Great news! The hi-res astronomy videos I made last month are now available on Vuze. That means people can get them internationally!
They’ve been uploaded to the channel SpaceRip, my partner Thomas Lucas’s channel there. Unfortunately I don’t see any way to embed them in the blog, but we’re still thinking about ways of getting these out there. Next time, we’ll try to get the Hulu.com and Vuze uploads done around the same time, so people all over the planet can see them.
I’m going to start working on scripts for the next set very soon, so stay tuned!
April 25th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Are you the copyright owner of this stuff? Why don’t you just park it somewhere for people to download them directly, no hassle?
April 25th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Finally got to check them out. Nicely done!
April 25th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Petrucio: It’s pretty clear he wants the ad cash. While I can’t fault Phil on that, I do think it’s a shame.
However, Azureus is a much more geek-friendly distribution platform. I can accept it much more easily than -shudder- Hulu.
April 25th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Petrucio, the files are huge. I could never afford the bandwidth.
And yes, these take a lot of time and effort to make, so having ads helps recoup the cost.
April 25th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Is this considered commercial content? It doesn’t seem to work on my Mac and I like my job too much to install a torrent client on my Windows laptop. Right now it just seems to download some kind of jar and nothing happens after Azureus launches. Does anyone have the actual torrents? That might be actually easier to watch. If the ads are part of the video I can’t see it being a problems.
Perhaps I could watch it if I pre-ordered your book like I planned? Your blog is one of the only uplifting things on the internet that doesn’t make me fear for our future, it’s a shame DRM keeps smashing you back down to earth. It’s kinda funny because Clarke figured long distance would be free by now and all we’ve done is make communication more difficult in the last few years.
April 25th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
I have 300Gb of space and more than a Tera byte of bandwidth, and it was not expensive. How much do you the bandwidth requirements would be? Maybe I can lend you some.
April 25th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Petrucio, I appreciate it, but this is in fact supposed to be a money-making venture, at least in part. Like I said, we spend a lot of time putting this all together, and we need to be able to make some of that back.
We’re still experimenting with this, too. We *might* put these up on YouTube, but that’s so lo-res I’d rather not.
April 25th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
When I downloaded the videos from vuze, I got two separate files, one was the video, and the other was the ad, separate, which I didn’t even touch.
Instead, why don’t you just embed the ads in with the video? This way the user will HAVE to watch it, and the advertisers will like that. Unless the income is comming from vuze itself.
Speaking of money-making venture, I sent you an email proposing one of those, did you get it? Maybe it got spammed?
April 25th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
[...] Bad Astronomy hat ein paar Astronomie-Videos gemacht die jetzt auf Vuze (dem Azureus-Videoportal) herunterladbar sind. These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
April 25th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Hi folks, I am not a geek, so I just have no idea how to actually, you know, play the videos. Can someone help me out?
April 25th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
You need the correct codec. Install this, it will play this format and many more:
http://www.download.com/AV-Codec-Pack-Pro/3000-2140_4-10509745.html
April 25th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Great, finally get to watch them. Thanks.
April 25th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
Petrucio: I think the ad was the blurb at the beginning? It was advertising itself, so…
Anyway, I’m perfectly willing to pay, I just wish there was a more direct option. Maybe when there’s enough of them, we can get a DVD? (One that doesn’t install a root kit, preferably…
)
April 25th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
BA,
Kudos for you for earning a return on your efforts. I don’t mind helping support something that is quite valuable. To that end, I will watch the ad content happily.
April 25th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Yes, but the Vuze client was already closed, so I just opened the files that were downloaded, directly from the drive, not using the Vuze page. No ad this way. I wasn’t trying to avoid the ads or anything, it just happened.
Psst, don’t tell the advertisers…
April 26th, 2008 at 5:12 am
I’m in the UK, and all the files say “This content is not licensed for your region.”
So, I don’t think you’ve got the international part down Phil…
April 26th, 2008 at 6:27 am
If I click download on the vuze page, it just downloads a vuze.jnlp file that’s 4 kb big. The page says “We recommend using VLC Media Player to play this video”, but VLC doesn’t accept the file either. How does this work?
April 26th, 2008 at 8:10 am
OK, it worked. Thanx a lot, Petrucio!
April 26th, 2008 at 10:19 am
Ben, this file you downloaded is kinda like a torrent descriptor (IIRC). If you just left click on the link instead of saving as, it will install a torrent client (Azureus), and that client will download the videos. At least, it was something like that for me. Don’t forget you’ll have to install codecs….
Easy, like stealing candy from a baby…
April 26th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
i asked Vuze to respond to Gib’s note about availability in the UK. He said…
“One of two things happened here. We might have accidentally set the wrong licensing terms (which should be WorldWide) or the guy did something wrong. Daniel can check on the former on Monday. Our service is used across the world, in every country that has open internet.”
April 26th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Petrucio, thanks for the help. I did left-click the file, and it just downloaded vuze.jnlp into my Downloads folder. I looked at the file with textedit, and it looks like a java based downloader to install the vuze player: azureus. So I understand now what vuze is trying to do, pushing their own bittorrent program. I am not really inclined to install a p2p program on my laptop. Pity, I was looking forward to the videos. I hope there will be some other alternatives in the future. I don’t want to sound negative. If so, my apologies. I really enjoy the good work of the BA.
April 26th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Ben… We’re also planning to put these onto Joost, another global video platform. Joost also uses a P2P system, but plans to move to a browser-based player in a few months. Hopefully by then we’ll have a whole series of BA videos.
April 26th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Joost used p2p? Didn’t look like it to me. I watched Joost in real time, which probably couldn’t happen if it depended on p2p.
Anyway, if it was, it made it much more transparent and painless (and didn’t install another, generic torrent client, nor needed codecs). Joost is much better than Vuze in my opinion.
April 27th, 2008 at 3:29 am
Tlucas, thanks, looking forward to it!
April 27th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Finally!
I was so sad when Hulu blocked me before. At least now I can download them.
Still, I’d be very glad for a YouTube link anyway. For us folks in 3rd world countries who pay 50 USD/month for 400 kbit/s ADSL, HD videos on the web is something to be avoided.
April 28th, 2008 at 10:06 am
Gibon 26 Apr 2008 at 5:12 am
I’m in the UK, and all the files say “This content is not licensed for your region.”
So, I don’t think you’ve got the international part down Phil…
————————————————————————
Try contacting the Vuze support team, it could be an issue with your IP or location. You can send them your IP and what ISP your using so they can check on their end.
April 28th, 2008 at 11:33 am
To download the full version visit vuze.com
April 28th, 2008 at 11:35 am
You can see the video here. Hopefully it works for everyone. vuze.com
April 28th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
artoodeetoo, thanks for your advice.
I’ll do that as soon as I get a confirmation from someone in the UK who says they can access it fine…..
Oh, and Tlucas, thanks, please let me know if there’s any further info on whether they set something wrong.
I’ve just tried again, and I’m still apparently in the wrong region… I’m using the azureus client for Vuze, which seemed to install itself when I visited their site. It’s pretty slow anyway…