Quality of clips4sale clips must adapt to times.....

[mabus]

Recently I've been talking to Tickle Torture about the quality of their clips, because I like their store and the fact that they update often, and do pantyhose and barefoot clips. But their quality isn't up to the standards of some of the stores.

He told me that they have to render their clips at 1.2 Mbytes, I believe, because that's what clips4sale REQUIRES. But, he also believed that some of the other stores rendered theirs at 2.0 MB or more. I told him I absolutely believed that some did, because their quality was much clearer than his clips, even though some of those stores use a HD camcorder. He said he will try to get a HD camcorder in the future, but that's not the issue. The old RealTickling site has clips that advertised they were digitized at 2.0 MB, a clearer resolution. The smaller resolution is evident in Nylon Tickling, Daily Footage, and many other stores. Stores like TickleCentral, Czech Ticklish Girls, and others must render their clips at a higher resolution.

He said clips4sale may try to do something to make the clips better.

My question is, why isn't the highest level the standard, and when will it be NECESSARY?

None of this is an attack on any company, I love them all. But the future is the future. Next year, February, we're all going over to HD TV. The quality will be about 4 times what you see on regular TV. BluRay discs look absolutely stunning when viewed on a 1080P HDTV set. You can see vibrant color and every little detail in crystal clarity.

Now, on the television front, TV is VERY inexpensive. Honestly, over 90% of homes in America have a TV set.

Now, let's look back at clips4sale. The average clip costs $10. For a 5 MINUTE clip.
Some stores, like Chloe Creations, still offer 320 by 240 resolution clips, and some stores still offer low quality rm clips ONLY. Tickling Paradise clips, though getting better in quality, are only about 60 to 80 MB, while other places on the net that are non-tickling sites, like Christina Model, or Danni's Harddrive,the clips are 200 or 300 MB, and you can see the colors clear as day, and can see the pores underneath the pantyhose!

At what point will you guys and gals refuse to purchse clips that are the quality they are now, when you can turn on inexpensive regular televison, and see jaw dropping quality, while the tickling clips you shell out $10 to $20 for a few minutes are grainy and dark?

 

[tcklft]

Great topic. It'd be nice if all the clips were up to at least the audio/visual standards of Czech tickling, but I believe many producers don't have either the equipment or the technical knowledge to get that together. I don't mind downloading a clip with subpar a/v if it's an older production, but the stuff produced today in general needs improvement. Some producers may be concerned with bandwidth (their own and their users') but in this day and age high-speed internet is both affordable and widespread.

(BTW, I don't know what stores you're looking at but most I've seen charge $5-6 for a five minute clip.)

 

[Babyshambles]

Great topic. It'd be nice if all the clips were up to at least the audio/visual standards of Czech tickling, but I believe many producers don't have either the equipment or the technical knowledge to get that together. I don't mind downloading a clip with subpar a/v if it's an older production, but the stuff produced today in general needs improvement. Some producers may be concerned with bandwidth (their own and their users') but in this day and age high-speed internet is both affordable and widespread.

(BTW, I don't know what stores you're looking at but most I've seen charge $5-6 for a five minute clip.)

clip quality is important.

I want extremely well lit

I want good sound

I want a good back drop

BUT - FUCK large clips where you can see pores. That is excessive and I don't want that.

There is a trade off, and there comes a point where increasing quality is not as important as fast download speed. I stopped buying from Tickle Central years ago even though they are one of the best - why - because their clips are too big and I want downloads in minutes not tens of minutes.
My connection speed is only about 2MB/s at best.

 

[ZenTickling]

I use and HD camcorder with a separate microphone. I offer all my clips in HD, but I also convert them to smaller files for people who have slower internet connections.

I still find that Czech Tickling's clips look better than mine.. probably because they have access to professional lighting and studio equipment. They most likely have a more expensive camcorder, but I only do this part time so I'm not going to invest thousands of dollars into equipment.

 

[marcusb]

I shoot with both 720x480 and HD (1080 downconverted to 720p). Clips are rendered at 1500 with 2-pass encoding. Takes a very long time to process but the results are better than 1-pass encoding.

 

[ViperGTS]

Next year, February, we're all going over to HD TV. The quality will be about 4 times what you see on regular TV.

Off Topic: In February, USA is moving to DIGITAL, tv, not HD tv. For anyone using a regular tube TV set, the picture will NOT look any different than it does now, since

a) those TVs still only put out 640x480 resolution and
b) the source resolution of programs will not change unless they are being streamed as an HD channel.

Just thought I would clear that up for you since you seem to be a bit turned around about it.

Back on Topic: Keep in mind that in order for a company to produce higher quality clips, their source footage needs to be of higher quality as well. This means expensive, high end cameras. Not only is this expensive, but clip size, as far as MB goes, would be astronomical.

