Keep Hoping Machine Running (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thefourthvine) wrote2006-08-20 10:35 pm
thefourthvine) wrote2006-08-20 10:35 pm
Poll: Vid Watching
This is the counterpart to the poll I posted earlier. (It, uh, had to undergo some revisions after the results of that poll.) And this one is for anyone who has ever seen a vid.
Again, feel totally free to pimp. I'd love to get a range of responses on this one.
After this, there'll be a round of vid meta coming out, but then I swear we'll go back to fan fiction. I'm really starting to miss recommending the written word.
[Poll #800594]
Again, feel totally free to pimp. I'd love to get a range of responses on this one.
After this, there'll be a round of vid meta coming out, but then I swear we'll go back to fan fiction. I'm really starting to miss recommending the written word.
[Poll #800594]
Re: Poll: Vid Watching
Do you have a specific mailing list on which you push vids? Because I've been the beneficiary of your (incredibly cool) vid resources (in dS and Pros, plus you were the person who convinced me that it was worth sending off for DVD sets), and I'd love to hear about your favorite vids.
And I didn't add this option via text box, but you don't list getting vids via a trade or loan with other fen, something that was very common with tapes and even as vids moved to DVD distribution, though perhaps less so now as more vids come online.
Well, it was totally an accident that I left "won't watch the vid if it's only available on YouTube," but it wasn't an accident that I left off DVD/videotape trade; I didn't know that happened enough to be considered a means of exchange.
And now I do. Um - next vid poll, I guess.
I chose 50mm as the largest vid I'll download, but that's a bit misleading.
I was curious to see what you'd pick, since you're one of the few vid enthusiasts I know who is on dialup. And I totally did not expect it to be as big as 50MB - the smaller numbers were put up there with you and your fellow dialuppers in mind, actually. Three hours of downloading time is quite some dedication. Wow. That's made me swear that I will no longer whine when my download speed drops below 100KB/second.
The largest vid file was likely Lum's Scooby Road at 250mb, but that's a song cycle rather than a single vid.
You don't do AMVs at all, I'm assuming, but if you did - there are a lot of multi-editor projects over there, and many of them are, like, an hour long. Which means they clock in at around ~700 MB, usually. I mean, they are totally worth downloading - it's an amazing experience to see so many vidders working with a similar theme or music or whatever the unifying element of the multi-editor project is, and an hour of solid vids is very different than four minutes of vid - but 700 MB would take you two days to download. (And you can't even use your connection while the download is going.) Yikes.
Wait, Charmax's gorgeous Xena vid, Boom Boom Ba, in a super-high quality version topped out over 200mb.
*envies*
I'm an idiot and didn't notice that she'd posted the super high quality link until it was gone. But that vid is so fucking gorgeous at any size, and I'm thrilled to have the DivX remaster, even if it is only about 50 MB.
Re: Poll: Vid Watching
*beams* I'm so glad to know that you were converted to the joys of DVD sets. I think vid viewer recruiters should get a DVD player instead of a toaster, or maybe an external hard drive to store recruiting materials, don't you? *g* My energy and ability to interact online comes in waves, so my list of lists is small, not much over a dozen. There isn't any specific mailing list on which I rec vids, rather I try to tailor my comments to the various lists and sprinkle vid recs amongst them, using the topic de jour as a springboard. I had a very successful (at least from my view) vid push on Pros-Lit recently where I recced Pros vids, then segued into Oysterband vids across many fandoms, then extolled the joys of vid collections (tape and DVD) and generally urged on a chorus of "Vids good, Pros vids great, More Pros vids fantastic, New vidders in Pros - Priceless!"
Re DVD/videotape trade -
Oh yes, at least amongst people I knew/know; some fandoms more willing to lend and/or trade than others. But most of the older fandoms (Star Trek, B7, Pros, Starsky & Hutch) all had willing lenders, and some groups were very organized. I don't think any quite reached the level of The Circuit for Pros fiction, but lending circles and tape trains were, if not common, certainly not uncommon. And while it wasn't songvids per se, Due South had an extremely active tape train for episodes - and other Canadian goodies - when the show was only airing in Canada.
Mary Van Duesen's a good example of a related practice: having multiple fen volunteer as vid duping centers for fannish distribution of her songvid tapes/DVDs, and asking only material replacement costs. She's had volunteer duping centers in the US,UK, and Australia across multiple fandoms, both ten to fifteen years ago and today. I think amongst older vidders that vid tape/DVD tradings are still fairly common (i.e. I'll trade you my vid collection for your vid collection), but amongst non-vidders, it seems like the the consumer model is dominant.
