|
Frequently Asked Questions
|
|
|---|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
General
What is an Internet Video?
An Internet Video, or digital media video, is a media file that is specially
created to be viewed on the internet with a media player, such as Windows
Media Player, QuickTime Player, or RealPlayer. Digital media videos
are created with special software by combining digital
photos, digital movies, sound, text and special effects.
Why can't I just
use the movie from my camcorder or digital camera?
Most camcorder and digital camera movies are recorded in format such as .mov
or .avi that doesn't lend itself to efficient viewing on the Internet.
To be effectively and pleasantly viewed on the Internet, a movie needs to be
compressed and encoded to correspond to the connection speed of the user.
Some of the newer digital camcorders and digital cameras are able to capture
movies in the MPEG file format. This is a more compressed format that
can be used for Internet viewing, though it is not as optimal as a format
created for a specific media player.
About Us
Crystal Ball Media began to take shape as a concept and idea as we were
exploring options to share our own digital videos with friends and family.
We've taken all of the technical details that we learned about creating
effective digital videos for the internet, and combined that with an easy to
use interface to allow you to publish your own digital creations to share
with your friends and family. Our goal is to provide an easy to use
service that maintains the cutting edge technologies of the emerging digital
video wave. We plan to continue to enhance the service with new and
exciting features.
What services does crystalballMedia provide?
Crystal Ball Media
provides a full set of features for creating and delivering Internet videos.
You can start with a collection of photos and movies, and build a storyboard
organizing the photos and movies, and add text, special effects and music.
You tell us about your target audience and how you want your video
delivered, and we take care of the technical encoding, compression and
delivery details. You can chose to have your video available for
viewing from a public or private area at crystalballMedia.com, or you can
host your video on your own website.
I don't have my own website, how can my friends and family see my Internet
Video?
If you don't have your own website, or if you don't want to use, or can't
use your own website; your Internet Video can be hosted at
crystalballMedia.com. We are not a web hosting company, we provide you
with a secure place on the Internet to host your video for the amount of
time that you determine. You choose whether your video is in a public
area, or a private area. Private areas require a password that you
provide to login to view the video. You can see examples of Internet
Videos on the
my crystalball Public Portal. These are Internet Videos that
people are sharing with friends and family across the Internet.
Can I put my video on my free website or my photo sharing website?
Maybe, or maybe not; you'll need to check the terms of service of the
provider. Many of the free websites or photo sharing websites restrict
multimedia files. Internet Videos are multimedia files, and the videos
created at crystalballMedia will be the latest state of the art digital
media files. Many of the free sites don't support these file types,
restrict the size of files, restrict the bandwidth, or don't allow
hotlinking from other locations. Internet Video files are big.
The larger the movie screen size, the faster the connection speed, and the
faster the motion in the video the bigger the file size. The 500K
bandwidth Winter Games example on our samples page range in file size from
6.4 to 12.1 MB. Many of the free services restrict file sizes to 5 MB.
What is hotlinking?
Hotlinking is when one website (Website A) links to high bandwidth images,
videos, or music on another website (Website B). This is sometimes
called bandwidth stealing, because the bandwidth to serve up the file is
being paid by Website B, but the visitor requesting the content is actually
viewing Website A.
Do I have to sign
up for a full year?
No, we are a pay-per-use service, not an annual subscription service.
You chose the type of service you want for creating your Internet video, and
for delivering the completed video. If you chose to have your video
hosted at crystalballMedia.com, you decide how long you want it to be
available.
I want to do some of my own digital movie editing
Great! It's a lot of fun. If you're just getting started,
consider trying some of these reasonably priced software packages.
Note, video creation software is resource intensive, i.e. you need a fairly
powerful computer.
Ulead VideoStudio
I'm really looking for a different kind of service
If you are creating your own Internet Videos and you are just looking for a
photo and multimedia sharing website that has an annual low-cost subscription rate,
try out some of these sites:
www.screenblast.com
If you have a VHS tape or DVD from an event and you want to show the
entire one to two hours online, try out:
www.ourspecialvideo.com
Back to Top
|
|
Account
Why do I need to create
an account?
You do not need to create an account if you are visiting crystalballMedia to
view Internet Videos created and published by others. If you want to
create and/or publish an Internet Video using the crystalballMedia service,
then you need to create an account. There is no charge for creating an
account, however charges do accrue for the various services options.
What personal
information do you collect?
