Like the ceiling can't hold us

[gwyn]

On Saturday I had a tea party with some friends, where I get to break out the Red Wing Pepe midcentury dishware pattern I started collecting a few years ago and my cool midcentury modern stuff and make tea and eat stuff I shouldn't. It's the only time you'll likely be at a tea party where you also get to talk about blood and guts and gore and sexual shenanigans while eating scones and drinking orange blossom oolong. Seriously, we were talking about this fanart I love where Steve gets deserumed and Hydra carves their logo on his chest and he's given to the Winter Soldier and then we were all laughing hysterically because yeah, that's not your typical tea party conversation. I love fans.

Anyway, I was lamenting my worries about the Vividcon auction, like ya do when you know people are going to spend money on you and you worry about whether you can do what they want, and without my realizing it for a while minim_calibre started bidding on me, and killabeez was plotting as well. After everyone had left--such a lovely time! Thank you all again for coming!--I went across the alley to see my old next door neighbor, who was visiting my other neighbor, and chatted and caught up, and then I came back home and the auction had ended. There was an email from Killa saying VICTORY IS MINE! and I knew, from being in a bidding cabal with her before, that she'd had trouble in past auctions getting the vidders she wanted, so she was very happy to make me her vidding slave.

So now I am owned by Killa and we're talking songs and fandoms and I am so excite! You always worry that you might not be sympatico with whoever buys you, just like there's always that tension before you get your fandom assignment for Festivids. It's great to be able to do a vid for someone you love. I've been so lucky in my vidding gift/auction vid assignments--for three years running in Festivids I've been assigned someone I like, and in the first VVC auction I got bought by kadymae/devilc, so I cannot complain about this. This is gonna be FUN.

OTOH I'm tortured by what I want to make for premieres, and I have a book coming in in a couple days with a ridic deadline and I really want to finish this goddam Steve/Bucky fic that's been torturing me for MONTHS now and makes me want to spork my eyes out and claw my face off. It's not worth the effort, I know it's not, and yet here I struggle.

The one bad thing about Saturday was that I found out Vimeo has removed all of my vids without any warning. It says I have zero vids, and I can't seem to log in even after requesting my password and stuff. I knew they were banhammering new vids, but I didn't think they were just flat-out deleting older ones, and I'm kind of sick about it. I just don't have the time or inclination to put those up on my YouTube channel but people don't seem to want to DL vids just to view them these days. Ugh. I hate it. Especially because one of them was the Flashpoint vid that Hugh Dillon tweeted about a couple years ago, and now it's just gone. Fuck you, Vimeo. God, I hate YouTube but that's really the only option now.

Comments

[sholio]

Oh, ugh, that's awful about your vids! :(

I bemoan the general trend towards people no longer offering downloads of their vids; doesn't anyone like saving vids anymore? They disappear all the time; you can never assume that a streaming vid is still where you last saw it! I'm so glad I've got all these saved vids from 5 or 10 years ago, because most of them are no longer online. You even see people every so often in places like vidding who lost all of THEIR OWN vids in hard drive crashes and hope that someone saved them and can email them. When everything is streaming, are vids just going to become a transient art form, and fans who get into a show years after it went off the air are completely out of luck? (grumble grumble, kids these days, lawns, etc)

[killabeez]

Since Megaupload died, it's become even more of a pain to host vids. I used to keep mine available for download on slashcity, but even with the relatively low number of views/downloads I got, the bandwidth quickly overtook what I had allotted for the K/S archive. We started running out before the end of the month every month (which caused the archive to go down until or unless I paid more money). I took them down rather than have to worry about the archive.

[sholio]

Oh, that's a really good point re: the death of free gigaspace hosting sites. Which is interesting because there is SO MUCH more bandwidth/disk space available now than there was 10 years ago ... but you usually have to pay for it in order to get the good stuff. Funny how things never quite work out how we think they're going to ...

[gwyn]

Yeah, every year at Festivids, the ones that you have to DL somewhere to watch get next to no hits, so I think that's a good indicator that even when people are really motivated, generally, they don't seem to want the trouble. It makes me sad, but...I think about getting rid of my vids site all the time and saving my money, but I have so many vids and I just can't see making them all streaming. I don't have that kind of time and physical ability right now (not to mention that my hard drive crashed a few years ago and I lost a lot of important stuff).

