Forum Request for Animators (quicktime Embed)
mod
So, the forums have seen a huge jump in animator traffic lately, and for animators, the best way to show your work is via quicktime movies. It lets you scrub through animations frame by frame. The forums for 11secondclub.com has it where if you post a public link to your .mov file in your dropbox, it will auto embed your quicktime into the forum.
I was wondering if it is at all possible to get this happening for Polycount? Im not really sure how it all works, and Ive asked the other site for help. But does anyone know how to do that?
Cheers
Stefan
I was wondering if it is at all possible to get this happening for Polycount? Im not really sure how it all works, and Ive asked the other site for help. But does anyone know how to do that?
Cheers
Stefan
Replies
Often the people who don't understand the value of scrubbing animation, use youtube and vimeo because they are super easy. Even if they could embed .mov files they probably wouldn't and they are the ones that need scrubbing the most, they just don't understand why yet. So they get the speech "get dropbox, post .mov, bla bla bla"
"In regards to your question about auto-embedding, a lot of forum software will do that for you now (with plugins).
The way we do it is that we a have a parser that runs before each post is displayed. It searches for links to YouTube/Vimeo/.mov files/etc. We then replace that link with the embed code. What's nice about this approach is that if YouTube's embed code changes, we can change one line of code to affect all forum posts."
If that helps at all?
A slightly more ambitious request from me would be an animation sub forum to collate the animation related wip threads as well as stickies with links to essential reading or commonly recommended books etc, although I appreciate demand for this might not currently warrant such a thing.
Awesome that Vimeo embeds on PC too now, but quicktime would be really amazing as well!
If someone wanted to go the extra mile they would download the mp4 and drop it in their dropbox and post a link to that along with the embedded vimeo.
Quicktime embedding would be great.
An animation sub forum to funnel animation specific threads would be awesome.
I'm not so sure it needs to be segregated to another sub forum, just smartly worded the thread tiles, so people know it contains animation would probably be enough.
"Spin Kick animation practice" or "Anim: Spin kick WIP" instead of "My Latest WIP Project". But that's mostly common sense with any type of post a poor title will lead to poor turn out.
I think if its another sub-forum it will fall off the radar of people who aren't animators who might check P&P and have some good insight but wouldn't check the animation only sub-forum.
I think it should only become a sub-forum if it gets to the point where there is enough traffic it is disturbing the other functions of polycount.
Each time polycount grows in a new direction, 2D & 3D, General CG and Game Art, Environment and Character art, people want to carve up the forums and push people into little boxes. While I understand it's kind of a status thing and a mark of recognition to have a dedicated sub-forum, it makes the forums a bit harder to navigate for most people, when things are segregated and its easier for sub forums to go dark and posts slip by unoticed.
Full .mov support would be great for the WAYW thread especially, I don't know about anyone else but I tend to skim through that thread and only notice stuff that catches my eye, and text links to .movs would easily be missed.
YouTube and Vimeo are fine, but as noted, they don't offer scrubbing and for WIP's, it's not ideal to have to upload every iteration to YouTube or Vimeo when it's so easy to drop a .mov into DropBox.
Very good point.
+1 for Quicktime support though!
But ya, I always add [Animation] to the start of my thread titles. Easy to read and keeps it organized
11secondclub.com, ya. I go there as well. That's where I got the idea for quicktime support.
ay!
As for Quicktime embedding, I'll bring this up with the rest of the Polycount Crew and see what we can do. I suppose for now, just put a link to your quicktime video in your post along with your youtube/vimeo video. Doesn't that generally just open in a new browser window with scrubbing support anyway?
Thanks Emil.
I know on my end it works as you say, plays the video in a new window. I'm not sure if that's browser specific though (or browser settings specific) I'm using Chrome and for some reason WMV's always download rather than opening, as do MPG's, whereas MOV's open in a new window.
Im an animator (student but still) i pretty much just do games loops and other misc stuff and 11second aint that useful for that kind of thing, only reason ive never posted work here is lack of .mov for proper crit. Id love this support and would be alot more active than i am at the minute because i could actually post my work
Does anyone know where this thread is located at?
...I'm kinda still getting used to Polycount so please excuse the newbish questions :-)
Right now I would suggest posting the video to Vimeo it will allow people to log in and download a .mp4 (which is a scrubbable format). That way you can embed it in the forums and people can get a scrubbable format without much fuss.
If you wanted to go really make things easier on people visiting your thread, you would download the mp4 for everyone (so they don't have to log into vimeo) and place it in your dropbox, then embed the video and link to the mp4.