If you are visiting our site, we do not collect any personal information;
unless you chose to signup for What's New newsletters. If you create
an account on crystalballMedia, we minimally collect your name, email
account, and birth month and year. Why do we collect your birth
information? Please see the section on
Protecting
the Privacy of Children. Additional personal information may be
collected with the various services options. Please see our
privacy
policy for additional information.
How do you use my
personal information?
Your personal information is used to service your account requests. We
do not share, publicize, sell, or in any manner distribute your personal
information. Please see our privacy policy for additional information.
What are your terms of
service?
You can read the complete
Terms of Service
here.
Will I have a monthly recurring charge for creating an account?
Not necessarily. The default option with crystalballMedia services is
to designate the period of time you want your video available for viewing.
You may chose options that will allow you to automatically extended the
viewing period, and these options may result in recurring monthly fees.
Why don't you have free
accounts?
We are privately funded, and we're doing this as a for-profit venture.
Unlike many of the "free" services that are and have been available in the
past, we're in for the long run, we don't limit features, and we won't
suddenly restrict or drop features. Your contribution to our
for-profit venture helps us to provide you with the latest and state of the
art features, performance, and security. And, while you are using the
site, viewing or sharing your videos; you won't be bothered with pop-up ads,
or need to worry about spyware, or spam messages because we don't depend on
advertising to support the cost of maintaining this website.
Can my
child use this service to create a video?
We adhere to and firmly endorse the Children's Online Privacy Protection
Act, therefore we require that accounts created on crystalballMedia are by
someone over the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect any
information on someone under the age of 13. Your child is welcome to
use this service to create a video, but must do so with the assistance of a
parent, guardian, or relative over the age of 13. This person will
create and be responsible for the account. We advise that you do not
use your child's full name, or any personal information about your child in the
videos that you create and publish in the public area of crystalballMedia.
See the FAQ section
Is My Family
Safe in a Public Internet Video for more information on protecting the
privacy of your children.
  
Back to Top
|
|
Viewing Videos
Watching Movies
Internet Videos on crystalballMedia are available in selected options
for Microsoft Media Player, QuickTime Player and RealPlayer. If you
need additional help or information about the players, please read the
section
Site Requirements
Your
connection to the Internet
Acceptable quality Internet Videos have become reality with the combination
of the increasing availability of high-speed Internet access and better
video compression technologies from the major media player vendors.
Internet videos are bandwidth intensive applications. The trick to
effective Internet video is to balance the quality of the video with the
download time. Video quality is measured, in part, by the Kbps of the
video, and the speed of the Internet connection. The higher the
Internet connection speed, the higher the Kbps can be in the video. If
the Kbps is too high for the Internet connection, you'll see choppy and
blurred images in the video, and it will take longer to download the movie
before it starts to play.
If you have a high-speed Internet connection such as
cable modem, DSL, T-1 or ISDN, then you can successfully and quickly watch
movies on this site at the 300K (medium) or 500K (high) option.
If you connect to the Internet using a dial-up modem,
then your internet connection speed is in the neighborhood of 56K (low). To
create an Internet video that will play over a dial-up connection requires
sacrifices in video quality and video window size.
All of the videos on crystalballMedia are created to
start playing while the video is still downloading. You might see this
in the player window with a status line that states buffering or loading.
This technique is called a progressive download, or HTTP streaming.
After a few seconds, the movie will start playing while the remainder of the
video is downloading. If you find the movie starts jittering, stopping and
starting; then the playing time has gotten too far ahead of the amount
downloaded. This can happen for any number of reasons, and if you are
on a high speed connection, it should be very seldom (unless of course your
network connection is dirty). This jittering can be frequent on a
dial-up connection.
If you are experiencing jittering, or if you are on a
dial-up connection and really want to watch one of the 300K (med) movies; then try
this technique. Simply wait for the movie to finish playing, then
WITHOUT CLOSING the player window, click the player button to start the
movie playing again. Since the movie has already downloaded, you'll be
able to watch the movie in one un-jittered stream.
If you consistently experience stuttering or jittering
videos, you may be on a congested connection, and can improve your viewing
pleasure by increasing the buffer amount. The buffer amount specifies
the percentage of the file that is downloaded before the video starts
playing. In Windows Media Player, select Tools, Options, Performance.
You can experiment with the value for Network Buffering, Buffer xx seconds
of content by starting with 10 seconds. In QuickTime Player, select
Edit, Preferences, QuickTime Preferences, Instant-On. In RealPlayer,
select Tools, Preferences, Playback Settings, More Options, Buffer up to xx
seconds of the clip before playing if needed.