[dine]

your tea party sure sounds like a grand time! what a perfectly fannish conversation to have in such a civilized setting

I'm so sorry about vimeo - personally, I'm glad you still make your vids available for download, because I've always been a fan of rewatching, and it's just no fun to discover something one loved has vanished.

[gwyn]

It was really a lot of fun. Min's daughter gave her a hard time about going to a tea party since she likes to talk about blood and guts and she wasn't the right kind of person to go to a TEA PARTY, and I was like "au contraire, little one."

[klia]

I hadn't heard Vimeo was deleting vids and banning people! That sucks! I just checked, and the one vid we have up is still there, though I expect we'll get dumped off, too. No way I'm putting anything up on YT, either, especially after what just happened to Brad. No. Freaking. Way.

You're right, except for us oldsters, no one wants to dl vids, anymore, and I find that incredibly sad.

[gwyn]

Well, I certainly didn't know they were deleting vids! I'd heard they would ban new vids if their music software pinged them, but I'm the first person I know of who's had her entire catalog there removed.

I don't know what happened to Brad. ?

[klia]

He wrote about it here.

Vidding really is one hell of a hobby. /o\

[ratcreature]

I'm sorry to hear that about vimeo. FWIW I like vid downloads but often watch streaming first to see whether I'll like it

Do you have a link to that fanart? I don't think I have seen it and it sounds great.

[gwyn]

I'll see if I can find it, it might take me a while since it was quite a few months ago that I saw it.

Here's the link to the original poster's art and story:
http://flyingblackhawk.tumblr.com/post/108512533630/bluandorange-so-someone-on-the-shrinkyclinks

[ratcreature]

Thank you so much that you went to the trouble to find something again on Tumblr.

[kore]

WTF VIMEO

I just routinely save downloads of vids I really love (like Sorrow!) because I remember when Headtilt (blast from the past, wow) went offline and I hadn't done that. So now I'm paranoid about it. But yeah, people seem very reluctant to DL stuff now, even tho computers have much more space? I don't get it.

[gwyn]

Yeah, I think it's that instant gratification/entitlement thing. God forbid you do might do something that takes more than a second's effort. I dunno. It makes me feel very old.

[cesperanza]

Get an account at critical commons - I can help you do this and they're our people. Or YT, I'm not against it, but if you want an alternative, critical commons. :D

[cesperanza]

replying to myself to say there's more info about this on the OTW's Fan video project page. And critical commons loves vidders.

[grammarwoman]

+1! I applied for an advanced account and mentioned that I was a vidder, and I got approved with a lovely note in less than a day.

[gwyn]

Is it free? Is the advanced account what you have to have for being able to embed vids?

[grammarwoman]

It is free, and I believe that the advanced account is need to upload/host. I haven't taken any of those steps yet, though; ghost_lingering is the one that turned me on to them, so she would have more details. Plus cesperanza below. :)

[gwyn]

I saw that the advanced account requires you to be an academic? That's definitely not me!

[grammarwoman]

Oh, I saw that too, and it gave me pause, so I prefaced my letter with that exact "I am not an academic or educator, but I would appreciate a place to host vids where I don't have to fear takedowns", and I got a nice letter back with my acceptance saying that I totally qualified just on the grounds of being a vidder. So I say go for it! :)

[gwyn]

Okay, I'm just ignorant enough that I thought CC was a place where you had to have a streaming vid that you could upload there, and not a place where you could post a vid and have it streaming. I also didn't realize it was possible to embed--that's what I mostly want to do, put the Vimeo vids up somewhere streaming so that I can get the embeds in the posts like at AO3 or DW back up. I don't know if I have the energy to get more than that up, I guess just because I've got like 60 vids, not even counting the MC stuff. Which, Rache mentioned putting her and Sandy's vids up on CC and I was surprised.

Clearly I did not know about this. I liked Vimeo before I started the YT channel just because their video quality was always superior, and I liked the passworded viewing option. I was just stunned that they took down all my vids, though. At least with YT, I can just cave to their fucking advertising and third party content admissions. The world is really against us.