Re file size -
Dial-up: the bane of this vid fan's life. It wouldn't be so bad if I could do something else online at the same time, but even moderate surfing to check LJ or other sites slows the downloads to a standstill. And I can only dream of download speeds in the double, much less triple, digits. *deeply envious*
Re Anime vids -
Au contraire, mon ami. I have fewer anime vids than live action/media fandom vids (about 10 Gigs AMVs vs umm, maybe 200 Gigs media fandom vids), but I've been downloading AMVs since at least 1998. Since AMV file sizes have always been so much bigger than other fannish vids (early on, AMVs were five to ten times the size of other fannish vids), I've been more selective with anime. Plus, I have this rather complicated relationship with anime and anime fandom, issues both socio-politcal and personal (as I said, complicated). I remember when the AMV site first came online. Talk about jumping through hoops to get to the vids; people who freak out at the thought of emailing for a password would faint at what it took to get into the anime archives. I've not attempted the really huge multi-editor projects, but I do have two smaller ones that I like: Animix (part 4) and the REM Sleep Project, both coming in about 100-125mb.
Re Boom Boom Ba -
The visual quality, the colors, the movement, the music - it's an amazingly beautiful and sensual vid. The NTSC DVD version was rather daunting in size, but I knew how much I loved the vid prior to the remaster, and I'll go to great lengths for excellent femslash vids, especially Xena. IIRC, it was about a 10-11 hour download - and worth every minute.
Re: Poll: Vid Watching
The joy AND PAIN of DVD sets. Because watching them is a totally different experience than watching vids on my computer, and I had a whole bunch of stuff to unlearn and relearn. (And one thing I still haven't managed to fix: I like the smaller size of vids on the computer screen, and deliberately resize windows to be smaller, because that way I don't have to figure out where to put my eyes. Very few vidders are good about cuing that - and even the ones that are don't always manage to do it - and vids cut faster than I can scan an entire screen. On DVD, therefore, I have to watch vids several dozen times in order to get the same kind of comprehension I'd get from four viewings on my computer.)
And DVD sets are, in a way, really sad. Because when I see something I love, who can I tell about it? Who can I convert with it? I can and do make BB watch it, but beyond that, it's just a cul-de-sac of squee. And if a fangirl squees and no one hears her, does it really count? So, you know. There's some philosophical issues tied up in the DVD sets.
But, OMG, I am so happy to have Scooby Road on DVD. And JKK's vids. And the Chicago Loop. And I was one of the people who got all of Mary Van Duesen's (sp?) dS vids when AuK was distributing them. And...yeah, okay, I love DVD sets. I admit it.
"Vids good, Pros vids great, More Pros vids fantastic, New vidders in Pros - Priceless!"
And let us not forget the joy of Justacat's remastering of old Pros vids. I love her so much for that.
Dial-up: the bane of this vid fan's life.
So, I'm curious - how come you haven't switched to DSL? Can you not get it where you are? Or do you get dial-up free (or so much cheaper that it's worth it)? (I ask because where I live, I couldn't get dial-up that provided 24/7 access - which I've always used - as cheaply as my high-speed DSL package, because all the ISPs put limits on dial-up hours per month 'round here. Whereas DSL is 24/7 by default, and keeps getting cheaper.)
about 10 Gigs AMVs vs umm, maybe 200 Gigs media fandom vids
Holy shit. I just checked mine, and I have 35 GB of media fandom vids and 16 GB of AMVs. (Aaaaaand - wow. I'm going to need to buy another external hard drive soonish.) And now I really, really want to know about the one hundred seventy GBs of media fandom vids that you have and I do not. *resists the compulsion to demand that you list every single one, on account of it would take you the rest of my life*
200 GBs. Wow. I am deeply impressed and envious.
(Of course, I've only been a vid fan for two years, so what I should really be thinking about is how I've averaged over 25 GBs of vids per year - and that's just the ones I've kept, and I don't keep anything even close to half of the ones I download. From that perspective, I should probably already be seeking therapy for my tragic vid addiction, and certainly not salivating pathetically over your 170 GBs of additional vids.)
Plus, I have this rather complicated relationship with anime and anime fandom, issues both socio-politcal and personal (as I said, complicated).
I'm curious to hear more, if you're up for sharing. If not, then not, of course. It's just - I'm inching into anime and anime fandom, and it's - interesting. Different. But there are some real issues for someone coming from media fandom, at least for this someone. I'd be interested to see if you have the same issues, or if there's a whole host of different ones waiting for me.