If you are connecting to crystalballMedia through a
firewall, then you most likely will need to set proxy settings in your
preferred media player. Please utilize the media player online help or
your technical department for additional information.
If you are connecting to one of our movie viewing sites
with Microsoft Pocket Internet Explorer (PocketPC on a PDA or Smartphone),
then progressive downloads are not supported, nor are embedded players.
The movie you select will download in entirety to your handheld device, then
it will automatically launch in Windows Media Player. Note, you will
be prompted if you want to accept the download.
If you have Hotbar or FunWebProducts installed on your
browser, according to various articles found doing a google search, these
spyware and scumware products can lead to performance problems which could
negatively impact your ability to watch our videos. For more
information do a search on google.
Do I need to install a player to watch
videos?
In the past several years, all Windows computers come with Microsoft Media
Player installed, and all Apple computers come with QuickTime Player
installed. You, or your guests should have one of these players
available. If not, or if you are having trouble playing a video, read
the section on Site
Requirements.
I'm having trouble viewing a Windows Media Player video
The Windows Media Player videos on this site are created using Windows Video
and Audio version 9
CODECS
. If you have an older version of Windows
Media Player, these codecs should download automatically. If
you have an older version of Windows Media Player and don't want to upgrade,
or if your version 9 codecs don't download automatically, you can manually
install version 9 codecs which are available from
this Microsoft download site. If you are still experiencing difficulties, please read the
instructions in the section on
Site Requirements and
review the information in
Your connection to the Internet.
I'm having trouble viewing a QuickTime Player video
The QuickTime Player videos on this site are created using the QuickTime
version 6.5
CODECS
. If you have an older version of QuickTime, you may
see a broken QuickTime movie link, or QuickTime may try to automatically
download the correct plugin. PLEASE NOTE! At least on Windows
operating system, this automatic download from Apple does NOT install the
correct version of the plugin. This has been reported to Apple.
You will need to install the latest free QuickTime Player, which you can
find access to on our links page.
If you are still experiencing difficulties, please read the
instructions in the section on
Site Requirements and
review the information in
Your connection to the Internet.
I'm having trouble viewing a RealPlayer video
The RealPlayer videos on this site are created using RealMedia version 9
CODECS
. In all of our RealPlayer testing, RealPlayer has never
succeeded in displaying a useful error message if the RealPlayer is an older
version and does not have the particular codec available. Our only
advice is to install the latest free RealPlayer, which you can find access
to on our links page; or to use
Windows Media Player or QuickTime Player. If you are still
experiencing difficulties, please read the instructions in the section on
Site Requirements and
review the information in
Your connection to the Internet.
I'm connecting with a dial-up modem, and the dial-up videos are fuzzy
Please read the section
Your Connection to the Internet.
Back to Top
|
|
Creating my Movie
What can I do with my movie?
A lot of fun things! You can publish your movie on a
public portal page, or private portal page at crystalballMedia.
You can invite friends and family to come see your movie. If you have
your own website, you can publish your movie on your own website; we give
you the HTML and Javascript code, or you can link from your website to your
portal page at crystalballMedia. Read
more about publishing your own Internet Video online.
Is my family safe in a public Internet Video?
The privacy and security of your family are very
important to us. We strongly encourage you to insure that your public
videos do NOT contain any personally identifiable information about your
family. For example, do not use your child's full name. Do not
show photos or movies of your child at a publicly recognizable location that
your child frequents (such as school, church, park, etc).
Do not video tape your child wearing clothing with physically identifying
words or markings, such as the name of the school or activities your child attends.
DO use other
common sense practices, such as avoiding pictures and movies of the street
side of your house, street signs, city names if you live in a small
community, etc. If you want to publish a video of your child's
graduation from pre-school and the school is easily identifiable from the
video, we strongly encourage you to utilize our private portal options.
These guidelines apply whether your child is two-legged or four-legged.
Can I send the movie in an eMail message?
Most Internet movies are to large to send as an attachment in an e-mail
message. You can always send a link to your movie by using the
tell-a-friend option at the top of every portal page. If you
specifically want a movie that is small enough to attach to a e-mail, tell
us so when you are managing your production in your mediaroom, and we'll
create one for you, but you should be aware that sacrifices in quality and
video size may be required to make the file size small enough for an e-mail
attachment.
How do I send you my digital photos?
When you create an account on crystalballMedia, you are allocated your own
private storage spot in our mediaroom. You'll use this to tell us
about your production, and to send us the digital media used in your movie.
