Hi.
Is it possible to upload a 3-hour video to our Class Creator web site and make it available for our classmates to download? If so, are there instructions posted somewhere for how to do this? Thank you.

That's a very long video. YouTube videos are limited to about 10 minutes or so I believe, so that's not a good solution (other than posting 18 YouTube videos in a row, which would be very clumsy).

The answer is yes you could actually do it, but you'd have to compress the video to a size and compression rate that would fit into the limit of your File Vault. If you don't size and compress it right you'll wind up with 1 3 hour video larger than the limit of your entire File Vault.

What I would do:

1) Download any free video editing software, such as Windows Movie Maker or IMovie for Mac, and open up your 3 hour movie.

2) Compress it to the Windows Media format. I'd make the size roughly 320 x 240, and drop the frame rate to 15 seconds instead of 29.97.

3) You'll wind up with a final .wmv file. Upload that to your File Vault. Then insert a link to it on your site. I can help you with this part once your .wmv file is in your File Vault if you need the help.

If you don't understand much about compressing videos you'll either need to read the instructions that come with the software, or ask somebody else who understands this to assist you.

Bottom line: Yes it can be done. But it does take some technical expertise to accomplish this.

Knowing it's possible... but understand this! Is this going to increase to your site to have someone sit to watch a 3-hr movie? I do not like going to the movies with popcorn and sodas along with other assorted snakes to a 3-hr movie. You need to keep your users active or you will lose them. Some of the YouTube video's are too long and I turn them off. or find something else. Commercials sell because they tell a quick mezmorizing story in 1 minute or less!

Charlotte,

I'm with Terry, if you don't cut that monster in half, you will find your classmates will do it for you by turning it off after 10-15 minutes. Have you ever watched a commercial movie that lasted for three hours? Your video would have to have lots and lots of action in order to keep my attention going that long. No one person or object should remain on the screen longer than 10-15 seconds and 5 seconds can be too long sometimes.

Case in point, I'm making a 75 minute (or slightly more) video from 550 still photos and 120 minutes of raw video, complete with music & voice over (semi-professional quality). I think if you really need to have it on a website, you might consider something like signing up with one of the really inexpensive web hosting services that have totally unlimited space and band width for under $75/year and one of them offers free domain name as long as they are the host and just create a link from Class Creators to that site. You still need software that will convert the video for you to either Quicktime or Windows Media.

But why not just create a five minute highlight in You Tube, embed it on your Class Creator site and burn a couple DVD's or if you have compression software, you could get it all on one DVD and SELL them. Better warn your classmates in advance if you decide to stick with a 3 hour production.
Just my opinion from someone who has been around the block a time or two! Good Luck

Thank you very much for your answers and comments. My co-administrators had asked me the question. We will soon have a DVD of our 50-year reunion, and they were hoping we could post it on the web site so that our classmates could download it to a DVD. They thought that would solve the problem of distributing the DVD. However, if it needs to be a wmv file, I don't think posting it on Class Creator will be the answer.

Terry,
Thank you for your comments. What my co-administrators were hoping we could post is a DVD of our 50-year class reunion. Their idea was that our classmates could then download it to a DVD and watch it later on their DVD players or computers. We were not trying to get people to watch it while they were on this site. I don't think this is the way to go with it. I think we will need to make copies and mail them. Thanks again for your input, though.

Please see this thread for information about adding a DVD to your site.

Hi, John.
Thank you very much for your comments and suggestions. I see you are from a 1961 class so I understand your comment about being around the block a time or two. You have more knowledge of these things than I do, though.
We will soon have a DVD of our 50-year reunion, and my co-administrators were hoping we could post it on our web site and that our classmates could make their own DVD's of it by downloading it, then could watch it on their DVD players or their computers.
However, at this point we have only about 30% of our classmates as members on our site, and I think only a small percentage of them would know how to download a file to make a DVD - IF they had a computer that would allow them to make a DVD.
I think we will need to make copies of the original DVD and mail them to the classmates who are not local.
The classmate who is making the reunion DVD also put one together before our reunion that was very much appreciated. It ran for nearly two hours and included local history from the time we were born. Most of us were born around 1941 so he included news of WWII and also news of a major flood in our hometown during our senior year plus many photos from our childhood through our 45-year reunion.
Thanks again. I really appreciate your taking the time to answer. Getting three answers was more than I could have hoped for.

Posting a DVD online that people can download and then burn....wow that's definitely a new qustion here.

The answer is actually yes, although it would be pretty difficult. When you make a consumer DVD the encoding process is known as "multiplexing". When you multiplex a DVD what you wind up with is a bunch of files that wouldn't make much sense to people. They are .vob files and things like that.

Technically, you could:

1) Take all files on the DVD and zip them with Winzip into 1 file
2) Post that File to Your File Vault
3) Insert a link to it on your site for downloading
4) Classmates would download and unzip all files
5) Then they would burn all files to the DVD

If they did that they would in fact wind up with a DVD they could play on their DVD players. Accomplishing this process would be beyond the technical skills of many though, but it would work for those who can do it.

Thank you again. I agree that the process is probably beyond the technical skills of many, but I certainly do appreciate your taking the time to give me the information on how to do this.