Got Videos / Get Views

Most Machinima Makers that I know, make machinima films because it is great fun to do, a challenge to see what can be done, and sometimes because it is a way of re-adressing an issue, Literary, Social or Virtual...

Once your project is complete however, their remains the matter of making your machinima visible....
And whilst it may be true that great works will speak for themslves and need no advertising,
Unless your machinima films are in a place where your intended audience might easily find them, they might otherwise remain
virtually invisible.



To acheive some level of public awareness of your masterwork then, will inpart be down to where you upload your film,
and inpart will rely on the methods you employ to distribute it from your host site.

There are a growing number of sites and groups to which you may upload the finished film, many of whom will allow linking from their site so that you can use it as a platform for sharing it further afield, perhaps on your twitter account, facebook page, or in a pertinent comment to some relevant online article..

They all do however have varying demands in regard of Encoding the Formats, Codecs & BitRates that they will accept.
This is a dark and disturbing Art on which I hope to post more when I am better versed in clearly and simply describing the differences involved.



To Host & Distribute;

Clearly the most popular video host is
YouTube, a video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos. Unregistered users can watch the videos, while registered users are permitted to upload an unlimited number of videos.
Videos uploaded to YouTube by standard account holders are limited to 15 minutes in duration (the ten minute limit was increased to fifteen minutes in July 2010).
File size is limited to 2GB for uploads from YouTube web page, and to 20GB if Java-based Advanced Uploader is used(?).
YouTube also offers lots of advice pages including
How to Optimize your video for You Tube,
& a number of specific machinima groups such as;
Second Life to share machinima made in SecondLife..
Machinimadwhich is a place for you to submit your videos and be considered for the Machinima Directors Program(get featured on our their channel and be paid).
Machinima Artists is a collective of filmmakers, where video games are not just games, but the tool for an artform...
About InWorldz Machinima To share machinima made at InWordlz.


Vimeo is perhaps the second choice and backup host for many machinima makers, offering a video-centric social networking site which also supports embedding, sharing, video storage, and user-commenting on each video page.
In contrast to You Tube however, you only get 500MB upload per week in the free version (with the first upload pr wk of this allowance allowed as HD), your upload in the free account will delay for some hours before processing,
and you can't embed HD.
You could go Pro and get 5GB of HD uploads pr wk, with unlimited HD embed and Priority uploading, but there are charges (approx $60pr yr, or $10pr mnth) ~
Vimeo also has a number of specifc Machinima groups, including
Machinima, SL Machinima, About InWorldz Machinima, and many more..

Daily Motion, allows users to browse and upload videos and make user-created groups. The maximum size of a video file is 2GB & the length is upto 20 minutes.
Problems for me were that to have HD videos you must send a lot of personal information and register to become a Motion Maker, and that once the videos are uploaded, they play with advertisments at the start.




Viddler offers a personal Advertisement-supported, not for commercial use account with a 500MB per video limit.
That 'Ads may be run on videos to make up for costs' and a 2GB limit on storage and monthly bandwidth use have combined to dissuade me from testing these waters.


metacafe allows 10 minute films upto 2GB only, and has a surprisingly long list of site rules which I found daunting..
Metacafe is similar to other video viewing websites such as YouTube or Dailymotion, but with several differences, including; duplication elimination(see below for irony), a community member reviewer panel, VideoRank, and Wiki-editing of metadata.
Its VideoRank system gauges viewer reactions to videos in order to feature those that prove most popular to its viewers.
I found the size restrictions a bit cramping on this one requiring re encoding/compressing of films for upload, and that it starts film with an advertisement sequence is a point against, although it does show film at HD which is a plus.
I also found that whilst they state 'Original content is uploaded to the site by independent video creators, small to mid-sized production groups, and major media companies'....what this means in practise is that if you have uploaded to a number of sites and You Tube is one of them, then via a system which titles you as an 'Affiliate Submitter', your videos may already have been linked by You Tube at Metacafe, and not in HD as you may have uploaded them.
If this matters to you, and I cannot see any way to block the process, you might consider uploading your work in HD under your own Metacafe account along the lines of 'If you cant beat them, then Join them' at least the viewe will be able to see the film as YOU had intended ...




TubeMogul is a rather different sort of host, which enables you to multiple upload your video directly to many different video-sharing websites, such as YouTube, MySpace and Google Video, in one run.
All you need is a free account with TubeMogul and then set up and link each of the sites that you wish to upload your video(s) to.
Then, select your QuickTime (QT) movie and upload.
TubeMogul 'should' make it easy to upload to all your sites ONCE, instead of doing it individually, but I have found that the system is again not clear, and anyway I prefer to manage those I use on an individual basis.


Moving on to
ping.fm which by contrast is not a host, but a redirection site, that allows you to post one comment here and this may include your video http, and it will be immediately posted to all the accounts that you have registered with and linked to ping...




Again I do not use this as I prefer a more personal interaction with any potential viewer, so its not necessarily the quantity of views that count, but the quality of community relationships that matters...



Another contestant for useful distribution network is..
blip.tv, which focuses on "web shows' to the exclusion of other types of online video. "The blip.tv formula purposefully does not emulate the YouTube viral video sharing and friends and family video hosting model" (ZDNet blogger Donna Bogatin wrote). It also employs advertising in your video; All revenue from advertising is split 50/50 between content producers and blip.tv....
Whilst users can opt in and out of advertisements at any time, wether they may have to declare any earnings and pay tax on these I cannot say, as have not used this system.



Once uploaded by whatever means possible and to whichever combination of hosts you have chosen, you may concentrate on the distribution aspect of this project.
The social networks such as Facebook, & Twitter etc etc may be suitable places to share with family and friends...


A more dedicated peer to peer site for machinima films is
Yourmachinima Community a recently created group run by and for machinima makers across numerous platforms, with the intended aim of enabling them and everyone with an interest in the genre, to find and view the latest productions.
This site accepts video submissions via url code hosted elsewhere, and as is often the case with sites sharing films hosted elsewhere it does not convey the view hits back to its source.

TMUNDERGROUND is also a specific machinima based site, for machinima films made with TheMovies, MovieStorm, iClone, Sims, Blender, Poser, Antics3d, SecondLife, and other purpose-built programs for making animated movies. Geared for peer to peer reviews, this is a useful site and allows 'upload or embed' from another host, which may save time and effort...




Machinima Makers Peer Groups;

By far the greatest feedback that you may ever be likely to get, unless you are discovered by a national brodcast network, or have a particularly patient friend, will be in one of the peer moderated groups.
Run and managed by machinima makers who have personal insight and experience into the artistic and technological skills involved in the craft, here you may find genuine and constructive comments about how to improve your output.



SecondLife Machinima Artists Guild is a thriving community website where SecondLife machinima producers, actors, directors and technicians collaborate and share experiences.
The membership ranges from absolute beginners who are just starting to make machinima, to seasoned professionals.
The Guild also has an SL group called the SL Machinima Artists Guild for real-time help in-world...

Machinima.com is a gaming and media streaming website, which hosts the works submitted.
It aims to be a hub for machinima, the art of creating animated videos in numerous real-time virtual 3-D environments.
The site features machinima-related articles, news, and Internet forums.
Machinima productions can be submitted for possible redistribution after staff review and approval..



I hope that you may now find adequate outlets to share your machinima films with your potential audience and so have more fun and possibly get more, usefull feeedback.
If you do know of more or better video hosting and networking sites, please do share them with the community via a link in the comments below.