[Stephen Potter]

Keith,
Unless you are a team member of a given production, you can’t access the video in any way. It will give you an error. If you are a member, it will in fact download the video. But we did a few crafty things to help thwart someone from getting the source video (which is an encoded h.264 and not the original high res by the way). I invite you to try and rip a Takeoff video. Hopefully it’s not easy. That’s really the point. It’s not impossible, but it’s not easy. But that was our goal. We just want to make it tough to get the video file. That way we minimize the likelyhood of a client ripping off a videographer by getting the source video then not paying. That’s one of the major problems with FTP or email.

Stephen Potter

CTO, http://www.mediascend.com
Creator of http://www.takeoffvideo.com – video producers check this one out

[Stephen Potter]

Bret, could you please tell me what OS and browser you are using? I can’t seem to replicate that bug here.

Stephen Potter

CTO, http://www.mediascend.com
Creator of http://www.takeoffvideo.com – video producers check this one out

[Stephen Potter]

We put the bit rate at about 1.4mps…a pretty good number. The main reason we don’t allow videos to bypass the system is that we require at least 5 keyframes per second. That allows our commenting system to be as precise as it is. You ever click on a YouTube video timeline and the playhead jumps to another spot? That’s due to lack of keyframes. That doesn’t happen in Takeoff. Try pressing left and right arrows and you will see the smooth scrubbing we have. All due to keyframes.

We couldn’t detect the number of keyframes per second so we decided to transcode each and every video, even if they are web ready adn within our bitrate range. However, a new version of our video analyzer recently came out that lets you determine keyframes setting during encoding. So at some point we will re-enable bypass. We will also provide presets for Compressor and Adobe Media Encoder to make it easier. This will avoid double compression. Until then, I recommend uploading high res quicktime vids. Those compress very well.

Thanks for the feedback at uservoice. I already wrote back and it’s in our plans. It’s not such an each feature…lots of tricky UI work involved. But we’ll get it done at some point. One thing we do with our clients is zip everything up and just upload that zip. It’s not perfect but is a decent workaround. How does that sound?

Stephen Potter

CTO, http://www.mediascend.com
Creator of http://www.takeoffvideo.com – video producers check this one out

[Stephen Potter]

Jackson,
Yes we plan on it. One way to do it is to simply insert feedback people write into the timeline of whatever NLE or gfx suite you use. We will probably start with FCP and Premiere. That kind of integration isn’t so time-consuming for us, because we can just leverage the XML nature of those projects to insert markers into timelines.

The ideal way to do it would be to create a plugin that keeps FCP always hooked up to Takeoff. Instead of using Compressor then uploading to Takeoff via Safari, you just hit a single button inside FCP. Or you could reply or cross off comments right on the timeline. Stuff like that. The only problem is that plugin authorizing is a big deal and we don’t have the resources to embark on such a project. But we can start with basic XML-driven integration. Expect that at some point over the next few months.

We will be publishing an API for Takeoff in the future. Once that is done, there is nothing stopping a 3rd party from creating such a plugin. Maybe one of the developers at Red Giant will get inspired and write a sick Takeoff plugin for FCP!

Stephen Potter

CTO, http://www.mediascend.com
Creator of http://www.takeoffvideo.com – video producers check this one out

[Stephen Potter]

Bret,
Thanks for writing. Takeoff is definitely right for you. There are a few other sites out there but they are all overpriced and complex. One of our highest priorities is simplicity. Us production guys are pretty tech savvy, but not necessarily our clients. We tried some other solutions but they were so difficult to learn that we knew our clients would reject them and just ask to go back to email.

There is no specific way to encode the videos. It takes just about any codec, not just h.264. Higher quality always comes out best…it just takes longer to upload. We use whatever frame size and rate the source video uses, so it’s quite flexible.

Stephen Potter

CTO, http://www.mediascend.com
Creator of http://www.takeoffvideo.com – video producers check this one out

[Stephen Potter]

Patrice,
There is no limit as to how many videos or assets can be uploaded. Each file can be up to 2gb (technical limitation for now).

How does that sound?

Stephen Potter

CTO, http://www.mediascend.com
Creator of http://www.takeoffvideo.com – video producers check this one out

[Stephen Potter]

Jodi,
Thanks for writing. Takeoff is a pure web app. There is a tiny Flash plugin that plays the video, but that’s it. So if you can watch YouTube, you can use Takeoff.

We do provide the option to make the source video downloadable (the orignal MOV or whatever), but that’s off by default. We want to protect you from the situation where someone uses your proof before you get paid (not cool!). The final encoded video, which is h.264, is extremely hard for someone to download (as hard as Vimeo anyway). So your proofs are protected.

I forgot to mention that Takeoff is fully secure. Every page uses HTTPS to encrypt data. Your videos are invite-only, never public. It’s all about letting you produce video in a secure, easy way.

Thanks Jodi!

Stephen Potter

CTO, http://www.mediascend.com
Creator of http://www.takeoffvideo.com – video producers check this one out

[Stephen Potter]

There are so many ways to tackle this problem. The best approach is subjective and depends on your situation, budget, and priorities. So I can only tell you my story.

If maintaining quality for the future is important, which it is for us, you have to find ways to deal with large amounts of data.

Typical backup programs like Mozy won’t work if you have tons of data, which many video people have. So we ruled them out early on.

My company – https://www.mediascend.com – had over 1TB of projects, source footage, render files, etc. We set up a server (really just a basic Windows XP machine) with 2 hard drives, each 1.5 TB. We set up a network share on the first hard drive. That had all our FCP projects and source footage. We went with a wired network because editing from a wireless network share is too slow. You also have the option of copying the files over to your local Mac desktop…just remember to copy the project and assets back to the network frequently. And make sure your bin files aren’t scattered everywhere.

For safety, we used the 2nd HD as a backup, which was done nightly, just in case the 1st one blew out. Then we had an external HD that was kept at a separate location and once a week we backed up the server onto that.

That setup only costs a few hundred bucks and will keep everything – raw uncompressed footage included – safe. You can get 1.5TB internal disks for around $100 or so. They even have 2.0TB ones now. Chances of failure are very low.

But just to cover our butts, we ended up backing up choice projects onto Amazon’s S3 storage service. It’s $0.15/gb (now you can get it as low as 10 cents), but also $0.15/gb that you download. We backed up over 500gb of stuff. Cloud storage is great for peace of mind. There are two problems. First, the cost. If you are archiving tons of stuff, you are looking at a $100+ monthly bill. So you may want to only back up crucial stuff. Second, it takes forever to upload a ton of crap. They do have a pretty cool service where you can mail them an external drive and they upload it for you. S3 is great but is a pretty low-lever nerdy service. If you go with it, use a FireFox plugin called S3Fox to transfer files.

For all our backups we used a program called Allway Sync. It’s free to start and cheap to buy. It made it each for us to take the main harddrive and back it up to a 2nd internal hd, an external hd, and Amazon’s S3.

This may seem like overkill but data loss is a bitch. This system took us some time to set up but we sleep very well knowing it’s there. And we did it all for a few hundred bucks!

Stephen Potter

CTO, http://www.mediascend.com
Creator of http://www.takeoffvideo.com – video producers check this one out