Videos for affiliates - other than FLV
 

Hi,

I'm rebuilding my review site to become mobile friendly and feature friendly (supporting only features / technologies available for given device). This naturally means I need to match the video format with device supported format.

And here I face the problem. Very few programs offer MP4, OGG or WEBM videos.
Some have only FLV in NATS. Same have other formats on their tours, which is lame cause I have to search every tour to find them. And even worse to come.... sometimes cross-domain policy of their servers doesn't allow me to use them.


Programs can you give an answer:

1. Why you feature so little MP4, OGG or WEBM videos for affiliates?
2. Why don't you offer videos you have on your tours as affiliates promos as well?
3. Cross-domain policy - often it disallow remote use. You do it prevent hot-linking?
4. Don't you think by giving affiliates above formats pro-actively you improve the conversion formats?

I couldn't agree more. There's simply too few programs offering mobile-friendly video formats (unlike FLV).

The web has been trending to mobile for a while. Surprised most of us haven't caught up yet.

Try to get approval to convert them yourself to desired format.

Actually, converting all my promo videos to MP4 is a TOP priority! It's a MASSIVE job, which is probably why most Programs fail at offering this vital format. I am guilty of this myself. I have literally thousands of FLV and WMV and AVI videos....but so what? No one ever goes there and grabs them via CSV dumps. I never see affs downloading and converting them themselves....

So let's see if converting them will do anything. LOL

If you have the promo material in FLV, WMV.. anything else already made, then it should be pretty easy to convert it to MP4.. just load every file into a tool (lets say any video converter) and it will batch convert them.. a few clicks and its done :)

I was actually thinking of converting some. But the traffic..

Oh I totally agree! But we have a dump feature in all my Affiliate Programs and still very few, if any, affs go in there and grab clips for their tubes. It amazes me! Yet you hear aff after aff complaining, or people who run tubes complaining, and it's all right there for them....amazing.


If I knew I would get more traffic I'd convert every damn video I have TODAY. LOL

Ah yeah.. I think affiliates mostly cut their own promo material.. of course not in case when you have a tube and you need to load it with hosted vids.

We've been offering our promo videos in mp4 format for a couple of years.

I think at least 1 good video (thinking of it more like teaser trailer, than individual episode video) in variety formats would do it:

MP4
FLV
OGG
WEBM

Program owners / program managers do you think you can hear this voice?

Thanks :thumbsup

Just one format is needed really, that's MP4. Many programs are in the process of swapping FLV out with MP4 these days, much needed too! :)

One problem is that many programs have embedded MP4's but the way they're embedded means they don't work on mobile.

Most tube scripts (if not all) have conversion integrated. In Adult Script Pro for example if you decide to hotlink a video, if the video is not mobile compatible, the script downloads the video and creates a mobile compatible file (which is hosted on your server). On destop if will display the main file (flv,mp4 whatever the csv/xml export provides) and on mobile the mobile file will be used.

This is a great solution, but it's product specific.

I'm more thinking about the approach of programs than individual products.

So at the end I did some programming and solved the technical level: Using Modernizr and multiple fallback methods :)

There are 2 important checks:

1. what video format device supports
2. if the video format for the given device exists

On logistic level I guess I would just have to convert the good videos myself and host them too :(

Yes it is very hard !!! :upsidedow

What is hard is finding the time ... This bash is relative to the directory it is in BTW.

An the HTML CSS is mind boggling ....

HTML5 Video - HTML5 Rocks

If i had them on server it would be as easy as you say. But if they are remote embeds, it's not so easy. A solution is regexp custom post type in Wordpress then wget those files and convert them as you wrote.

It has been said before but just my :2 cents:
The majority of my biggest affiliate programs are offering downloadable MP4s

Some are still using FLVs. Very few are offering hosted tube videos.

I really do not think you should have to convert them -- it is the sponsor's or content owner's responsibility. The Affiliate's responsibility is to market with compatible tool's (the videos) offered to the Affiliate.

An RSS feed (or XML) of MP4 videos compatible with WordPress might be nice ...

We use wondershare's ultimate converter to batch convert them to mp4.
That is, if you decide to host them. Think about your traffic. What will be the best for them, leave them with the best impression of your site and have them want to join the sponsor you are promoting. Of course we only do this for sponsors whose members areas have mp4.
Seanchai's does for example.