What is GetThePod.com?
GTP is a site dedicated to the hosting and streaming of EVE Online related videos. We allow you to upload any video (up to 1.5GB) that is related to the game. We then transcode the video so that it can be streamed, but also present the download so that people can take a copy of the original.
Who runs GetThePod.com
The simple answer is "Cymru2000" - I host, run, moderate and generally make sure everything happens as it's supposed to. Any suggestions, requests, complaints or problems should be directed towards me directly.
So, how does all this work then?
Firstly, you make your masterpiece as normal, and then create an account here.
Click on Create Content from the menu, and then choose video.
Fill in all the boxes as best you can and then upload the video. We're working on allowing you to upload from elsewhere, but it's not ready yet.
Then press save.
Your video will then be whisked off to our transcoding server, which processes one video at a time. The transcode server will turn your video into something we can stream - preserving the aspect ratio and audio where it can. We then upload this video to a CDN, and publish your video.
It can take a long time to transcode your videos - but more on that later.
Why does it take so long to transcode my videos?
Because videos come in all different shapes, sizes and formats. In a bid to keep video sizes low, but quality up, there are many different codecs floating around. Our server has to decode your video into something it can work with, which normally takes half of your video's length (though for MKV's can take 1.5x) and then compress it again into a whole other format which can take 2x the length of your video. In total, the normal transcoding process take 2.5x the length of your video, or 2:30s for every 1:00 of video.
It isn't quite as simple as that, because this site isn't youtube, we aren't backed by a bottomless pit of advertising revenue. This means that I have to throttle the transcoder to 1 video at a time, at least until I can afford bigger servers. This means that your 1 minute video may not complete transcoding for several hours, if it's stuck behind other videos in the queue.
I'm trying to find a way to show the queue to people as a widget, but that's low priority at the moment.