VGVids: The Return

[Cat333Pokémon]

Alright, might as well let you know that VGVids will indeed be ready soon. I've scrapped a lot of stuff in the latest iteration. The site will be more of a video game multimedia archive than a YouTube clone. There won't be any user accounts, and we'll be accepting many types of content that would be great for archival reasons. All of my remixes, Mario Paint videos, and video game screenshots will be uploaded there, for instance.

I'm going to need some beta testers soon, too, notably people with mobile phones, game consoles, smartphones, and outdated systems with Web browsers. The reason for this is that, unlike VRAC, this site uses a variety of multimedia technologies that may or may not work on various devices.

I'm also saving disk space and only uploading MP4 videos and MP3 audio, falling back on a Flash plugin for anyone else. WebM and Ogg are losing, and MP4 supports interlaced video without jumping through hoops. The top four browsers (IE9+, Chrome 3+, Firefox 21+, and Safari 3.1+) all support MP4. Opera, Chromium, and <IE8 users without Flash represent too little of the population for me to bother doubling the video storage space.

Also, I'll be extremely stingy with Let's Play videos because of the MASSIVE size of them. For testing things, I used Reun's five "Let's Fail Rhythm Heaven Fever" parts, and they total 170 MB for just over an hour of footage. A full LP of a Pokémon game may easily be 20+ hours, so that would easily exceed three gigabytes for a single Let's Play. I'd prefer those to stay on YouTube, frankly, and instead promote videos showing off interesting parts of games.

[Twiggy]

Can I be the beta tester for Windows Phone? I guess it needs no introduction at this point. Hope there's a test video or something.

[RotomGuy]

I can Beta Test using the Wii U, if you want.

[TurtwigX]

I volunteer Wii U, Android Gingerbread, and iOS 5 (and maybe 6.) But I don't have much OC to upload due to lack of a capture card.

Edit: And Xbox 360. I can do that too.

[Yoshi648]

I can test Commodore 64.

[Cat333Pokémon]

Alright, I'll be glad to accept the help, and of course there will be plenty of files to help demo the site as soon as it's ready.

[NismoZ]

Question: what's your stance on piracy with VGVids? Will you allow media from pirated games in general, or just for purposes of things you can't do on consoles, e.g. TASes or ROM hacks?

[Cat333Pokémon]

For the most part, I'll be more lenient with such media. Of course, I'll still take preference to legitimately recorded stuff, and anything that is terrible quality because of poor emulation will be simply rejected.

Another thing I forgot to mention is that if someone uploads, say, a glitch video recorded with a camera in front of the TV screen, I may replace it with a direct capture video. Same for audio from a mic vs. with a line cable.

[kakashidragon]

Will the site support the 3ds browser? Cause i normally use that nowdays [like right now]

[Twiggy]

Originally Posted by kakashidragon

Will the site support the 3ds browser? Cause i normally use that nowdays [like right now]

The Nintendo 3DS browser does not support any video playback, as it has neither Flash Player nor any HTML5 video element support.

(I think for consoles, you'd need either a 360 or later, PS3 or later, Wii U or later, or a Vita or later for guaranteed playback, I think. I don't know whether the version of Flash Player included in the Wii can play videos off VGVids.)

I have a feeling that I'd need to start poking around The Sims 3 and its built-in movie recording functionality.

[kakashidragon]

Originally Posted by Twiggy

The Nintendo 3DS browser does not support any video playback, as it has neither Flash Player nor any HTML5 video element support.

(I think for consoles, you'd need either a 360 or later, PS3 or later, Wii U or later, or a Vita or later for guaranteed playback, I think. I don't know whether the version of Flash Player included in the Wii can play videos off VGVids.)

To bad for the 3ds that they didnt do an update to make it do some sort of playblack for either flash or HTML. It sucks having to watch vids on something else.

[Cat333Pokémon]

The 3DS browser will only support images and text. Sorry. I THINK the audio player for Flash works on the Wii.

[TurtwigX]

Originally Posted by NismoZ

Question: what's your stance on piracy with VGVids? Will you allow media from pirated games in general, or just for purposes of things you can't do on consoles, e.g. TASes or ROM hacks?

Also because of this (something else which I must always bring up) what's the stance on certain popular carts that don't exist? Or Like English Earthbound Zero and English Mother 3? Do those get a special pass, or would you try going for legitimate footage of the Japanese versions?

[Cat333Pokémon]

Case-by-case basis. I'd probably allow hacks and English patches, but remember, you have to be showing off something interesting enough to need to submit media anyway.