Donations and a New Storage Server

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Postby princess myu » Fri Oct 10, 2008 2:37 am

Garridy wrote:Bluetrain ,the way I see it you shouldn't be donating because of perks, you should be donating because you want to support what we are doing here at the org.


or both ^_^
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Postby bluetrain » Fri Oct 10, 2008 4:27 am

Oh no, i wouldn't donate because of perks, but i know a few people who would.
I've drawn up a tally of how much i owe the org - and i intend to pay it as soon as i can get some breathing space from out behind of the shadow of the maxxed out card, the car loan and the uni debts... *sigh* but that should only be a few months.
*one day something with some effort will reside here*
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Postby Phade » Fri Oct 10, 2008 9:58 am

Hey Everyone,

Thank you for your enthusiastic response! I’ve gone through the posts and collected a list of questions. Here we go...

Merchandise:

I’m down with getting some online merchandising going. The Zazzle seems to be good, though I haven’t looked in depth at the site. Anything where we don’t have to keep an inventory is good. CafePress still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Streaming Videos:

Will streaming videos be hard to make? Each video that is uploaded can automatically be converted to a unified streaming format by the server itself. These cached streaming files will be uniform so there won't be any "you didn't encode your streaming file correctly" problems on the video creator’s end.

What about streaming quality? Teh Tube = teh sux0rz. They are a really good example of bad streaming. Vimeo much closer to what we are going for. Here is an example of typical Vimeo video quality: http://vimeo.com/877053 Even maximized to full screen, the quality is really decent. These streams are automatically created by their server; the member just uploads one file in any format.

Will the streaming video files kill storage space? Streaming video files will be smaller than the original upload (assuming you created a quality video file). We estimate that the streaming files will take an additional 20% of server space. This means with our existing 3TB of videos, we will have to use an additional 600GB for the streaming files.

Won’t streaming videos kill our bandwidth? Since streaming files are smaller than actual downloads, they have the potential to actually reduce our bandwidth usage (though bandwidth usage is not a problem). Since we have fixed hosting costs, bandwidth can be thought of as a "renewable" resource while storage space is a "non-renewable" resource. If we hypothetically max out our bandwidth today, there’s just as much bandwidth available tomorrow to do it again at no additional cost. If we use up our storage space today, there will be no more available tomorrow and it will cost us to get some more. Our current daily bandwidth usage is about 1/3 of our max.

As an added bonus to donators, we could allow embedded streaming video on external member sites.

Server Auction:

What are these "best" videos that you speak of? The star rating system would be used to calculate the videos that go onto the drives. The rating is fairly accurate as far as general public likes/dislikes. You specific opinion may vary. What I would do is order all the videos from highest to lowest rating, make a batch file to copy them over, allow the batch file to run, and you get what you get. I generally arrange the videos using the same directory structure as the site currently uses and attach a index data file that can be imported into Excel, Access, or whatever else you want.

Can we make the hard drive auction thing more than just a one-time deal? My initial reaction is "not really". It requires physical media to be mailed, filled up, and mailed again. This is hardly an automatic or trivial thing to do. Having it as a one-time event to specifically upgrade our servers is fine with me. I have put up similar hard drives into anime convention charity auctions and they fetch a couple hundred bucks each there.

Donator Perks:

What about [insert perk here]? Most of the donator perks mentioned here are really good ideas. Again, the more non-admin-involved the perk is, the better (IMHO). Most of the ones mentioned can be implemented. Some members love perks as donation incentives; some don’t care at all. We just need to find the balance of implementation time vs. perk usefulness/popularity and get them in.

Next Steps:

I will get with Derobert to confirm the quantity, type, and capacity of the hard drives we have in our servers now. Once we have that list, we can start the auctioning process. Just as a reminder to the obvious, we will need to get the auction funds received, new server ordered, implemented, videos copied over, and then old server removed before we can actually fill and send out the drives to the winners.

