As we now have about 30 video recordings on the site, I think it is time to standardize a bit and my idea is the following.

1. PS (Piano Society) converts submitted videos to 440x330 .flv format in "YouTube" format.

2. We add some initial text with information of the performance on picture cover.

3. Whenever there is a combination of Audio and Video recordings in a genre, we split them with the Video recordings on the top.

I did a little experiment to show you what it looks like with Tom's third movement of the Pathetique sonata and Lust's Bartok Sonata at:
http://pianosociety.com/cms/index.php?section=105
http://pianosociety.com/cms/index.php?section=36

Comments (yes I know the fonts was not perfect...will try to get it better)?

I think that looks good!
Nicole

Looks very good and makes things easier! Thumbs up!

Let me make a little suggestion: move the videos to the bottom of the page because, first, PS relies mainly on audio-only recordings and videos are still more of a gimmick (at least I believe so). Second, you always have to scroll much when there are several videos on the page. Third and most important, the software normally loads the entire video though many people only click the play button to watch the first seconds. Some kind of YouTube mentality, I think.

I think it looks good, too, but nothing played - no sound.

What? It works perfect for me. Check the volume in the flash application. Do you have the same problem with YouTube?

Oops, I'm such a dope. It does work. Last time, I clicked the start arrow button thingy only once. Now I clicked it twice and it worked. Sorry Robert. What do I know....

Chopin music?

I think that's a great idea. The different video formats or codex seem to create much trouble, so to have a common format working everywhere is great.

Is it possible to preserve the audio recording quality, or is always video as well as audio quality reduced in this YouTube format?

Also great to include a title. Maybe you can share the tools or links to the tools so that everyone can create the video in the target format? In order to reduce your additional work on that?

I have experimented by having the videos to the right as we have with pictures but it does not scale as well as pictures. I will continue to see how to present them on the site so that not audio nor video recording are neglected.

I have tested a bit with different Audio and Video settings and think that the following settings work well:
Video: 440 x 330 resolution with a video frame rate at 30 and video bit rate of 336.
Audio: Audio sample rate 22,050 Hz and 96 bps.

Generally, I do not expect the Audio or Video quality to be better than this from start. The settings produces a file size of about 3.2 MB/minute which actually is a really good compression ratio.

I use Ultra Flash Video Converter 2.0 to convert the files (trial but you can always convert one file at the time) and then I add an embedded flash function to present them on the site. I would like myself to take care of the last step to ensure we have a similar tagging as we today do with the ID3-tagging of the Audio files. But it would be good if videos from now can be submitted in flv-format.

One issue I have not solved is why I do not get the "Full Screen" option to be included. If I could solve this, I could present a smaller start screen on the site with a full screen option for the user. In the CMS we are using and the WYSIWYG editor, it is a problem to include Java Scripts and that is probably the reason. One way to solve this is to present a download link to the actual file so that users can choose between streaming it off the site or downloading it locally.

I forgot to say that I am happy that you like the idea . I think it will be a much bigger chance that our visitors will find the videos this way.

I agree.

I have been fighting around with this matter during the day. I am also very happy to have solved a couple of issues.

1. There is now a "Full Screen" option in the "View" option so basically, this means that I can convert the original videos to FLV-format in a much higher quality and then shrink in to the default view. But once you press the Full Screen, you will get in it high quality.

2. The format is now 355 x 320 in the default view which means that is does not take that much space on the site.

3. I have been able to locate the Videos in a separate column to the Right under the Pianoteq banner. That will eliminate the scrolling issue.

Gosh it took some time. Check the Chopin Etude page for example:
http://pianosociety.com/cms/index.php?section=125

A bit unusual, but a good solution. Good work!

It is good. Maybe in the future it will need some fine tuning like the "new recording section" (remember when there was a tag next to the composer to notify viewers of a new recording? Oh my, was that a headache)

Thanks for the hardwork,
-jg