Fractured Axel

jared wrote:

But, it would be great if contestants would be willing to upload their own entries to a video sharing service like Vimeo or YouTube as well.

Just to reiterate this point; if you host any file on a video sharing service you are exposed to whatever change of heart they happen to have. How many of the VF entries have copyrighted music playing in the background ? I had one of the promo. efforts muted for that very reason and a workmate has had a collection removed without warning.

Personally I can't think of anything better than hosting by One Of Our Own.

YMMV

Mike.

+1 for 'as is'. 's all good.

Bryan

Zippy8 wrote:

jared wrote:

But, it would be great if contestants would be willing to upload their own entries to a video sharing service like Vimeo or YouTube as well.

Just to reiterate this point; if you host any file on a video sharing service you are exposed to whatever change of heart they happen to have. How many of the VF entries have copyrighted music playing in the background ? I had one of the promo. efforts muted for that very reason and a workmate has had a collection removed without warning.

Personally I can't think of anything better than hosting by One Of Our Own.

YMMV

Mike.

What I'm looking to answer is the best way to provide a streaming version of the videos for anyone to view, rather than relying on the individual entrant's encoding settings (stream vs. no-stream) and browser plugins for viewing videos. Building our own YouTube seems like a challenging proposition

Maybe if we could collectively find a way to supply you with .flv files, a single freeware flash video player could be used to embed each of them?

But... if people want to make and can arrange their own hosting I've got no problem in letting them put some FullHD video out for those who want to see (I'll link to it on the video page) as long as a <20Mb video is available. I like looking at good quality kite videos and, given the choice, I'll watch the HQ version. But I'm watching the flying still.

the double file issue is solved by adding one word...

no problem in letting them put some FullHD video

becomes
no problem in letting them put some FullHD off-competition video

I vote for keeping things as they are.

That being said, Martin, how did you get such a vivid full screen video at 20 Mb? I just picked up an HD camera and hoping to improve the quality of my submission for the next round. What editting software do you use? What tricks are you using to compress to 20 Mb?

My guess is these tips might help many of us.

Brian

As this is a kite flying competition and not a competition for video-making skills, why do people need to put music on their videos? (especially copyrighted music). Could it skew people's scoring if one guy does a basic video with no music, and another does a whizzy video with intro, credits, and some cool music? Would anyone admit to being swayed by someone's more "professional" entry?

Perhaps the rules should state, no music allowed - use whatever background sounds are in the video (personally I would like to hear the surroundings / the wind / the flyers cursing! )

just my 2p!

Hezz

hezz wrote:

As this is a kite flying competition and not a competition for video-making skills, why do people need to put music on their videos?

They don't need to. It is optional and it's not uncommon for people to leave any soundtrack off.

I personally like it.

Mike.

hezz wrote:

As this is a kite flying competition and not a competition for video-making skills, why do people need to put music on their videos? (especially copyrighted music). Could it skew people's scoring if one guy does a basic video with no music, and another does a whizzy video with intro, credits, and some cool music? Would anyone admit to being swayed by someone's more "professional" entry?

Perhaps the rules should state, no music allowed - use whatever background sounds are in the video (personally I would like to hear the surroundings / the wind / the flyers cursing! )

just my 2p!

Hezz

If a person picked music and flew to it (like in many comps) why not include it in the video? Personally, I watched all the videos with the sound on to score artistic points and turned the sound off to score technical points.


Denny

If I may add my tuppence to this...

The original 10Mb limit was introduced due to technical constraints of GMail 'back in the day' (tm) when all entries were emailed in, collated and posted on my own host, or (kindly) by Ed Green on his Khite server.

Then the internet changed allowing larger emails and YouTube came to the fore, which gave VF a few alternate means of uploading videos. HD camcorders etc. grew up and became affordable which gave an additional aspect to the possibility of ever-spiralling file sizes.

However, as Mike has already stated VF is *not* a kite based video-making competition, it's a video based kite-flying competition - Please don't lose sight of this just because it's now technically possible to create a 90-second sequence thats over 20mb! For the purposes of the competition keeping any individual entry under 20Mb won't have a detrimental impact on any given entry - I remember one of the 1st rounds had an entry filmed on a mobile phone! - and will keep life simple for folks wanting to review the videos and for the poor soul who is giving their time to collect and collate all the entries.

Mike's work in the past few rounds has been exceptional, especially given the volume of entries of late. Let's not get distracted from what VF is trying to do.

DWayne wrote:

hezz wrote:

As this is a kite flying competition and not a competition for video-making skills, why do people need to put music on their videos? (especially copyrighted music). Could it skew people's scoring if one guy does a basic video with no music, and another does a whizzy video with intro, credits, and some cool music? Would anyone admit to being swayed by someone's more "professional" entry?

Perhaps the rules should state, no music allowed - use whatever background sounds are in the video (personally I would like to hear the surroundings / the wind / the flyers cursing! )

just my 2p!

Hezz

If a person picked music and flew to it (like in many comps) why not include it in the video? Personally, I watched all the videos with the sound on to score artistic points and turned the sound off to score technical points.


Denny

Eep, so did you give me a Zero for artistic, since I used no music?

I also say keep it as it is. Until teh internetz gets better.

jared wrote:

Eep, so did you give me a Zero for artistic, since I used no music?

I didn't give anyone a zero. Nor did I add or subtract points for musical choice, or lack thereof.

Denny

I enjoy the chance to take part in VF, watch a load of freestyle flying and if ya win a prize its a bonus.
Do we have higher quality video with a higher standard of flying and more entries, more often with more rules because there are better prizes on offer?
Has VF become a victim of its own success?

Mike

...oh and
VF has been great for promoting Freestyle flying.
30+ entries from all around the world for a kite flying comp.
We have something good here, are we going to start knocking it down?
Even some of my non flying family and friends are interested who won this round

Mike

More rules -> more formal -> more disqualifications -> more disputes -> more hassle for the organisers -> end of [this type of] comp (just my view)

Look at other "freestyle" sports - freeride snow sports, surfing, skating etc. They are all relatively regulation free, subjectively (sometimes peer) judged and all "cool", "fun" and "laid back". I think that's what freestyle is about - "video some cool flying and see if other pilots like it" - and even if they don't, that doesn't really matter either if you are having fun doing it... It's all good...

(do I sound like an old hippie?)