
Vidly (YC S08) first to launch HD video on Twitter - chrysb
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/10/vidly-brings-hd-video-to-twitter/
======
DarkShikari
Someone should tell them to upload their encoder; they're apparently about 4
years out of date, which would explain why their video quality is rather
subpar for the claim of "HD".

    
    
        x264 - core 57 - H.264/MPEG-4 AVC codec - Copyleft 2005 - http://www.videolan.or
        g/x264.html - options: cabac=0 ref=3 deblock=1:1:1 analyse=0x3:0x113 me=hex subm
        e=5 brdo=0 mixed_ref=1 me_range=16 chroma_me=1 trellis=0 8x8dct=1 cqm=0 deadzone
        =21,11 chroma_qp_offset=0 threads=12 nr=0 decimate=0 mbaff=0 bframes=2 b_pyramid
        =0 b_adapt=1 b_bias=0 direct=3 wpredb=0 bime=0 keyint=60 keyint_min=25 scenecut=
        40(pre) rc=abr bitrate=2000 ratetol=1.0 rceq='blurCplx^(1-qComp)' qcomp=0.60 qpm
        in=10 qpmax=51 qpstep=4 ip_ratio=1.40 pb_ratio=1.30
    

Even Youtube does a better job keeping modern than this; there's no excuse for
startups to be using outdated technology.

~~~
chrysb
Why don't you elaborate and tell us what exactly is out of date and we'll look
into it. We're always open to feedback and you should know that the YC nature
is to be constructive and helpful in our community of startups and hackers.

Thanks!

~~~
DarkShikari
Your x264 encoding library is quite outdated (read: years). Newer versions are
faster, more efficient, and give higher quality output. You can get the latest
at <http://git.videolan.org/?p=x264.git;a=summary> .

If you need any assistance, drop by #x264 on Freenode.

I'm always surprised by how video startups--whose most important technical
resource is their video conversion system--don't seem to do sufficient
research into how it actually works (or for that matter, how _well_ it
actually works). This may be because of the assumption expressed in posts like
<http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=933713>: that all software is pretty much
equal and it doesn't matter what you use or how you use it.

Then again, I can't be too harsh, because you at least used open source tools
instead of Flash Media Encoder, so you must be doing something right ;)

~~~
danielrhodes
That's interesting. We do have some very recent versions of x264 installed
(Core 67 - 68, depending on environment), but it looks like Mencoder might be
using a different library. I'll have to check.

Thanks!

~~~
DarkShikari
Yup, that's a classic issue; you can end up accidentally using ancient
libraries without even realizing it.

Also, 67-68 isn't particularly recent; the latest "stable" would probably be
r1318 aka fe83a906ee aka Core 78. You can try trunk as well, but we're having
some miscompilation issues with the latest improvements, so I wouldn't trust
it for production use yet.

Another note is to check your settings; a lot of people have all sorts of
weird encoding commandlines (you included, given the contents of the string I
pasted above) from the days when x264's setting system was baroque and
confusing. Now the defaults are good and there's some nice automatic presets
that let you easily pick a tradeoff of time vs. quality (see x264 --help), so
you don't have to mess with weird options.

~~~
nopal
Do you have a link to a good "getting started" article written for a desktop
user? (someone looking to encode nice looking videos, not build an encoding
infrastructure)

This seems like an issue with a great deal of nuance, and I'd find such a
resource invaluable.

~~~
DarkShikari
For a normal desktop user, you should try one of the many encoding GUIs
available.

I'd recommend Staxrip, Ripbot264, or Handbrake; all are relatively simple GUIs
built around x264. For Handbrake, make sure you get the latest snapshot (the
last release, 0.9.3, is very outdated).

On Linux or Mac, there are fewer options, but Handbrake is still one of them.
If you prefer a commandline interface, see
[http://rob.opendot.cl/index.php/useful-
stuff/ffmpeg-x264-enc...](http://rob.opendot.cl/index.php/useful-
stuff/ffmpeg-x264-encoding-guide/) .

Handbrake has a great support channel on Freenode (#handbrake) as well.

~~~
nopal
Thanks. This is an area that I don't keep up with, and it's great to have a
recommendation from someone in the know.

------
axod
If there's a sign of a bubble, it's companies building things that already
exist, on top of companies that have no business model. Skeptical.

