Stage6

[David White]

They closed my beloved Stage6 down at the end of February. In my opinion, the DivX codec provides the best quality streaming video available on the internet. It seems as though all of the other content communities are using Flash. At present I am in the process of moving my videos over to www.vimeo.com/oceanview/videos but it will take some time since there is a 500 Mb weekly upload limit. The videos are converted to Flash at their site and the frame rate is reduced to 24fps so the overall effect is not as smooth as Stage6 but beggars can't be choosy.

[Jonathan Bird]

Was stage6 just not popular?

Flash video looks like poop on YouTube. Not sure if that is because flash video just stinks, or they just use too little bandwidth. I have always liked quicktime, but I encode the Blue World stuff at a high enough bandwidth that it looks pretty good.

Jonathan

[David White]

I understand that there were more than 17,000,000 viewers registered at Stage6. I think that the problem had more to do with policing content and copyright issues than anything else. It was designed as a showcase for their DivX codec and perhaps worked too well. The pending lawsuit likely had a lot to do with the decision to close down. Hopefully it will not take a long time before we have cheap enough bandwidth to be able to stream high definition media across the internet. We've come a long way in a few years but there is so much further to go.

[Shooter]

Stage6 is down:( That was my favorite online site. the quality there was exellent.

[sorvju-f]

Stage6 is down:( That was my favorite online site. the quality there was exellent.

Thats terrible, I just noticed this thread!

I have always loved Davids videos I am able to look full sreen mode!

There was a new one from tiny Tiger...future hope at this vimeo-site...beutifull, but not the same:(

David, have you considered to hire space to your own videos as it is not even very expensive...I pay 60 EUR annually from my own for 100 GB. Then you can use DivX.

Jukka

[Sharp]

I have used for a while www.servage.net

It is only 75€ (about 100$) in year. 5010GB monthly data transfer and 510GB quality webspace.

www.pasilensu.com

[David White]

Thanks for the info. Some of the older files were being uploaded to www.vimeo.com/oceanview but now they need to be rendered at 1280 x 720 in order to be accepted as HD. The DivX files were rendered at 1200 x 672 which is part of the reason that they do not look as sharp on vimeo as they did on Stage6. Recently a new video, Nudibranchs of Lembeh Strait, was rendered at 1280 x 720 and uploaded to vimeo. It displays well in full screen but cannnot be released for public viewing until the royalty rights to the music are secured. Some of my earlier files are also available at http://www.imctv.us/00000099fa09ddc1b/0000009a6508e0b01/index.html which utilizes the DivX codec so they look the same as they did on Stage6. My own site is still in the works, trying to sort out the e-commerce part of the business.