[klia]

Last time I checked, CC wasn't active yet. Thanks for the heads up.

[cesperanza]

They are! The downside is that they're academic, so they don't have a glossy and intuitive interfaces, and moreover, they require you to say something about your vid; for them, the idea that is video produces ideas/discourse. But even a summary or a line about what you think you were doing in the vid is enough; the idea isn't JUDGED at all and most people won't be seeing it on that site anyway - you can embed in the AO3 or anywhere else.

The UPside is also that they're academic, which is to say they really get vids and love vidders and believe in transformative works and fair use and all the underlying principles we stand for. So what you lose is glossy corporate sophistication you gain in principles and heart. If you want more glossy sophistication, go to YouTube, which isn't really a terrible option either - they do takedowns but they mostly take them back when we protest, and there are people behind the scenes there who know vidding and OTW and us etc.

[kass]

My vids are still on vimeo but I always assume they're going to disappear at some point, especially now that I hear what happened to Gwyn. (Grr.) So I may pursue this also. Thank you for the intel!

[kass]

This is entirely unrelated, and I am sorry to do that (what is your email these days?!) but I have to ask: did you watch The Librarians?

[gwyn]

My email is gwynethr at gmail.

I did watch the Librarians but I confess it didn't always keep my interest and I would often look up to realize I had missed chunks of the episodes. Why do you ask?

[kass]

For a silly reason -- we're doing a partial rewatch with grammarwoman who is visiting and had never seen the show, and in one of the episodes there is a room full of human skulls, and sanj and I both looked at each other and chorused "Human skull, on the ground, turn around!" and for the remainder of the evening I was thinking about your vid, that's all. :-)

I send love.

[sperrywink]

Aw, your tea party sounds fun!

I'm glad your vidding services were bought by a simpatico fan! Go you!

That sucks so much about vimeo. I just checked and my vids are there (of course there are only 4, so no big deal), but I guess I have too little traffic to be noticed right now.

[mackiemesser.livejournal.com]

I just don't have the time or inclination to put those up on my YouTube channel but people don't seem to want to DL vids just to view them these days.

I feel ya on that one! I kinda hate that vids are all on YouTube now. When I see a really good one, I'd love to be able to DL it to watch over again, but that's not an option with YouTube and you never know when something's going to get taken down...

[destina.livejournal.com]

Hi, sorry for butting in, but if you use Firefox you can use the Video Download Helper add-on to download anything you want from YouTube without any issue whatsoever. It even gives you a choice of file formats. :)

[mackiemesser.livejournal.com]

Right, there are plenty of file converters out there,and I've done it on occasion. I'm just rarely ever happy with the quality of the file that way, and I find being irritated by that kinda ruins the benefit.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

That was one of the things I actually loved about Vimeo--they had a DL option built right in and they tended to offer much better video quality. I'm really pissed about this.

[mackiemesser.livejournal.com]

It really sucks that everyone has to keep shifting around all the time. And I think it's especially lousy for the history of vidding if all the older vids are no longer around. :(

[destina.livejournal.com]

Ugh, Vimeo. I'm so sorry they disappeared your vids. :/ It annoys me that there isn't anywhere to put vids where they can be safe from unwarned deletion. I don't want the visibility of YT. I like being able to limit who sees things, and change passwords when I feel like it to avoid anything being reblogged with accuracy on tumblr.

I was eyeballing you and Rho and Nicky in the auction, but you all got very pricey all of a sudden, and I had to choose where to throw my last-minute bid. I felt greedy bidding on anyone, because I have received amazing vids from all of you, so therefore I am very glad Killa won you! :D

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Francesca was telling me about Critical Commons, and I'm going to check that out for at least the deleted vids. It's hard when you have as many as I do. I just don't have the time to put all this shit back up.

I wish people wouldn't wait till the last minute to bid on people! But it is always so. I had no idea it would escalate so fast. I'm thrilled that you got Nicky though because I'm dreaming of the possibility of another vid like Lightning Strike. ;-) But I'm most excited about being owned by Killa. She seemed to really like Monsters a lot, and I hope I can make a vid for her that will give her the same feels.