Sharing Video Files With Clients

Sharing Video Files With Clients

by Peter Wiley

on Aug 31, 2011 at 2:34:49 pm

I'd really like to know how people are sharing video files with clients.

I have doing some work for a large company whose network/IT arrangements apparently won't allow it's employees to see vimeo or download files from there or from similar sites. Client has suggested the use of Dropbox and You Send It, but the services are SLOW. Getting files uploaded via Dropbox needed at the last minute took many hours . . . client was not thrilled with the time taken even though the service was his suggestion.

I am am wondering what people thing think the best way to share files via the internet is. FTP from one's own web site, another file sharing service?

Re: Sharing Video Files With Clients

by Jason Jenkins

on Aug 31, 2011 at 6:19:00 pm

[Peter Wiley] "I am am wondering what people thing think the best way to share files via the internet is. FTP from one's own web site, another file sharing service?"

I upload quite a few videos for client review. I've been FTPing them to my own website. It worked fine for a while for smaller files, but I got to the point, recently, where it was too slow for the size and quantity I was uploading. I upgraded my Fios internet connection to 25/25 Mbps. I signed up on a 2 yr contract and was able to get the speed upgrade for less money than I was paying for my 10/2 service! I thought I was good to go, but then I discovered that the upload bandwidth to my Yahoo hosted site was another bottleneck. I contacted Yahoo support and withing a couple of days, they had fixed the problem. Now I have blazing fast uploads to my FTP site. What used to take minutes or even hours, now takes seconds. I love it!

Jason Jenkins
Flowmotion Media
Video production... with style!

Re: Sharing Video Files With Clients

by Joseph W. Bourke

on Sep 5, 2011 at 6:40:49 pm

Personally, I love Dropbox. I had tried many of the free services, such as TransferBigFiles, and a couple of others. They were sometimes fast, sometimes slow; as a result, unreliable.

I tried out the 2GB free Dropbox account, and found it simple to use, and simple for my clients to understand. I could set up folders so that only certain clients had access to their folders, and certain people within that company. I now have a 50GB account, and it's only a hundred bucks a year.

As far as encoding, after my master is done in Premiere, or AE, usually at 1920 x 1080, I will output that uncompressed. Then I encoded Quicktime movies at 640 x 360 for approval. Since this is the size that many of my clients end up using on their websites, it's perfect for approval. They don't see something that's better than the final delivery encoding. After changes/approvals, I deliver the final files via Dropbox as well, usually sending .flv and H.264 files. Works great for me! I haven't sent out a DVD in over a year!

Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com

Re: Sharing Video Files With Clients

by Mark Suszko

on Aug 31, 2011 at 6:23:56 pm

Search the COW for some discussion about MediaShare.

FWIW, what we do for approvals is Compress a half size version into H.264 and then use a proprietary FTP, we're limited there to files around ten gigs or less, but You Send It Pro should work fine, that's what I use at home. I think your problem boils down to they client's IT department not cooperating and a lack of really high-speed pipes.

I would suggest playing around with your compression settings in order to slim the files down just that much more, trade off size and qwuality for speed, depending on the final user requirements. Maybe not every file eneds to be sent out as 1920 RAW files, you know?

Re: Sharing Video Files With Clients

by Erik Freid

on Sep 7, 2011 at 4:10:17 pm

Focus Mediashare was powered by MediaSilo, Once VITEC bought Focus Enhancements they discontinued the service and all existing clients migrated to MediaSilo. Check us out we will be releasing a new version in a few months. FTP access and 4GB plus upload/download sizes plus web/mobile friendly proxies. Plus searchable metadata and tagging, per user security access following MPAA best practices.

Erik Freid | MediaSilo, Inc
207 South Street | Third Floor | Boston, MA 02111
t. 617.423.6200, m. 617.306.8632, f. 617.507.8577
http://www.mediaSilo.com erik@mediasilo.com

Re: Sharing Video Files With Clients

by grinner hester

on Aug 31, 2011 at 11:58:57 pm

I just upload em on my site ot yousend it to em for approvals. Today's final distribution rovelves arounf the receiver's needs. Depends on ther network.

Re: Sharing Video Files With Clients

by Noah Kadner

on Sep 1, 2011 at 2:43:17 am

I just switched over to Vimeo Pro- works like a charm for private review and clients *love* it:

http://vimeo.com/pro

If Vimeo is being blocked- try getting them to discuss with their IT department. Generally speaking those blocked site rules get relaxed if it's causing the company to not be able to function.

Noah

40% discount for Creative Cow users with code ccow2011 at Call Box Training.
Featuring the Panasonic GH2 and GoPro HD Hero.

Re: Sharing Video Files With Clients

by Stephen Smith

on Sep 1, 2011 at 4:30:44 pm

I agree with Mark. Compression is the key. We used to do FTP but that is such a pain. I love YouSendIt. It works great. With Sorenson Squeeze it will put a Flash video up on your site that looks great but it takes longer then compressor does to make a small H.264 video.

Stephen Smith
Utah Video Productions

Check out my Motion Training DVD

Check out my Motion Tutorials