why did you stop uploading videos and pictures?

[kylepeterson]

i stopped caring about uploading videos a few years ago when YouTube began changing bit rates, rejecting anything that had music in the background, and generally sucking all the fun out of it.

now i can upload in 1080 60 or 480 30 and there is hardly any difference at all.... meanwhile i see other videos/channels that look like they might be 8k 120, or better than human eye perspective.

I've used the tutorials to make sure the frameraces/bit rates/color matches what YouTube likes, but it's still crap.

now, I'll upload a ride, view it on the computer and just sigh, there's no point in linking it to forums anymore. i guess YouTube just picked some to be at full quality and drags the others through the potato patch.


pictures..... hell every hosting service went poof and now wants $150 a year to host my stuff (pictures???) with only a 9 month guarantee it will still be there.

i guess this is a rant, but I've noticed a LOT of folks aren't uploading anymore, unless they're blessed with a million subscribers.... which i don't ever want

rant over

[klaviator]

I have never made videos but I do take a ton of pictures and post a lot of them.  I use SmugMug to host them and I'm much happier with Smugmug than I was with photobucket.  Photobucket cost me around $27 a year and SmugMug is around $45.  It's worth it to me.  Even though I no longer pay photobucket anything my pictures are still showing up in the forums. 

[renchinrider]

Yeah, I've been on Flickr for a few years, and everything was great until last month when Smugmug bought Flickr from Yahoo and brought the 1Tb free storage capacity to an end.  My suspicion is Smugmug bought Flickr so it could kill its competition.  (Smug, huh?!! :-[ :-[ :-[)

Anyway, I had to go in and remove about 300 photos to get under the 1,000 photo limit.  I'm too cheap to pay for a photo hosting service, given that I'm not a professional and not even my family is "that" interested in my posts.

So, sadly, I too will be posting less photos, and may not be able to keep them on the Flickr platform for as long before I have to remove/replace them.  It's too bad, but it is what it is... :(

[KevinB]

I've been using the photo hosting site www.pbase.com for about 18 years. Costs me @$24/year and have never had any issues at all.

[springer]

 I use to use VIMEO for my videos because they are a little less strict on the music stuff. Youtube has gotten very strict on copyright music BUT, they have also improved their music library.  Some of it is pretty good but there is hardly anything over 5 minutes long. You also have to load in a certain file format but I can not get them to TELL me what format THEY WANT. So I upload a 60FPS 1080p video and they reduce it to 480p. ??? I see others, not on this site but other sites that upload 4K videos and Youtube publishes them at 4K. WTF?
If anyone know what "file format" Youtube wants, please tell me.
Why not just go back to Vimeo? I might but;
1. I am approaching my free limit there.
2. Not to interested in paying a monthly or yearly fee.
3. Vimeo doesn't pay me anything no matter the views I get. (You can build a channel on Youtube, get enough viewers, and Youtube pays you)

Pictures;
Right now I am using Photobuck and have for....10 years I think. Yep, paid a fee but for awhile, considering how many photos I have on there, it wasn't to bad. Of course they have upped the fee soo I'm looking for something else.  I considered Smug-Mug and Smug-Mug charges a fee but they are cheaper than Photobucket...for now. Also there use to be a program that you could use to transfer your photos from Photobucket to Smug-Mug. Use to be ON the Smug-Mug site but I can not find it. I also have photos on Google+. I would like to get all my digital photos in one place.

But to be honest, I am really getting to hate digital.

So much so, my next camera will be a FILM camera.

In 2005 I sold my film cameras. My 2 35mm cameras, a Nikon N90s and a Nikon F5, my medium format camera, a Pentax 645, and my Wista 4x5 Large Format camera. WHY? Well the magazines I was doing work for need digital files and photo scanners cost money so I sold all my film cameras.   :( (kept all my Nikons lens though, my digital Nikons can use them) Also sold all my darkroom equipment too. :(

But I am planning on getting back into film and darkroom work. My next camera will be a Nikon FM 10 (35mm) or a Bronica ETR Medium Format with 2 lens, the prism finder and auto film advance. (120 or 220, the camera can handle both)
Then I plan on building another darkroom too. And buying a 8x10 large format.

Screw this digital crap.  My new printer has a good flatbed scanner that can scan prints good enough to view on a 4k TV.

I still plan on using my GoPros, my Nikon Digital SLR, and my s9+ phone for pictures and videos. I still plan on posting videos and pictures.

But I am getting back into film for me.  ;) I really miss darkroom work. I am retired now so what the heck, I will do only the things I want to do, not have to do. 

[JBMFT]

I used to really enjoy shooting, editing, finding or composing music for videos and posting.
Felt the same way about pictures.
My kids have gotten older, work schedule has changed and I have less time to ride much less shoot and edit video.
I will try and do more in the new year. Didn't really realize I missed it so much until you brought it up.
Gee, thanks. ;)

[springer]

I've been using the photo hosting site www.pbase.com for about 18 years. Costs me @$24/year and have never had any issues at all.

