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Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is blip.tv?blip.tv is a free videoblogging, podcasting and video sharing service. If you don't have a blog we'll give you one, and if you have one already we'll make it a show. There's a tour available to walk you through some of our unique features. To get started just sign up. 2. How do I upload video?If you already have a video ready to upload (maybe a Quicktime or Windows Media Video file) you can upload it to blip.tv right away. You can get to the upload form anytime by clicking the "Upload" link at the top of every page. If you don't have your video in an uploadable format yet, you can use a tool like Windows Movie Maker (which comes with Windows) or iMovie (it comes with a Mac) to create a file you can share. Once you've done that, upload it! 3. Where can people get my video?When you register with blip.tv you get your own blog. You can find this blog at [yourusername].blip.tv. So if your username is "mike", your blog will be http://mike.blip.tv/. 4. Do I need any software installed to view the videos on blip.tv?You'll probably want to download Quicktime and Windows Media Player to watch videos on blip.tv. If you can't get a video to play it's probably because you're missing one of these two pieces of software. 5. Can I link to my video directly?Absolutely! Link to it from your blog, in an e-mail or wherever. Just click on the "Share" link near your video and you'll get a pop-up window which will let you e-mail links to your video, get links directly to your media files and even get the information necessary to hand-craft your own RSS feeds. 6. Can I share the video on my blog?Of course you can. There are three ways you can do this. You can do it with our cross-posting feature, with our "Share This!" feature or with the Media Permalink. Cross-posting lets you automatically post video you upload to blip.tv to your blog, without any extra steps. To get started setup your blog today. If you don't want to use cross-posting you can use our "Share This!" feature which lets you post video to your blog by copying & pasting some HTML or sending it automatically in the background. To use "Share This!" just click the "Share" link on any individual video page. If you're viewing a list of videos mouse over the "+" sign and then click "Share This." The Media Permalink is explained in another answer. 7. How can I make a video private?Private videos are available with our pro accounts. You can find out more about private videos and other pro account features in the Pro Accounts FAQ. 8. Do you provide syndication feeds like RSS?Many pages on blip.tv feature badges linking to syndication feeds. We also offer one-click subscriptions for users of My Yahoo! and TV Tonic. Our feeds are top of the line valid RSS 2.0 with enhancements including Creative Commons, MediaRSS, iTunes support and geocoding features. In addition to RSS feeds we also offer formats like SMIL, ASX, Atom, SPFX, OPML and JSON. For more information on alternative feed types e-mail support@blip.tv. 9. How can I get help?See our help page. You can use the support form on that page to send your question to us, and we'll get back to you with an answer as soon as possible. You may also want to check out the Videoblogging Group on Yahoo! Groups, or the blip.tv learning center. 10. Is this free?Yup. And we promise never to charge you tomorrow for what you're doing today. In other words we're not going to charge you in six months for a video you upload today, and we have no intent of ever making blip.tv's basic functionality cost money. We make money by selling advertising on videos (only with your permission) and by selling pro accounts, which cost $8 a month or $96 for fourteen months. 11. Do you have a copyright policy?We take copyright law extremely seriously. We believe that the only way to build a responsible company is by respecting the rights of creative people everywhere. For this reason (and because our lawyers told us to do it) we've developed a copyright policy to ensure compliance with the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. 12. What are your terms of use?Our terms of use are available for your review. By using the blip.tv Web site and services you agree to our terms of use. We'll tell you one thing right now: Our terms don't say that we take ownership of your video. Far from it. By uploading your video you're giving us a right to distribute it until you tell us to stop. That's it. 13. Why isn't my video showing on my Wordpress blog?Version 2.0 of the popular Wordpress blogging software has a bug that prevents cross-posted blip.tv videos from showing up properly. To fix this problem please upgrade Wordpress to version 2.0.1. If you're using the Wordpress.com hosted blogging service we strongly recommend that you use our cross-posting feature rather than copy & paste HTML because of Wordpress.com security software. 14. Do you have any system requirements?Unfortunately we do. blip.tv is best experienced with a modern Web browser like Firefox, Safari or Internet Explorer 6 or later. Opera and OmniWeb should work, too, but we make no guarantees. You're best off with Windows XP or Mac OS X 10.3 or better, too. We also recommend that you install some software to help you watch videos. 