Open sesame

Off and on for a while now, I've considered getting rid of the password for my vids site (and also considering getting rid of the vids site altogether and just using megaupload or something similar, since I honestly don't think I get enough hits to warrant spending that kind of money for vids hosting anymore). But I waffle back and forth on it.

Nothing like what happened with killabeez recently on YouTube, or any of the other stealing/posting on YT/hotlinking/whatever, is very likely to ever happen to me. I know people probably say, mais non! But honestly, so few people even know about my vids that I can't see this happening the way it happens to popular vidders -- those of us who fly way under the radar of most fans are just not going to get noticed.

Partly, I like the control over seeing who gets in or not. If something seems suspicious, I can simply not send out the PW. And I don't think it's going to increase traffic in any way whatsoever to remove it; the times I give my password out with the post have not resulted in any greater DL stats than the times I don't. Sometimes I wonder if I even care anymore; the threat of the RIAA/ASCAP/BMI is still a scary one to me, but I'm not that out there. It seems like people who are more public, more rec'd, more visible are the ones who get hit with C&Ds.

But it's a daunting prospect -- I'll need to zip every single one of my something like 25 or more vids, and I don't really relish all that copying from backups on disc and reuploading, which will take me weeks. I wouldn't want to put them up unpassword-protected without zipping them. (That said -- does anyone know of free zipping software for Macs? I will have to pay $25 for the Stuffit zipper if I start using it, and right now, with the full copper repipe and other projects, I just don't want to do that, so some freeware or shareware with a lower cost would be fantastic.)

I don't know what I feel about it. I talked with killabeez a bit this weekend about how she felt about stuff, and I can't say I disagree with her belief that once it's out there, there's not much you can do about stuff being... out there. I don't want to get ripped off or sued or anything else, but the likelihood of that happening to me is so low I guess it doesn't seem worth it anymore.

I'd love to hear your opinions. I didn't do a poll because it seemed unnecessary, but I can provide ticky boxes if anyone really really wants them. But here are my options:
- Leave it as is, since many people already have the PW, and it's safer
- When the next web host vids site payment is due, don't renew and start using a temp site for your new vids (meaning the older vids would go away)
- Take off the password, but keep the vids site

Ugh

Has anyone by any chance watched my vid for the VVC premieres show, There by Grey Eye Glances for BSG, on their con discs? I was just wondering if my disc set is bad... my vid is horrible, even though I didn't do anything different from previous vids -- all the right speeds, sizes, etc. But on my copy I was just watching, it looks wretched -- everything's jittering in the frames, only a couple of clips don't look bad, the dissolves are kind of snapping off rather than dissolving... I'm kind of sick about it but I don't know what it looks like to others, and I don't remember it looking like that at the Premieres show itself, but I couldn't see anything much at all, so I simply may not have noticed it.

Arg.