That should put my "Tlapse" YouTube channel in the top 100 all-time most-viewed director. Actually it should put me in the high eighties, but it's not showing up. I'm not surprised.
Making the "YouTube Birthday Flaming Tribute" Video
I'm not sure how this idea started, but I think I wanted to do another time-lapse with candles. The goal was to create something to get a lot of views and drive traffic to GBTimelapse.com so I could sell more time-lapse software. We set out trying to make something short, funny and different.
Here's the video, if you haven't seen it yet...
and more than you ever wanted to know about making it...
Cynthia scrounged up some table candles and I did some test shots. The cheapest candles looked best by producing copious quantites of molten drippy wax. But, I wanted to make a video using a large number of candles (maximum overkill) and even cheap candles would burn too long (hours) and cost too much (over $1 each).
Since birthday candles were cheap ($.89 per 24 wholesale online) and burned quickly (about 15 minutes max) thoughts turned to doing an "over the top" birthday cake. Kristin discovered that YouTube's second birthday was coming up in mid February. At first I wanted to do some geometric designs with the candles, but Kristin thought it would be cool to reference some of the most popular names on YouTube.
I dropped the idea for a while, but Kristin bought me a test cake at Raley's to get me going again. I did a test to get the right camera setup and quickly discovered that a real cake was not strong enough to stand up to repeated flaming candle formations. The candle wax accumulated in pools on the frosting and the frosting carmelized and burned. This formed a hard wax crust making it difficult to place another round of candles. I tried using an electric drill to pre-drill holes for the candles, but the cake collapsed under the pressure of the drill.
In talking with the cake decorator at the local Raley's supermarket, I learned that they occasionally decorated fake wedding cakes made from styrofoam. I bought some styrofoam sheets, cut them into the shape of a full-sheet cake and covered the top with a 1/4" thick layer of Sculpty clay. The clay would provide a compliant layer to hold the candles and also insulate the underlying foam from the heat. The decorator did a great job with the YouTube logo. When she asked "What is YouTube", I told her and she replied "All I do is eat, sleep, and work so I guess I'm out of touch".
I set the cake up in the barn with lights and two cameras (a 400D and a S3) for the video and a third camera (A620) to document what happened. I made stencil patterns for each director to make it quick and easy to place the candles. The entire shoot took over six hours...
It went pretty well. The cake got so hot the candles were melting before they burned (as in the "Nalts segment"), so I had to spray water on the cake to cool it down between takes. The electric pre-drill technique became necessary as the wax layer accumulated and the Sculpty clay began to bake. It became clear that long names wouldn't work, so I discarded "lonelygirl15", "barats and bareta" and "blendtec". I was a bit worried that the styrofoam would catch fire at the end, but the fire extinquisher worked like a champ.
The hope is to get this video featured, but the odds of that are slim.
I just ran across a very clever filmmaker, Mitchell Rose, on YouTube. He and his film company have created some great short films which you can see on his web site via streaming QuickTime. My favorites are his "Daydream" series
It's surpising that they haven't had many views on YouTube. Maybe it's because their pace and style require a bit of patience and investment by the viewer. That may be something most YouTubers are unwilling to give. He began posting to YouTube in June, but has not had a large number of views, but his "Learn to Speak Body" film was featured today on YouTube. It will be interesting to see what happens.
Which video sharing service should I use? Over the past several months I’ve tried several sites to see which one best meets my needs. I write and sell time-lapse software, so I need a video library to demonstrate what my software can do. Rather than doing advertising I post videos of my work to drive traffic to my site. People like to watch my videos, so I might as well make some money off of that too.
1) For my video library I need good video quality, easy and fast uploading and an attractive and flexible video player. 2) To drive traffic to my site I need a site with a big audience. 3) For extra revenue I need a site with an ad revenue sharing business model.
I haven’t found a site that meets all these requirements, so I use several. Here are my main choices, I've embedded a player for each one for comparison purposes...
