

Posterous.com (YC summer 08) launches Video support - rantfoil
http://blog.posterous.com/now-supporting-more-audio-form

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DarkShikari
Great idea, but the quality is awful--not at all surprising, given that you're
using a video format dating from the late 90s (Flash Video 1, a slightly
modified version of the decade-old H.263 format). "Looking like Youtube" is
not a compliment in 2008.

High quality at reasonable bitrates in Flash isn't difficult; you just need to
use x264. ( 280kbps example: <http://norp.ath.cx/h264.html> ) Quality has
improved quite a bit since that sample was made, too:
<http://i35.tinypic.com/rk33wx.png> (screenshot from 400kbps encode). There's
a reason a huge number of sites, both small startups to companies as large as
Facebook, are switching to x264.

Drop by #x264 if you need more information; we're there to help. And if you
need something more in-depth, I do contracts, too...

~~~
a4agarwal
Thanks for the tip! I just switched our codec to x264 and we saw a quality
improvement. I'm also playing around with higher bitrates, we definitely want
the video on Posterous to look good.

~~~
DarkShikari
Note that if you're using ffmpeg (which seems to be popular for Flash video
encoding), you have to be very very careful with encoding settings because it
uses rather bizarre defaults for x264, forcing you to re-specify all the
existing ones to get it to work ideally. Fortunately, there's useful guides on
that too:

<http://ffmpeg.x264.googlepages.com/mapping>
[http://rob.opendot.cl/index.php/useful-
stuff/ffmpeg-x264-enc...](http://rob.opendot.cl/index.php/useful-
stuff/ffmpeg-x264-encoding-guide/)

The first link is useful even if you're not using ffmpeg, since it has a
relatively good explanation for what most of the options do. And if you still
need more quality, drop by our IRC.

~~~
rantfoil
This is fantastic. Thanks for the link and the advice. Talk about being
helpful... I'd like to +10 karma on DarkShikari's account.

------
LukeG
Next episode: Posterous now delivers babies, too!

Jeezus H, Gary and Sachin, take a break or something. You're making us the
rest of us look bad. And I even know some of the other stuff you're working
on, too, so it's almost depressing.

Ha nice work.

~~~
rantfoil
Luke, you guys at Startuply has been working insanely fast too!

They recently rolled out an awesome resume tracking system for employers,
which we definitely hope to be using in the future.

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kyro
Very cool update. Now I'm waiting for my phone to support video capture (GUESS
WHICH PHONE!).

Once you guys roll out customizable themes and domains, I'll definitely be
using Posterous to host my blog (vs. tumblr). That multiple posting feature is
really winning me over.

Great job pumping out the features.

~~~
a4agarwal
There are some unofficial video recording apps for the iPhone, and they have
email support built right in. Hopefully one of these will make it to the app
store, and we'll have a direct video to blog flow. Brings a whole new meaning
to live blogging.

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jmorin007
I'll take a drop-dead easy solution over a theme any day.

Don't get me wrong, themes will be awesome, but simplicity and ease of use are
the game changers with Posterous. Keep up the good work guys!

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maxklein
I like the concept of email to blog, but I have no wish to move my blog to
maxklein.posterous.com. Why can't I just use my existing blog and you
integrate into that?

~~~
a4agarwal
We have a feature called autopost which will post to twitter, flickr, and all
the existing blogging systems out there. Just sign in to Posterous and you'll
see where you set that up.

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volida
as i can recall the founders of YouTube said it was impossible to share videos
with email because of the large size... except .3gp how are you going to avoid
the file size limitation of most mail services?

~~~
rantfoil
For short videos of around 20 to 25 meg, it's quite viable. It's actually
ideal for camera phone and small digital camera videos, because it's long
enough to see something interesting but short enough to not bore people.

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whather
Posterous keeps getting cooler and cooler. Nice work guys!

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unalone
Excellent job, guys. I'm still not a fan of the email-to-posting system, but
the rate at which you've added features is stunning.

~~~
fallentimes
Why?

~~~
unalone
Because it lacks a sense of community, and that's why I would use a communal
blogging site like Posterous. It's why the only system I use outside my main
site is Tumblr.

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Kevinish
I'm still waiting to post blog posts over the phone. I would like voice to
text so that i can make posts from anywhere.

~~~
rantfoil
If you set Jott.com up to send email to post@posterous.com, we automatically
clean up the email they send us and just post the Jott.com transcribed
content.

That's one fast way to get voice to text to posterous. =)

