quote:

---

What's so bad about Quicktime?

---

Wow, anti-Apple bias - who woulda thought? The interface on the player is very basic, but the rest is good and you can get without itunes now (that part DID suck, I'll admit). The Pro version is a regular video swiss army knife - it saved my butt and paid for itself the first time I used it. I'm not forcing anyone to use it, but the H264 codec is pretty good...

It's getting OT - let's just say that as long as the clips can play in the leading players and the codecs are easy & free then almost any format is OK. The best combination will sort itself out via public opinion once different clips are posted.
_________________
Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

WMV isnt free, h264 does have open source stuff, IE mplayer can play it, looks like windows media player can too.

I haven't seen anything encoded in it just yet though, so i cant comment on how it looks.
It may be "the format" if its twice as good as the old mpeg-4 then it wont be all bad ;->.
_________________
Mechanical engineers build weapons, civil engineers build targets

I'm not too concerned about formats atm - it can be whatever turns out easiest . . . we can use ffmpeg for transcoding if it comes to that (CPU intensive I know). The main thing is getting a site that is functional and that people will actually use . . .

How do people feel about the idea of starting with a wiki and improving from there ? Perhaps it would be better to build something from scratch ? Anyone have layout ideas ? Maybe the test that Nick did for BotClips would be a good starting point ?

@Phil - File size isn't really an issue in the way of storage, more the amount of data that people are willing to download for three minutes of viewing. For most cases I'd say cap it at ~60-100MB for high quality and say, ~6-10MB for low quality - H264 looks pretty impressive at even those sorts of data rates.

btw, FTP accounts / subdomains . . . who wants em ?
_________________
Jeff Ferrara
fb@ffej.net

ffej.net

I think the trick to user-driven news web sites, is there has to be some "cred" amongst your peers for contributing items.

The problem is, until there is a significant number of viewers, the effort to post useful informative items vs the feedback is low.

I was hoping the RSS feed from the Wiki would help keep people informed that updates had been added, so they would come to read them and comment, but apparently not..

The RoboWars wiki has a section for Event Reports, nrews and other things, it is not just a Technical Wiki, but noone has bothered to use it. Probably because the Forum offers more appreciation, viewers and direct feedback from the viewers than the Wiki does.

Who here knows what the most recent change to the Wiki is without going and looking now that I mentioned it ? Is it because most are using the Internet Exploder 6 or earlier or dont know how to use RSS notification ?

I think you were on a better track with the BotClips server, since the thing the RoboWars server doesnt provide is large amounts of storage.. But now that YouTube and other video sharing sites offer a wider audience, a smaller viewer video host only has the advantage of superior resolution.

I dont mean to discourage you Jeff, I think donating 'Net space free is very kind of you, but you have to think of how to encourage people to use it for more reasons than putting up a sign saying "free storage space" unless you want it to just be used as a closet.
_________________
Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people

I didn't know the wiki did rss lol.

I'll put doing a backend for nicks site onto my list of "to-do" things.
do you think it would be too much to ask for people to upload a photo with their fight? kind of a thumbnail. Yes you probably could automagically extract one, but it runs a fair chance of being part of a wall.

Does your host have mod_python?
(I'm learning python atm and that could be a decent "first project", though there is more php experience out there so that might be better)
_________________
Mechanical engineers build weapons, civil engineers build targets

I am in a much better position to to a nice graphical front end than before. I have a backup of all the demo site that I can upload and develop on the new server and it would not be too hard to power it with PHP or something similar. I was thinking for the thumbnails, we just keep a stock library and re-use them.
_________________
Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

The challenge for someone trying to start something new is to make the new thing better than what already exists. This forum is s great place to find and share information.
_________________
So even the rain that falls isn't actually going to fill our dams and our river systems

Forums are definately a great place for information, but what happens is that great information gets buried in the large amounts of dead posts, off topic chat and repeated threads asking for the same information. If these forums were stripped of all the crap and all the useful information was drawn up into guides and knowledge banks for a website, it would be a lot more effecient for the newcomer to find out what they need.

I find myself diving into the Wiki now and again purely because it has most of the good info summarised, same with the Ultimate Guides section....
_________________
https://www.halfdonethings.com/

a wiki link at the www.robowars.org homepage or under 1 subsection like guides might get more viewers of it. and it could do with abit of work as there is quite a few things that u get this message "You don't have write access to this page. You might need to register an account to get write access." after a few times of that message some people might give up looking further maby just some of thoes links can be removed untill someone does write a part for it as they can be a lot of work and people are taking there free time to write them for people.

upcoming events is not current the next event in victoira is aparently in augest. that might also put some people off when they see that knowing that it is not up to date and make people want to come to the forum more

I will be doing some updates to the RoboWars homepage as soon as I get the flyer for the next event, so I'll have to remember to link the Wiki into the homepage then.

I didnt do it initially because the wiki was fairly empty. but now its got some good content on it, a homepage link is probably a good idea.

Write Access to the Wiki shouldnt be required to view any pages.. can you tell me what pages are giving you that error ?
_________________
Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people

Hey Jeff, would be interested in a sub domain to play around with, no rush but.
_________________
Bots that do not destroy you, only make you stronger.

Ey Jeff, for my MDP I will be requiring some online hosting for it at some point. I'll have some more details when I come closer to it but would it be ok sticking it up there in a subdomain? Will probably be something like a forum and some wiki articles.
_________________
( •_•)

( •_•)>⌐■-■

(⌐■_■)

YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

quote:

---

Originally posted by dyrodium:
Ey Jeff, for my MDP I will be requiring some online hosting for it at some point. I'll have some more details when I come closer to it but would it be ok sticking it up there in a subdomain? Will probably be something like a forum and some wiki articles.

---

I might get an account,dunno yet