~~~
crescendo
The problem with analyzing companies like this is that they don't really admit
of a traditional value-based assessment. What is the value proposition of a
service like Vidly, really? It shortens the process of posting a video link to
Twitter by a few steps. Yes, I'm understating what they do, but when you
distill it down to its actual _benefit_ to an end user, that's it.

    
    
        Option 1:
            1) Open youtube.com.
            2) Create a youtube account (First time only).
            3) Post video to Youtube.
            4) Open twitter.com, or a Twitter client.
            5) Post a tweet with the Youtube link.
    
        Option 2:
           1) Open vidly.com (or client?).
           2) Post video and tweet to Twitter.
    

You've reduced the steps it takes to post a video to Twitter from 5 to 2; big
whoop, right? But looking at this alone misses the point. Here's where it gets
interesting: given that they're both free, and that users actually know about
Option 2, most of them will choose Option 2 without hesitation. Besides that,
the relative complexity of using Youtube for this task might have been a
barrier for many people who otherwise would've posted videos. When you combine
this with good marketing, the vibrant user base of Twitter, and a large mass
of people hungry to broadcast videos, big things can happen.

~~~
dannyr
crescendo,

Actually YouTube integrates with both Facebook and Twitter now. Go to My
Account > Settings > Sharing and you can link your Facebook and Twitter
accounts.

Once you upload a video, it will automatically update your status for both
services.

I use YouTube for my uploads mainly because it's one of the built-in upload
options for Android. I believe this is true for the IPhone too.

~~~
chrysb
That still remains a barrier to entry to people who are not savvy. Video
devices are becoming more and more pervasive, the number of people uploading
video will grow, and it needs to be easier.

One of our primary goals is to remove friction. Reduce the number of steps it
takes to distribute video to the audiences that matter to you. The ideal
number of steps: 1. We're almost there.

Convenience is another goal. People are lazy, I am lazy, and I prefer
something that is convenient and does all of the work for me.

Tell your parents to go to Accounts > Settings > etc, and watch their eyes
glaze over.

~~~
alain94040
But do you really want to build a startup around a feature that a much larger
competitor already almost has, and if that feature ever became important (as
in people switching to your service instead of youtube), they couldn't make
more visible and user-friendly?

Apparently, youtube can already tweet the videos automatically that you
uploaded. What will be the shelf-life of that startup then?

Again, humbly sounds to me like a great example of a feature, not a product.

------
alain94040
Can someone explain the rationale behind such a service? Twitter and HD video?
I must be showing my age, but what is the point? I'm genuinely curious to
understand what kind of company they are trying to build. Do they want to take
down youtube?

Someone please spell it out for me.

~~~
alaskamiller
A Twitter-integrated video site. Now displays HD.

~~~
alain94040
Do we need one railroad company per town? So now there would be a video site
that is twitter-friendly (in HD), another one that is youtube friendly,
another one that is voice-mail friendly... How many different video sites can
we have?

------
DarkShikari
For a moment when I read the headline, I thought they were sending videos over
Twitter by splitting them into 140-character data segments.

~~~
chrysb
Let me know if you can figure that out and we'll implement the feature asap.

~~~
kierank
A transport stream (that is used in digital TV and Blu-Rays amongst other
things) segments video/audio into 184 byte payloads. It's not that much
different really.

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jraines
A suggestion for Vidly: please make a video's view count available through the
API. I just went with YouTube + bit.ly for a video & twitter related thing I'm
doing because I have to have access to the view count.

~~~
danielrhodes
Thanks for the suggestion! It will be in the next push, later today.

~~~
dilanj
Real-time feature releases, nice work Dan!

------
DanielBMarkham
Somebody dropped the ball here.

Not only is this possible with a few clicks -- it's already possible with no
clicks at all.

It's an entire company devoted to replacing one feature that already works
fine on an immensely popular site.

Just set up AutoShare. When you upload a video, you get a tweet (and FB and
others get notified as well if you've set it up to cascade)

Where was the value again?

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nGsF0YR7NU> (instructions on how to set this
up on YouTube)

------
Tichy
Very impressive. I didn't think it was possible to compress HD videos into 140
bytes.

------
ak1394
I don't know how popular a service like that is going to be.

I'm doing something similar at the moment - a combination of Twitter client
for j2me phones that beside normal twitter functions allows taking
photos/videos/audio recordings and a web site to display recorded material.

I've been live for about a month, and surprisingly I'm not seeing many users
recording videos. Most would use it as a normal Twitter client, and some maybe
will snap a few photos.