BrightCove for my video gallery – Videos are encoded the excellent Flash 8 codec and are available for viewing within a few minutes of uploading. The player looks great, easily hosts a video gallery and has a neat interface for sharing and embedding videos. Titles are grouped into lineups, and lineups are grouped together into a player with tabs for each lineup. This makes for an easy to set up a video gallery or channel to hold multiple videos. Their content management tools are well designed (in contrast to YouTube). BrightCove is well financed (with a $59MM C round announced today), but the site is still in beta. It doesn’t have a big audience and its ad revenue sharing isn’t running yet. Uploaded files must be Flash8 and 480x270 in size with a 512kbps data rate. You can also upload WMV files for sale or rental at 1.4Mbps and 720x480 (I haven’t tried this yet).
YouTube for the high traffic – In less than six months I’ve had over 2.5MM views of my YouTube channel. Despite the poor video quality (Flash 7 codec) it drives a ton of traffic to my site. If they only had revenue sharing, this could have generated a lot of cash. A major downside is YouTube’s error prone interface. I get multiple notifications when a fan posts a comment or video response. Replying to a message or video response can be frustrating because of the system errors. But uploading is quick and easy. Uploads should be mpeg4 (including Divx) at 320x240 with MP3 audio. The file limit is 10 minutes or 100MB.
MetaCafe for extra revenue – I had the good luck to get my first video mentioned in the MetaCafe blog and that translated into some cash (I wish YouTube paid as good). Quality (Flash8) and uploading are good, but they take a couple of hours to approve because of their concern for copyright. One clip of mine got lost in the system took two weeks to get approval. It required a personal email and documentation from me to convince them that my music was royalty free. This is puzzling to me because many of the clips on their site use copyrighted music tracks. My last upload was approved two hours so maybe they have fixed their approval process. When someone plays one of my videos, they can click on my name to see my channel page (and then RSS subscribe). But for some reason my channel can’t be found by searching for my user name. Best upload format is mpeg4, but files can be mpg, mpeg, avi, divx, flv or wmv with a 100MB size limit. Rather than uploading a thumbnail image, you pick one from a number of choices generated by their software. Notice how the player gets it wrong and stretches this 16x9 content to fit a 4x3 aspect ratio...
I’m also uploading to some other sites to hedge my bets…
Zudeo for its 720p HD quality – This is a bittorrent site for the distribution of large video files. It’s one of the only ways to distribute HD quality video at this time. It doesn’t have a large audience and downloading content requires a high geek quotient (you have to download and install a client package), but I figure the audience is a good demographic fit for my GBTimelapse software. I haven’t found a way to create a channel yet and I’m not sure they have one. HD quality file uploads should be WMV at 1280x720 and 4Mbps.
Stage6 for its high quality – It uses the DivX codec at a 640x360 SD resolution so my videos look much better than the other sites, except Zudeo which requires a lengthy download. Uploads take 30 minutes to appear on the site and when selected, Stage6 videos play quickly. The site is still in alpha and has a small audience. My hope is that with the DivX codec and high quality it will catch on.
Revver for extra revenue – I’ve made a few dollars here, but it’s hard to get any traction. They don’t seem to have a very large audience (compared to YouTube). Quality is good, but the approval requires the video be watched by a human which delays the process. Uploaded files can be mp4, mov, mpg, wmv, or avi (including DivX) with a 100MB size limit. They are converted to Flash8 and QuickTime.
Google Video – Just because it’s Google. The web upload doesn’t have a progress bar, just a busy indicator; so it’s not clear what’s happening during an upload. But, the downloadable “Google Video Uploader” client application will batch upload a bunch of files with good progress feedback.
VideoEgg – Good quality, fast upload, and immediately playable. A quick and easy way to embed a video into a web site.
If you think there are better choices, please let me know.
Mike Posehn is an avid time-lapse photographer and creator of the GBTimeLapse software allowing anyone to make time-lapse videos using a digital still camera.
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