/blog/plugins/flv-embed/)


Hope this helps, and good luck with your project.

[MrDelish]

As far as Wordpress plugins go, I really like the stream Video player: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stream-video-player/

You can offer a downloadable version by taking these steps:

1) Compress the video into a ZIP or similar format.
2) Upload the file to your hosting account. I would make a folder specifically for the files, such as /public_html/movies.
3) Include a link to the ZIP file by including a link. This would be inserted into your post/page under the HTML tab:


<a href="http://www.yourdomain.com/movies/moviename.zip">Click here to download the full movie!</a>

As far as changing your WMV files to FLV, most of the programs I use give me the option to save the files as FLV. I'm not sure what the best programs are for that, but hopefully you can find something that works or someone else can recommend software they have used.

Streaming DVD-quality videos is probably not a good idea, since it will take a looooong time for the videos to download. Try to compress your videos so that they don't take up a huge amount of space but still look good. Although BlueHost offers unlimited bandwidth, any one account that is using more than its fair share could face some problems with too much popularity.