BluRay discs play video at 1080p, which is 1920 pixels wide by 1080 pixels tall. By contrast, the videos I put out are 640x480 at their largest right now. Using the example of Amber's First Time, that video is 365 MB in size.

Using basic math, if I had filmed and produced the same video in 1080p resolution, the filesize could be as large as 2.463 GIGABYTES. You can see how this would be a major problem for downloading videos.

 

[mabus]

I wrote that kind of fast, my apologies, I wanted to include more specifics.

Actually, you're on topic, and correct, Viper.
However, as capitalism does what it does, those HD TV's will come down in price until they are affordable to all. I know of no one today, no matter how poor, who has a black and white televison that can be knocked out for good by lightning, for example. We always had a big nice TV, surrounded by wood, with a TV that worked on top! And a few times, a TV on top of THAT TV!

The rendering and encoding is where my issue lies, mainly.
I have purchased clips from many stores, and the difference between your store Viper, and the Czech sites, and marcusb's site, compared to many of Nylon Tickling, and especially Tickle Torture and Daily Footage, and even Paradise Vision's sites, is obvious.

And I think marcus gave a good solution.

I've shot stuff with my 3 CCD MiniDV camcorder, and the raw footage looked much better than the stuff Daily Footage puts out, for example. I'm sure their RAW footage looks good, however.
I've seen 700 to 800 MB two hour movies that are very clear...have NO idea how those are done.

And again, this isn't by any means an attack on any company. I just want the aim to be top notch clips from ALL stores. Lighting and color of background IS important, but video clarity is more important.....and kind of a mystery to me, just because I make DVD's, and have rarely rendered clips to be put online. Guys like marcusb and Viper have the know how to help the other guys.....and have given some of it here. Thanks guys.

 

[Tickle Torture]

We've been corresponding with Mabus about this issue via email over the last couple months. The discussion started when he asked if we'd be shooting in HD anytime soon. Since we just spent a lot of money moving, we probably won't be investing in an HD camera until next year. But we would love to make the switch. We currently use professional studio lighting equipment and our camera is a middle of the road 2008 model 3 CCD MiniDV Sony camcorder. Obviously, a more expensive camera will have more megapixels and better quality. Here are the problems we might have with HD though. Many models prefer to avoid being shot in HD because you can see every last blemish on their face and body. However, this shouldn't be an issue when it comes to any foot tickling clips, since the focus will be mainly on the feet.

And in response to clip quality. Clips4Sale actually mandates the highest quality allowed on their site to control their costs associated with excessive bandwith usage. With as many stores as they have we can see how that may be an issue. Here is an exerpt from their New Store Instructions:

"You can use MPG, WMV, RM, MOV, MP4, M4V or AVI clips on your store. Make sure that you your clips follow this guideline.....a 5 min clip should not exceed 60MB or 1min of video should not exceed approx 10MB )...3min = 30MB, 7min = 70MB and so on."

Nonetheless, we've noticed that some clip stores exceed Clips4Sale's stated limitations and appear to be using a bitrate of 2.1 Mbps or higher. That's what we've noticed based on the size of their clips. To stay within Clips4Sale's limitations, we have been capturing and saving our videos in WMV format at a resolution of 640 X 480 using a bitrate of 1.5 Mbps. So a 7 minute clip of ours will be around 80 MB in size. Technically, that is still too sizeable and exceeds Clips4Sale's limitations.

Not sure what we are going to do about all of this. We want to have better quality, at the same time, we don't want our file sizes to be too large so downloads take forever and we don't want to disrespect the rules of Clips4Sale and bite the hand that feeds us so to speak. We are friends with the owner of Clips4sale, so we will probably address this issue with him. We would love to just go ahead and use a higher bitrate, especially since it appears everyone else is doing it. But for now, we will be capturing our videos at a higher bitrate (2.1 Mbps) while continuing to save them at 1.5 Mbps. This will increase the quality of our clips slightly, while keeping the file sizes about the same.

Please tell us what you think about the quality of our clips. Are they at all grainy? Or are they relatively sharp and clear? How is the lighting? How are the colors? Etc. We really want to have your feedback to make our clips better.

Charlee & Elijah @ Tickle Torture
http://www.clips4sale.com/9697

 

[ZenTickling]

"You can use MPG, WMV, RM, MOV, MP4, M4V or AVI clips on your store. Make sure that you your clips follow this guideline.....a 5 min clip should not exceed 60MB or 1min of video should not exceed approx 10MB )...3min = 30MB, 7min = 70MB and so on."

I emailed them about that and they don't really care nor do they enforce that rule. After I'm done converting to a WMV file, a 5 minute HD clip ends up being around 160MB.