We will also go over the list of suggested donator perks, figure out how useful/popular they are, how hard they are to implement, and then start getting them going.

I hope this helps. This seems to be a really good discussion! Keep going!!

Thanks again and have a great day!! ^_^

Phade.
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Postby jasper-isis » Fri Oct 10, 2008 10:03 am

Arigatomina wrote:Here's what we need, here's we're thinking of doing. Some of it's set in stone, some are wild ideas we're tossing out there. Since you're the ones who'll be using these things, and donating to support the site, feel free to discuss amongst yourselves and offer alternatives. Oh, and by the way, if any of this sounds good, please donate now instead of waiting for it to be implemented because we need the money asap.


That's pretty much it. Stuff is in the works right now, and not everything is set in stone. We want to hear people's thoughts in case there was something that we missed. However, we ask that you reserve some of your judgment for the test phase, when you'll actually have something to play around with. The call to donate is for the new storage server, an immediate pressing need. Regardless of whether or not there will be streaming videos in the future, we still need the new server, as space on the old ones is about to run out.
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Postby Corran » Fri Oct 10, 2008 11:49 am

Well... I don't want to sound contradictory to Phade but I want to play it safe right now and say I'm not sure if we could do vimeo quality or embedding, at least as things are currently being designed. There are numerous factors involved but for now I would like to take things one step at a time. In the future I will be nailing the details out as much as possible with Phade and letting the org know more as the time is right. However, right now I have stuff going on in my personal life that takes precedence and I think the best time for details would probably be once we are actually in a position to implement the feature (i.e. after we have more server space).

To answer JaddziaDax, this is the only thing I've been working on for the past several months. Other coders can speak for themselves, but no feature suggestions brought up in this thread have been previously in development.

bluetrain wrote:So streaming wasn't actually a suggestion, it was always going to happen?
:) Why do you insist people argue with eachother on whether or not its a good idea and then just say its guaranteed to happen in the near future on the 5th page of the topic?


I originally had hoped this to be a surprise feature and was a little surprised myself when Phade brought it up in this thread; however, I can understand the reason behind doing so. I wasn't sure if we should outright say, "yes, we are already working on it" and list off everything in detail or at least address the concerns being brought up regarding implementing such a feature. I didn't want the last several months of working on this to be vain and at the same time I didn't want to sound foolish if plans change drastically, we scrap the project, or anything else happens that would in effect cause me to regret saying more than I should.

Of course, as Jasper said, regardless of whether or not this feature is added, the need for a server is imminent. Streaming video doesn't matter much if there is no server to supplement the feature. I'm sure most people would agree the continued operation of the "Golden Donut" is more important at this point than any new feature that we could work on right now.

The reason extra ideas and suggestions were thrown out there is because the current cost of running the site vs donations received is not sustainable. Getting a server through a spike in donations would only be a temporary fix to the current problem. As Phade said in his first post, we've had to start using money that had been set aside for server upgrades just to keep the site running. If donations were what they used to be we probably could have done the upgrade without making this thread. However, even if we did not need to upgrade right now, eventually we would need to bring this up...
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Postby dazza1008 » Fri Oct 10, 2008 3:22 pm

Glad the streaming is going to be implemented - because at the moment I'm downloading recommended AMVs, and a lot I just don't like - I delete some after watching about 10 seconds of them, and then it's like "ugh, my bandwidth!" :?

Personally I don't really care about the quality of the streaming video - just so I can check if it's something I'd like, then I'm happy to download the local good quality version. I mean, it's not like the local version can't be available since the streaming copy was converted from the original.

Hmm... maybe the number of local downloads would go down? Is there any way the creator can get feedback if the streaming copy is viewed? (if so, please make it so one can leave feedback WITHOUT having to download the whole thing) Like YouChoob!

And I'd support the idea of streaming options for donators only, 'cause I'd like to see the site doing more for itself.

