I have been creating web videos since 2000 here at DJVIBE. I have seen the tools change, companies come and go, and the resolution of video go from a pixelated mess to pristine HD. It is funny looking back at all the struggles I used to go through just to get content online and how easy it is today. This is why the tools today seem so amazing to me. I will talk about what I use today later in the post but there are a number of milestones that stick out in the 12 years I have been in the game.
Hosting your own media Server is Time consuming
I remember back in the beginning when we hosted the videos on our own website and created Real Player streaming files that were hosted on a server in my living room. My ISP used to phone me saying I was 20 times over the allowed bandwidth for the month, and they frequently threatened to cutoff my internet service. The videos took forever to stream, they looked pixelated (even at 320x240), and our server got attacked constantly by hackers and viruses. Without a dedicated server admin it was a time consuming process and I ended up spending more time moderating the server then producing videos.
Bandwidth is expensive so you need the right Partners
Once I decided that hosting my own videos wasn’t an option then I went on the lookout for partners that could help out with this. I required someone with dedicated servers and admin staff to run them. It was not easy finding partners that would give free hosting back then. Especially to host videos that were both large files and bandwidth Intensive. So I needed someone with deep pockets that could afford to shell out thousands of dollars for bandwidth every month. I finally landed deals with Arc2 TV in Vancouver, and Psuedo.com in New York. It was great working with them, and at the time the technology they used was some cutting edge stuff. But the process of getting a video online was very time consuming and process heavy. I would FTP the file to Arc2 who would add it to the Real Media Server and send me the link. Then log in to Pseudo to update my channel player. Then I would to update the HTML on my site to link to the Pseudo player. It was days before I could get a video online and the videos were always watermarked with Partner logos which was part of the deal for getting the free hosting. This was the early days of distributing my content on Multiple platforms. Painful.
YouTube Changed everything
I remember when YouTube first came out and it basically solved all of my video distribution problems at once. I had been waiting for something like this for years. I couldn’t believe that it was a FREE service. I was wondering how a company could eat the bandwidth bill like that and still make money. I thought they were going to go out of business in a year. But YouTube had some amazing features like the embeddable player. It was a ground-breaking concept to me as I could just create a page on my site and embed the video in it. The user stayed on my site the whole time. I loved it! I ate that shit up right away and instantly uploaded my whole archive of videos onto the platform. The other cool part was the view counter. Before I never really had an exact number I could quote to people about how many times a video was viewed, unless I dug though old server logs. Now I had an exact number of how many times a video had been viewed, and it was public now. YouTube didn’t go away after a year, It got massive!
Here comes the competition
After YouTube got huge it seemed like everyone and their dog was starting a video sharing website. At one point there was like 20 sites that I posted my videos to. I used to do it manually too. Ouch! I seemed to have a reason why I should upload to all of them, I loved the distribution and the free promo that came from getting featured spots on each of the sites. All the sites had marketing teams out pushing their sites and in turn my videos. It seemed stupid to miss out on that. But the problem is that I used to spend days just uploading videos. I used to have multiple browser windows on the go all with an upload going. One at home, one at work. It consumed my life. I remember when I found this Windows app called Video Post robot that would upload to like 10 sites at a time. It was a great idea but the app frequently crashed and uploads failed. The support for this app was not great either so I was eagerly awaiting something new.
Oneload ( formerly Tubemogul ) Saves the day
I remember the day I found Oneload I was so pissed off because Video Post robot had crashed for the 9th time in a row. I was looking for another solution; anything but VPR. I stumbled across a blog post with a review of Oneload and signed up on the spot. It was the best decision I ever made. Not just because it saved me from Video Post Robot, but because it kicked some serious ass. It was all web based and looked slick. It had great features like cross site analytics that would pull in your total views across all platforms. The uploaded worked so well I couldn’t believe it. One upload and it went to Youtube, Vimeo, Blip, Metacafe, Dailymotion and more! And the best part was it worked the FIRST try. No errors, it just worked! I was sold. I have been using Oneload since it first came out and I haven’t used another service since. Since then they have been steadily adding new features like social media integration where it will updated your status on Twitter and Facebook. You can keep a iTunes video podcast updated through FTP. It is even smart enough now to update playlists in Youtube. For any video producers / creators out there that aren’t using it I would give it a try. It saved me hours of my time that I used to spend waiting for uploads. I now spend way more time either in the studio or out filming stuff.
Now I’m focused on the content, not on the technology. The way it should be.
Check out ONELOAD!! They have just re-branded their website and added a whole whack of new features. Also leave some comments about your experiences with web video I would love to hear them.
