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        Arimaa >> General Discussion >> Motionbox going out of business
        
(Message started by: Fritzlein on Jul 12^th, 2010, 3:57pm)

Title: Motionbox going out of business
Post by Fritzlein on Jul 12^th, 2010, 3:57pm

The three videos linked in the lower left of the game room are all hosted on Motionbox. Today I got an e-mail saying that Motionbox is going out of business as of August 10. Motionbox users are directed to sign up with Snapfish, but Snapfish limits videos to ten minutes in length, so they will not host these three Arimaa videos.

Does anyone have any bright ideas for preserving these videos? All I can think of is to post an announcement directing everyone to hurry up and view the videos before August 10 if they haven't seen them already, because after that the resource will be gone.

Title: Re: Motionbox going out of business
Post by Eltripas on Jul 12^th, 2010, 5:58pm

I think that Vimeo doesn't has a time limit for the videos. http://www.vimeo.com/

Title: Re: Motionbox going out of business
Post by rbarreira on Jul 12^th, 2010, 8:02pm

The videos could be split in 10-minute parts and uploaded to Youtube.

Worst case, they could be shared via bittorrent, omar could provide a seed on the Arimaa server and other people could keep seeding it to help with bandwidth.

Title: Re: Motionbox going out of business
Post by JoeHead on Jul 13^th, 2010, 4:56am

Easy solution is to upload them on YouTube. Firstly it is strange that videos are not primarily on YouTube.

You will cut them into 10min pieces and upload.
No big deal and much better propagation of Arimaa.

Title: Re: Motionbox going out of business
Post by Fritzlein on Jul 13^th, 2010, 6:08am

Cutting into ten-minute pieces seems like a palpable nuisance for viewing. Vimeo looks like a good solution, though, because the size of my commentary video is small even though the length is long. The one drawback is that Vimeo doesn't offer on-line editing capability like Motionbox did, but since all I need to do is cut and splice (not add effects), apparently Avidemux does the trick for free. I'll see if I can get it working. Thanks for the suggestions, guys!

Title: Re: Motionbox going out of business
Post by JoeHead on Jul 13^th, 2010, 8:49am

I try my last desperate attempt to convince you to post on YouTube.

Video cut in pieces on YouTube is almost not palpable nusiance even for me as an average user. The video can be checked and seen by FAR more people then on the pages you propose (I "average user" have NEVER heard about such web sites, so it is not good).
On youtube it can be seen by hundreds of people who can be captured by nice commentary and want to learn more.

I try "arimaa" search on YouTube often but content is terribly weak - mostly games without any comments or music or whatever (it seems like a miracle that nice tutorial is already there)...

So I beg once again - YouTube is number one choice.

Title: Re: Motionbox going out of business
Post by FireBorn on Jul 13^th, 2010, 9:32am

He's right about youtube being much more popular, if you want the extra exposure

Title: Re: Motionbox going out of business
Post by Fritzlein on Jul 13^th, 2010, 1:46pm

People searching YouTube for Arimaa videos is a pleasant thought, but as far as exposure goes, an hour-long lecture and two two-hour-long commentaries aren't the sort of thing to attract viewers who abandon 3-minute videos more often than not because they get bored. I am offering relatively heavy stuff to a very small audience. Viewers who want it at all are probably committed to Arimaa already and looking to deepen their knowledge, not hopping around looking to be entertained. It's like CSPAN: nobody tunes in to congressional hearings and suddenly gets excited about the issues; they only tune in if they already care and want to be informed.

If I may make so bold as to ask, JoeHead & Fireborn, have you both viewed those three videos linked from the game room in their entirety? Do you expect someone who knows and cares less than you do (someone who hasn't even been into the gameroom to see the links) to sit down for five total hours of video because it popped up on a YouTube search?

My primary concern is creating a good experience for someone who does care, rather than trying to fish in casual surfers. We can reach out to people who know little about Arimaa via other videos, such as the video on how to play that we recently created, and which is on YouTube. That video was much more entertaining and promotional in nature.

Title: Re: Motionbox going out of business
Post by FireBorn on Jul 13^th, 2010, 2:04pm

I think I watched the whole lecture. Not sure about the commentary, but probably.

I dunno about you, but I like to watch long, multi-part videos (documentaries, science videos, educational videos) on youtube from time to time. If I don't find a video I'm looking for on youtube I don't usually look on other sites - I just give up. I searched for "arimaa" on youtube when I first started getting interested in it, but I didn't find much so I gave up. Eventually, I stumbled upon the lecture in the gameroom, but if I had found it sooner...maybe I would've gained interest faster?

That's all I'm saying. Maybe there are others like me. It's just my perspective. I don't have the statistical data to make the case that it'd be worth the effort to split it up and post it on youtube rather than vimeo. It's totally up to you whether or not you wanna do it

Title: Re: Motionbox going out of business
Post by Sconibulus on Jul 13^th, 2010, 2:08pm

I agree with Fritzlein, let's keep the dry and pedantic stuff safely out of sight until someone wants to see it : () )

Also, as a somewhat average user of the internets, I find videos split into many parts to be a huge pain, and wonder why the creator would put them in that format instead of taking the extra ten minutes to find a site that lets them post the whole thing. (Exceptions made if the parts are >20-30 minutes or so, provided the links are all together, and the break points make sense) Otherwise it just seems incredibly unprofessional and slapped together, much the way I felt about all those angelfire and geocities websites without real names ten years ago. : () )

Title: Re: Motionbox going out of business
Post by omar on Jul 21^st, 2010, 1:08pm

I hope we can find another site like motionbox; otherwise I can serve the files from the arimaa.com server.

Title: Re: Motionbox going out of business
Post by chessandgo on Jul 21^st, 2010, 1:15pm

I'm going to upload mine on vimeo. I'm not fond of cutting the video into 10mns parts either as it was not intended to.

"dry and pedantic"? Yeah, I like that :)

Title: Re: Motionbox going out of business
Post by Janzert on Jul 21^st, 2010, 1:21pm

I've been very happy with vimeo as a viewer, having watched quite a few talks and lectures on it. No idea how it compares to motionbox for the process of posting your video though.

Janzert

Title: Re: Motionbox going out of business
Post by chessandgo on Jul 23^rd, 2010, 6:13pm

ok, cool. So the video is now available at: http://vimeo.com/13543451

And also Snapfish is taking over Montionbox videos, so it should be available on Snapfish as well within a few days. Maybe that's the simplest way to proceed for the other vids, just a couple clics.

Title: Re: Motionbox going out of business
Post by chessandgo on Jul 26^th, 2010, 12:56pm

on 07/12/10 at 15:57:18, Fritzlein wrote:

Ah silly me, I had not realized Snapfish had this limit. I should read more carefully :)

Title: Re: Motionbox going out of business
Post by rabbits on Aug 27^th, 2010, 9:20pm

I'm a fan of Vimeo.

I'm a little annoyed that it doesn't let me jump forward in C&G's video to the part that hasn't loaded yet, but that's not a big deal. It's better than the video being broken into several parts, in my opinion.

Have Fritzlein's videos been reposted? The links in the gameroom and the wiki should probably be updated.

Title: Re: Motionbox going out of business
Post by Fritzlein on Aug 27^th, 2010, 9:37pm

on 08/27/10 at 21:20:17, rabbits wrote:

Have Fritzlein's videos been reposted?

Ooops, I decided what I was going to do and then I didn't do it. I'm a bit busier than usual this weekend, but I'll try to get to it. I guess the number of people clicking on the link is not too high, given that nobody has complained that it leads nowhere.