And, Phade, or anyone - sorry if this is blunt - but do you think that the recent trend of the costs exceeding the donations is because of increased costs over the years and thus it is harder to maintain, or do you think the popularity of the site has decreased? If so, for what reasons? Have any idea? (or maybe people just haven't got off their butts and donated recently :P )
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Postby SQ » Fri Oct 10, 2008 3:25 pm

Dazza, I personally think it's the economy doing it's thing. But that's just me.
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Postby Garridy » Fri Oct 10, 2008 4:06 pm

SQ wrote:Dazza, I personally think it's the economy doing it's thing. But that's just me.

Why is everyone so quick to blame the economy for everything? :|
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Postby Orwell » Fri Oct 10, 2008 5:14 pm

Garridy wrote:
SQ wrote:Dazza, I personally think it's the economy doing it's thing. But that's just me.

Why is everyone so quick to blame the economy for everything? :|


Considering the fact that the Dow has lost, what, 6000 points? since the start of this crisis, I think it would figure into everything.

But I don't think it's a specific case of economy here, as noted prices have been going down in technology, the new hdds are probably all around better and at cheaper cost than the last server we bought. It's probably just a diminishing interest from the initial interests of the community. The demographic is not what it used to be, which is one that had more interest in the site functions and keeping it running, including donations.
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Postby JaddziaDax » Fri Oct 10, 2008 6:24 pm

Actually the possibility of "streaming might come sooner than you think" has been brought up in other threads... so Phade wasn't the one who "let the cat out of the bag"...

Also with what you are working on: is streaming your videos going to be automatic for all videos or is it going to be an "opt in"? and what of videos already on the server?
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Postby 76 » Fri Oct 10, 2008 6:54 pm

I'm going to go ahead and ask whether or not the harddrives are going to be wiped clean. I honestly have a few amvs that I'm fond of, but don't have the storage to keep archived. Also, I have recently started on my first real amv project and am worried that just as soon as I upload and feel safe, that it'll be wiped away as one of the un-worthy.

I've tried to decipher through the pages to see what is firm and decided and what is still being debated, but honestly I'm lost. I apologize in advance for my incompetence but I really just must know.
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Postby JaddziaDax » Fri Oct 10, 2008 6:56 pm

if the hard drives get wiped clean, its my understanding that it will happen after they are copied to the new drives
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Postby jasper-isis » Fri Oct 10, 2008 8:16 pm

That's right. All current videos are going to be transferred to the new server when we get it - none will be lost in the transition.
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Postby kinggreg10 » Fri Oct 10, 2008 11:53 pm

Orwell wrote:
Garridy wrote:
SQ wrote:It's probably just a diminishing interest from the initial interests of the community. The demographic is not what it used to be, which is one that had more interest in the site functions and keeping it running, including donations.


maybe not interests as allot of people like/love AMVs and all but allot also dont like them or find they get boring over time and i for one am one out of all the years i have been here i have had around a 4 month gap between downloads while the longest one was for downloads around Sep and downloaded again Mar 4 days before it was 6 months :shock: i have not lost interest in the site nor AMVs but i just have not seen really any that would catch my attention :| Hell i only made AMVs in 07 and no other time the one im putting out this year was because it was after the fact so i held it till now...(even stated it when it was done one my site :|) Also i find allot of people on this site either dont have the money like me or as busy as my in either work or school
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Postby EvaFan » Sat Oct 11, 2008 12:00 am

I don’t mind helping to pay for he costs of a new server. However I'd want to know how much is needed and stuff like that as we go.

Perhaps a chart or graph w/e should be put on the main page to show how much more $ is required before the new server is buyable... The person who donates the most can have first pickings with the old HD's etc...

I hate to do it that way but a new server is a new server. If someone rich comes along and wants to donate the most then let em. Their money is still benefiting everyone.

I haven't been keeping up with this thread all that well so sorry if this was mentioned already.

I has a question as well just out of curiosity.

How long would the site be down for all this to happen?
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