A placeholder for possible future discussions as to the hows and whys of putting ones fan made vids onto Imeem.

One weird thing I've noticed is that imeem is not giving timestamps on vids -- however, it does give a timestamp on music files, if you hover your cursor over that point of the "timeline".

I wonder if this is functionality that could be added to the streaming video if we asked for it?

good eye you have to have noticed the music timestamps vs video timestamps. Why don't you contact support and suggest it to them (they have a request feature option).

I just asked them if there was a way to do targeted searches : ex vidding AND spn

Thing 2 and I (... Thing 1 *g*) have noticed that the rating system here is a little wonky -- we've started rating favorite vids as we've come across them, and if we're the only rating, they keep showing up as "average rating 3 stars". We think the system is "averaging" any sole rating out to 3, for some unfathomable reason. (I've no idea if it does the same with low ratings, but probably.) When a second rating is added by someone else, it seems to average them out properly.

It's kinda frustrating looking at the five stars you gave something, all gold and shiny, and then at the dark three-star average that everyone else, including the vidder, sees. OTOH, at least it explains why I was seeing three stars on vids that are clearly above-average -- I was starting to think someone was roaming around rating everything 3 because they had an insanely high bar, or something.

Things - thank you for pointing out the rating issues. I was starting (sniff) to feel (sniff) unloved. I suspect others were feeling likewise fragile (and if they weren't we all know where that Nile river is).

FYI on the timestamp thing -- when watching vids in a playlist, you can getting the timestamp thingy on the timeline, even though it doesn't come up on the vids in their solo pages.

I noticed the glitch in ratings also and it made me hesitate to give out ratings because I didn't want anyone to see 3 stars next to what I think is a great video. I've found the technical staff here to be very receptive when it comes to questions/requests so it probably wouldn't hurt to let them know any ideas you may have. They seem to want to make this a great site which is nice to see.

You know, I wondered about the rating thing, and then it occurred to me that one reason why they might do that is if people can rate their *own* vids, so I just tried it on Bukowski, and in fact yes, you can; it went from 4 to 5 ratings after I added mine. So maybe they are assuming that everyone will give their own items a 5-star rating, and that's why? But it's not nuts to let people rate their own work; I know I think I have better/worse vids, so maybe we should all go through and rate our own vids to give a 'baseline' rating in our own estimation (I'd probably use 3 for average, 4 for better, 5 for the handful I think are the best, because I am vain and don't want to weight the public rating downward *g*), and then any ratings added by reviewers will show up properly.

I'm finding this interface whatever the opposite of intuitive is.  I'd like my vid to have the brownbetty.imeem.com watermark, but it simply says imeem.  How did other people achieve this?

Betty, I think that it depends either on whether you have created the [name].imeem.com url (which I see you now have), OR if you are uploading using the windows/mac software tool. Looking at my vids, the first handful of ones I uploaded only have imeem.com, and only the more recent ones have the full url on them. I think I set up the astolat.imeem.com url and started using the tool at the same time, so I don't know which one it is.

Astolat, thanks.  Makes a certain amount of sense that they're branded when uploaded.  Since I've only got the one, I think I'll reupload it and see what happens.

I wish there was way to quote a previous post.



cathexys asks: "Have any of you tried to embed vids on LJ yet? I just tried it and keep on getting Invalid Video URL."

Me: Same here - although their FAQ talks about embedding within LJ, I suspect LJ needs to support it at their end. Which means (guessing here) that the LJ embed is not generic (but is proprietary instead).

My suggestion: write to support (there is a Ask Support link at the bottom of the web page) and then post back here with their response.

PS.Posting Tip: Note the "New post editor" option in the upper right corner of your posting area - it allows you to offer links, bold/italics etc.

Thanks astolat for recognizing that the timestamp works in playlists. That's so strange to me that it only works there, but I guess it will encourage me to make playlists.

And thanks to Flummery for noticing the wonky ratings. I thought the system was just ignoring my ratings input in some cases. I was also wondering what churlish person was running around rating all my favorite vids at 3 stars!

Cathexys - I tried to do LJ video embedding two different ways and it didn't work. If anyone has a myspace profile or one of the supported blog formats (blogger, wordpress, typepad) I'd be curious to know if video embedding is working in those formats, and that it is *just* an LJ problem.

Thanks for the note about the "new post" editor, Morgan.

And if any mac people are actually running OSX 10.4.8 and can install the imeem client, I'd be curious to hear what you like/dislike about it. I'm still running 10.3.9.

Hey guys
These are all really good points and I'll be sure to point Support in this direction.

To answer the LJ question... Yes, embedding videos is a Livejournal-specific problem and hopefully that'll be fixed in the near future.

About the branding... when you have a custom url, that is what will show on the video, otherwise it is just imeem.com. Uploading a video to a meem is similar, a meem with a custom url will get the full branding, a meem without will just get imeem.com

Hope that helps a little.

Please do.  I find it frustrating not to be able to embed imeem content.

Thanks!