15. How do you handle different video formats?You're welcome to upload your video to us in just about any format you like. That said, we prefer compressed Quicktime and Windows Media videos. Please do not upload uncompressed DV or MPEG-2 video. 16. Do you offer Flash video?We most certainly do. Every video you upload is converted to Flash as soon as possible. Videos are converted on a roughly first-come, first-serve basis. Once your video has converted to Flash we will automatically present the Flash version to viewers on blip.tv as a convenience. You can change this behavior (and make us always display the native format first) by setting your Playback Preferences. 17. Why does video playback skip?We recently changed our Flash video encoding to move from Flash 7 video to Flash 8 video in response to popular demand from our show producers. This is because Flash 8 video looks much better than Flash 7 video. That said, Flash 8 video takes more computing power to play than Flash 7 video. If you notice that video playback on blip.tv is skipping, you have two options. You can select another video format from the formats dropdown below the video player, or you can check and see if you have lots of other things going on on your computer at the same time you're playing the video. We've found that skipping is worse if you're trying to play multiple videos at the same time or if you launch a large number of programs while watching the video. You can also try pausing the video to let it download fully, then resume playing when it has completed downloading. Flash makes big demands on your processor during the download phase, and this can cause playback to skip. 18. Why doesn't my MSWMM file upload or play?An MSWMM is a project file from Windows Movie Maker that's used to keep track of your audio and video while you're editing it. It's not designed to be shared with other people. In order to upload your movie you have to ask Windows Movie Maker to export it for the Web. There are excellent tutorials on how to do this at Freevlog. 19. Do you have an API?We do have an API. In fact, we have two! Check out our Developers page for more information. 20. Are there other ways to upload video?There are four ways to upload video to blip.tv. You can use our Web upload form, your cell phone, FTP or our desktop software. Each option is really good. Of all of the options, the Web upload form is the most powerful. The cell phone is the most portable, and both FTP and our desktop software allow you to upload lots of videos at once. 21. Can I upload video I don't own?Generally speaking you can't upload any video you don't own. This means that if you didn't create the video (and everything else in it!) you can't upload it to blip.tv or any other site. There are exceptions to this rule, though. If you have clear permission from the original creator of the video you're more than welcome to upload the video to blip.tv. This kind of permission can be given through phone or e-mail or more formally with a Creative Commons license. If you're uploading content that's already licensed under a Creative Commons license please make sure to give the original author credit and to select the same Creative Commons license when you upload it. 22. Do you change my video after I upload it?No, at least not now. We do create "derivative works" from your video — by creating a Flash version of your video, for example. At this time we make no modification at all to your original file, though, and we always make your original file available for people to watch. You can even ask us not to show the Flash version of your video (unless people specifically ask for it) if you feel your artistic vision is best served by your own expert video encoding. In the future we may introduce features (which can be turned off) that modify your video in some way after you upload it. We may do this to make sure that people can watch your video as it downloads, or to insert opt-in advertising. We will not edit your video to change its editorial content. 23. Is there a limit on the size of the video I can upload?You can upload videos up to 1GB in size, but we recommend that you keep uploaded videos to 100 MB or less for a number of reasons. Check out Freevlog and the blip.tv learning center for help with making your videos smaller without sacrificing quality. We can't guarantee that videos over 100 MB will work well for everybody, and very large videos may not transcode to Flash successfully. 24. Why do you require me to type weird letters to post a comment, send e-mail or report something as inappropriate?Like many sites on the Web, blip.tv has had a problem with spammers automatically submitting forms in an effort to promote their products or services. We use a standard technique called a "CAPTCHA" to help tell the difference between humans and spam software in order to combat this problem. You can read more about CAPTCHAs at Wikipedia. 25. Blogger rejects my post when I try to copy & paste a blip.tv video, or the video doesn't play properly.That isn't really a question, is it? Well, no matter. If you run into problems copying and pasting into Blogger you'll want to change your Blogger editor into "Edit Html" mode (there are two tabs at the top of Blogger's text edit — Edit Html and Compose. Pick Edit Html). You'll then want to publish the post. If Blogger complains about forbidden HTML tags, check the "Ignore HTML errors" box and publish again. Everything should work fine. |