How do I send you movies from my camcorder?
When you create an account on crystalballMedia, you
are allocated your own private storage spot in our mediaroom. You'll use
this to tell us about your production, and to send us the digital media used
in your movie. If your movies are from a digital camera, they can easily be
uploaded using the Internet to your mediaroom. If your movies are from
a digital camcorder they may be too large to transfer with a FTP connection
or if your movies are from an analog camcorder, then they are probably on a
VHS tape. When FTP transfer is not suitable, we will make arrangements
for you to mail us your movie footage.
How can I get music in my movie?
Well, that is actually a loaded question. Most likely you are thinking about popular music or tunes, which will fall under the
protection of the Digital Millenium Protection Act. In short, popular music
is copyright protected. While popular music is used in videos, legally
a "synch" license is obtained. A "synch" license grants the use of
music to play in synchronization to a video. Additionally, most of the
videos produced at crystalballMedia will air on the Internet, which
introduces another license requirement very similar to a broadcast license, and be burned to CD or DVD,
which introduces mechanical licenses. Being both a programmer, and a
producer of digital images, I frankly support copyright protection, and the
concept of the Digital Millenium Protection Act. In practice, I think
the music industry needs to wake up and smell the future in new media.
The current licensing fees are, frankly outrageous for the venue that is
playing on crystalballMedia. You might have noticed that "Cannon's
Video" on the samples page has no audio. It
was originally backed by 1 minute of Toby Keith's Courtesy of the Red, White
and Blue; which is Cannon, Rockaway's Freedom Fighter's theme song.
I naively thought I would be able to license or gain permission to use this
legally. I was wrong.
When you buy a CD of music, you don't own
the music; you own a silver platter. You are licensed to personally
listen to and enjoy the music. Your purchase of the CD is not a
license granting you permission to broadcast the tune on your website or to
use it in synchronization to video on your website; or the crystalballmedia
website. The music industry has created licensing fees for granting
license to do so; but the pricing is geared towards mass-market distribution
such as TV, Radio, Music DVDs, Advertising, etc; and doesn't scale down to
the individual user with a few hundred visitors.
Crystal Ball Media will adhere to the
current rules and regulations of the distribution of music. We want
the rules and regulations to change in favor of providing a legal and cost
effective method for individuals to feature music on their websites and in
their Internet videos, but we are not in a position risk court or legal
action.
Copyright's Communication Policy, by Timothy Wu, Associate Professor of
Law, University of Virginia Law School; while a long paper, is very
interesting reading. The history of copyright protection, and the
landmark court cases are discussed. The final section discusses the
current turmoil in copyright issues, and refers to the California Civil Wars
between the Los Angeles Producers and the San Francisco P2P networks.
The author states that we are in a transition period in copyright history,
and the online distribution of music is the current issue. Further he
states "the only question is how painful and costly the transitions will
be". Thus far, it has proven to be quite painful for us as we work to
find legal means to provide our customers with music options in their
Internet videos.
So, just how do you get music? Well, your sponsors at crystalballMedia
are hard at work on this issue. In the mean time, we are using our own
compositions, sound loops, and other legal means to provide you with music
in your video. If you have musical friends, or are musical yourself;
you can provide your own soundtracks. In the near future, we hope to provide additional
alternatives.
Can I send you my wedding DVD and have you create a short Internet Video
montage?
We request that you check first with the videographer who created your
Wedding (or any other Event) DVD. The event videographer may want to
do this themselves, or they will specifically want to grant their
permission.
FTP Clients
You will need an FTP Client to upload files to your mediaroom at crystalballMedia.
If you are accustomed to using ftp from a command prompt, then all you need
to know is that you will connect to
ftp.crystalballmedia.com using your crystalballMedia account name as the
ftp user and your crystalballMedia account password as the ftp password.
You may be able to connect using your Internet browser. Open a new
Internet browser window. In the address bar, enter:
ftp://ftp.crystalballmedia.com
Wait for the connection. You will be presented with a Log On window.
Enter your crystalballMedia account name as the User Name and your
crystalballMedia account password as the password, then click the Log On
button. After you are connected, you will see your private storage
location in the crystalball mediaroom. Leave this window open.
Locate your files using the File Explorer, select them, then Copy (Ctrl-C;
right mouse click - copy; Edit - copy). Tab to the ftp window and
paste your selected files (Ctrl-V; right-mouse click - paste, Edit - paste).
