Best Site for Posting Lots of Videos?

[mikeyPotg]

Hey guys,

I'm a high school teacher who has the pleasure of teaching students television broadcasting and video production/editing. Our budget is really low and its a PC based school (though I'm trying hard to make the push for my classes to Macs).

I'd love to be able to post all of my students projects to a website where I can showcase their work to their parents, friends, family, and the rest of the school. I'd also like to post due dates and all that jazz also.

Perhaps eventually I can even join up with the art, photo, computer assisted design, graphic art classes, etc. to post all of the schools media work online.

Do you guys have any advice on a great simple site where I can do this as well as how much I should look into to pay for a site like this? Any advice is appreciated!

Thanks
Mike

 

[Mr_Brightside_@]

Youtube?

 

[mikeyPotg]

I thought about youtube, and perhaps it will be my last resort. I just wanted to know other options since youtube is blocked at my school.

Oh, also, please let me know if any of these sites have something that will convert a large file into one that will fit (ie, 1000mb down to 100mb or something). OR if theres a separate program yall recommend?

 

[fart]

I I just wanted to know other options since youtube is blocked at my school.

ah, nothing screams "education" more than a grand ol' First amendment right violation! I understand that for productivity reasons, a blanket blocking is effective, but there is so much quality, educational content on youtube, its such a lazy step to just "block it". *steps off soapbox*

You might want to look at community based groups like yahoo groups for bulletin information, calendars, etc. I'm sure there is some video functionality there by now. If not, other flash based video services include Stage6 (super high quality video- but you need a divx plugin to see the videos), and Google Video. Both are able to embed video into site, so you might be able to get your web guy (or better yet, a web design student) to make/maintain a site with embedded video. I really like your idea of an integrated media portal for all the school's content.

Or you could just get a decent host (i use godaddy) and encode/host the files yourself.

 

[maestrokev]

Are you trying to show unedited video that others can download? YouTube compresses quite a bit so doesn't look that good.

I'm researching new HD camcorders and lots of people post to www.vimeo.com because they allow a higher bitrate.

Also, have you heard of www.phanfare.com? Clips are limited to 10min but I believe you get a free account if educational.

 

[mikeyPotg]

Thanks for the heads up! Phamfare seems like a real solid site so far. I've setup a basic layout and tomorrow I'll see if I can view it from school (though I doubt we'll have the flash codecs to play it on our comps).

If theres any 10 min projects that my students do, I'll just split it into 2 parts or so.

The uploading takes quite a while though! We'll see how long it takes to upload all of our recent videos. I'm assuming several days. I'll let you know how it goes and thanks again for the heads up!

 

[maestrokev]

You're welcome. Are you using the Phanfare client for Windows or Mac? The Windows client uploads pretty quick. The Mac client is being rewritten and probably won't be updated until January I'm told, so right now it's slower than the Windows client.

You can also enable the option to download as slideshow so viewers can download the video and play on their computer if you don't have Flash installed.

Phanfare customer support is awesome. Have fun with it.

 

[mikeyPotg]

phanfare.com was working amazingly and I LOVED it up until this past week... I've uploaded over 40+ gigs of video and pictures from my classes, but sadly, they decided to change it so that it can't be viewed anonymously. This is very unfortunate, since that was the main reason I signed up and decided to pay for their service.

Does anyone have any other site to recommend where people can view the video/pictures anonymously? I'd prefer to be able to have comments, visitor tracker/count, and if possible, high quality uploads.

Thanks,
sad teacher