Checking into that now. IF they can give me a "How To for a Dummy" list of what I need to do to transfer my photos from Photobucket to there....and it NEEDS to be dummy proof.  :D

[bblass]

FWIW, amazon does 5GB/year of photo hosting for free if you're a prime member and 100GB/year at $12.

I haven't used them but I'm a big fan of all their other services

[Jwwr]

I don't think Amazon photos will do direct linking. I would like to be corrected on this as I already have it and wouldn't have to pay for SmugMug.

[bblass]

I haven't tried it, but it looks like you can

Share Your Photos, Videos, & Albums
You can share your photos personal videos, and albums by email, Facebook, or Twitter, or copy a URL directly from the Amazon Drive website.

If you would like to find information on how to share files or folders, go to Share Your Files.

To share your photos and personal videos from Amazon Drive:

Go to Amazon Drive Photos and Videos.
Select up to 25 photos and/or videos.
Click Share.
Either share a link by clicking Get shareable link, or share by email, Facebook, or Twitter.
To share an album from Amazon Drive:


Go to Amazon Drive Photos and Videos.
Click Albums on the navigation panel and open the album you'd like to share.
Click Share.
Either share a link by clicking Get a shareable link, or share by email, Facebook, or Twitter.
Note: You are able to unshare photos, videos, and albums at any time. Unsharing photos, videos, and albums will deactivate the shared link, making it unusable for anyone to use in the future. This will also disable any preview of the shared item(s) that may have been displayed in an email, on Facebook, or on Twitter. For more information, go toUnshare Your Photos, Videos, & Albums.

Note: When you share photos and videos by email from the Amazon Drive website, your recipients receive an email notification with your name in the "Subject" field, a preview of the photo or video, and a link to view the full version--they don't need a Amazon Drive account. Your recipients can also download shared photos and videos.

[Jwwr]

I have already tried this, It would not fetch the image in preview, but I went ahead and posted the amazon link and it does't work. I can send one in email fine, that shows a preview and a link to the amazon site.

[Fencejumper09]

Smugmug has been worth it to me. After having multiple external hard drive bite the dust and lost all of my honeymoon picture (yes even the good ones  :-\ ) I decided the cloud is worth the money.

Youtube has worked for me it takes a while to upload and normally within a day it is encoded to the 1080p at 60 that I created. For the first hours or up to 1 day it is limited to 480.

I have about 200 gigs of videos from Colorado that I will be compiling once I have a new PC built that can handle the heavy lifting!

@IceCold4x4 you still want to help me spec out a PC?

[Brian A]

I still will do a video for major trips (Colorado, Baja, etc) but very little otherwise.

Photohosting?

I have two external 1T USB drives that have all my photos on them.

Online hosting?  Flickr for me.

They are moving (Jan 8th) to Free for 1000 pics or less.  Paid for unlimited storage.
Currently $42 per year with discount if you sign up. I think it's $48 or so for subsequent years. That's reasonable in my book.

Flickr is a good product. Sharing is super easy.
They have a good online editor you can use to tweak photos.

I might not have any online storage if I never shared pics here or other places. But I do. So I do.

[Brian A]

Correction - I just signed up at Flickr.  Discount rate was $44  for a year.
Auto-renewal until I cancel will be at same rate I signed up at for as long as I let it ride.

85 cents a week.  That's a pretty good deal in my book.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/41451619@N05/albums

[jrou111]

I upload everything in either 4K30 or 2.7K60 from the Virb, the Mavic, and my Panasonic G7. The key to getting good quality video is follow Youtube's recommendations for the file container (MP4), the codec (h.264), and the bitrate:

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en

Recommended video bitrates for SDR uploads

To view new 4K uploads in 4K, use a browser or device that supports VP9.
Type    Video Bitrate, Standard Frame Rate
(24, 25, 30)    Video Bitrate, High Frame Rate
(48, 50, 60)
2160p (4k)    35-45 Mbps    53-68 Mbps
1440p (2k)    16 Mbps    24 Mbps
1080p    8 Mbps    12 Mbps
720p    5 Mbps    7.5 Mbps
480p    2.5 Mbps    4 Mbps
360p    1 Mbps    1.5 Mbps

If you upload something outside of those parameters, Youtube will compress/re-render the video and it'll look like garbage 99% of the time. If you get it right, you'll be rewarded with a good picture:

2.7k 60 fps -



4K 30 fps -



As far as keeping files, I built a FreeNAS server using an old PC and a pair of 4TB drives that are mirrored (same data copied on each drive). If one drive fails, I still have a backup. I keep our music, pictures, movies, and my riding videos on there. It's connected to the network (NAS stands for network file system) and the media can be accessed internally on the PC's. Although I do share my music and movies over the web via an app called Plex.

Here's all of the riding videos:



For online cloud storage I use Google Cloud and Google Photos. It's like $20/yr for 100GB of storage. The photos app automatically uploads the pictures off my phone so if my phone goes kaput I've got a backup. Google Photos does hotlinking (posting the images to external sites like this forum) and I provided a guide last year on how I do that.

Oh and one last thing...uploading videos to Youtube takes up a lot bandwidth so make sure you've got a good upload speed  8):