Wait patiently for the files to upload..... When you have completed
uploading your files, close the browser window to close your connection.
There are several shareware (low cost) FTP clients
available that are very easy to use, most notably cuteFTP and WS_FTP
Installing and Using FileZilla FTP Client
FileZilla is an open source, free FTP Client. You can find the
download here. Select the download option for FileZilla (not
FileZilla Server). On the next page, select the download option for
FileZilla
****
_setup.exe. On the next page, click a link in the
download column from one of the mirror sites. Save the download file
to a location on your computer that you will remember.
After the download completes, use Explorer
on you computer to navigate to the location where you saved the FileZilla
download in the previous step. Double click FileZilla
****
_setup.exe to start the installation.
You can accept the default installation parameters.
After the installation completes, start
FileZilla by locating the program in your Start, Programs menu.
Now you will create a remote location that
corresponds to your user account. In FileZilla, select the menu option
File, Site Manager. Click the New Site button. In the file list
box, you'll see a new highlighted entry labeled New FTP Site, change this to
something meaningful, such as crystalball. On the right hand side of
the Site Manager window, you will enter your information to connect to
crystalballmedia. Enter the following information:
Host:
crystalballmedia.com
Port: 21
Servertype: FTP
Logontype: Normal
User: Enter the name you chose as your crystalballmedia account name
Password: Enter the password you chose when you created
your crystalballmedia account
Now, click Save and Exit.
Next, you will connect to Crystal Ball
Media by selecting File, Site Manager; select the crystalball FTP Site in
the File pane, then click the Connect button. It may take a few tries
to connect successfully, and you may need to select the menu option File,
Disconnect; then reconnect by selecting File, Reconnect.
After you are connected, find the files
you want to upload by navigating in the FileName section of your local site.
Double click the file, and it should start to automatically upload.
You can upload many files at one time by
using the FileZilla Queue feature. For more information, please see
the installed FileZilla Documentation; which you can find in your Start
Programs FileZilla menu.
Back to Top
|
|
About This Site
Site Information
crystalballMedia is hosted by
Network Eleven. The servers are in a state of the art secure data
center in Portland Oregon and running on Time Warner Telecom's IP Backbone.
This site is built using Microsoft Frontpage and Ultra-Edit. We test
with multiple browsers and multiple operating systems.
Site Policies
Full details can be found in the crystalballMedia
Terms of Service. To summarize at a high level:
- This is a family oriented site, no adult content nor pornographic content
- Children's privacy will be protected in the videos
- No "illegal content"; photos, videos and music will have proper license to
use or ownership
- The content on this site, including source code, images, videos, photos,
graphics are the property of Crystal Ball Media or the property of the
providing owner or licensor. Content may not be reproduced.
What are the site requirements?
-
You'll need a current "modern" browser to navigate the site and view
movies, such as Netscape Navigator 5.0 or higher or Microsoft Internet
Explorer 5.0 or higher.
-
Your computer needs to be
relatively state of the art, with a fast processor and fast graphics
card.
-
Javascript and ActiveX need to be enabled to view the movies.
Unless you specifically disabled these features in your browser, they are
probably available.
-
You'll need one of the supported free players, Windows
Media Player or QuickTime Player. You can find the links for these
players on our
links page.
-
You'll need the latest version of the codecs for your preferred
player. A codec is a piece of software that the player uses to
encode and decode the media stream. The Internet movies on this
site use the latest available codecs in order to provide the best
viewing options with the least possible download times.
Theoretically, Windows Media Player 6.4 and up will automatically
download a new codec if it determines it is needed. In limited
testing, we've found this to be true. QuickTime does not
successfully update it's codecs, and older versions of RealPlayer fail
with an ugly error message.
-
Our Internet Videos are encoded with Windows Media Player version 9 and
QuickTime Player version 6.5. If you have an older version of these
players, and are unable to view movies, you should probably upgrade your
player to the latest version. You can find them by using our
links page.
-
If you are in doubt about your system, you can check the
Windows Media Player System Requirements and the
QuickTime Player System Requirements.
-
You must have a valid email address and be 13 years of age or older
to create a crystalballMedia account.
-
You can test your media player plugins and other browser settings with
our
Browser Info Checker.
I still need help!
After reading this FAQ, using the Browser Tester, and installing one of
the players from the Links page, if you still need help, please send a message
and provide as much detail in the body of the message as possible.
Also, please copy the results of the Running Scripts box from the
Browser Info Checker into the message.
Back to Top
|
|
