Need to Reduce Photo and Video Files (updated)

[Andrea Lizares Si (HS'73,AB '78)]

In two days, we celebrate our 6th Monthsary. As of today, February 25, we have 1,410 members and 5,600 photos. Hopefully, when we celebrate our first anniversary on August 27, 2009, we'll have at least 2,500 members. The numbers give rise to one problem, diskspace. Ning.com's free package gives us a disk space of 10 Gigabytes, said to be the equivalent of 5,000 photos or 500 videos. When we grow beyond 10 GB, additional increments of 10 GB have to be purchased at $9.95 per month.

We already have 5,600 photos and as the number rises, so does my apprehension that the day will arrive when we've filled up our 10 Gigabytes and no one will be able to upload anything further, whether it be be a discussion, comment, photo, video, or a new profile of a new member. Since we're growing, we'll reach 10 GB, for sure. I'm writing now because there are a few things that members can do to postpone the date when I'll have to pay ning.com for additional disk space.

Things that members can do to reduce file sizes (leave a help message here if you don't know how to compress files).

1. Photo files should be less than 300 Kb. To reduce your photos to 300 kb or less, you open the photo file using a photo-editing program like Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft Office Picture Manager. In Adobe Photoshop, I first reduce the image size to a width of 300 pixels, then I "Save for Web." In Windows Picture Manager, compress the picture, selecting compress for web. Whatever program you use, check the file size of the picture that you intend to upload. It it is more than 300 kb, compress again. If you need someone to help you do this, let me know.

2. Pictures can be uploaded to your friendster.com, flickr.com, facebook.com, photobucket.com, or other account and you can embed the html code for the slideshow of the pictures in your lccians page. When your classmates are not likely to want to print out your pictures, a slideshow is advisable.

3. Youtube is the favorite for posting videos for free.You can add the pictures in your videos file by embedding the code for your album in a video upload page.

4. Post all your videos in YouTube. You will be saving us more than 3 MB of disk space if you do this because the video will not be taking up any part of the 10 gig we are banking on.

Please help to keep membership free.

[Ray John E. Alovera]

I suggest tinypic.com ... You can upload unlimited numbers of pictures.

The catch:
1. If you don't register(who wouldn't want to? It's free!), your uploaded pics will only stay for 30 days.
2. If you do, they stay up there forever. You can also organize them in albums, edit them or apply effects. You get the codes right after the upload and you can see them if you click on any picture.

Anyone can access them without registering. Here, I'll show you what I mean. My tinypic account

I also suggest keeping the sizes of photos down to 640x480 .

This way, reaching the 10 GB limit will be postponable.

[Andrea Lizares Si (HS'73,AB '78)]

Thanks for your suggestions, Ray. I forgot to mention Photobucket.com, the owner of tinypic.com. My daughter uses photobucket so I decided to use that. I guess the file sizes in photobucket don't have to be so tiny. I used flickr.com before but this displays only 200 pics, lousy. Perhaps tinypic.com isn't really unlimited. The photos saved are just smaller than in photobucket so you can upload as many as you please.

[Ray John E. Alovera]

I beg to differ. I don't think you have tried it yet. This will explain my point. FAQ

My reason for not using PB is that it's got bandwidth limits. Namely, monthly hits. A major drawback if lots of people are checking out your pics. If you reach your bandwidth limit, they take down your pics.

It depends on your own preference though. If you insist on using Photobucket, then go with that. Main point is, these are few of the sites that can greatly affect our site's file storage limit.

In addition, if anyone wants to upload streaming music, I recommend imeem.com . You can upload your music files(.ogg, .mp3, .flac, .wma, .wav) and you can embed the codes on your page. We seriously need to classify this free online services.

How 'bout a list? Yes, a list.

[Ray John E. Alovera]

/*--List of online media storage services--*/

**Photos**
|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|1. http://www.tinypic.com/ - Unlimited Photos. | |Unlimited Bandwidth. |
|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|2. http://www.photobucket.com/ - Lots of | features. Really big storage space. Apparently, there's a bandwidth limit. :( |
|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|3. http://imageshack.us/ - Pretty good service. Photos| |are kept if they are accessed by anyone at least once per year. That is, if you're not | |registered. If you are, they're kept forever. The only downside is the 300 MB/hour bandwidth|
|limit. |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|4. http://www.myphotoalbum.com/ - Very | |nice site. The features are too many to put in this post. See them for yourself here. |
|***http://www.myphotoalbum.com/features.shtml***|
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|5. http://www.shutterfly.com/ - Unlimited photo | storage and 25 free prints.
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|6. http://www.hoorray.com/ - This site has some | |pretty cool features that allow you to do some cool stuff to your photos. |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|7. http://share.ovi.com/ - Unlimited storage of videos | |and pics. Sweet!
|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|8. http://www.oosah.com/ - 1 TB(1, 024 GB) storage|
|for photos and videos. Many features too. |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

**Videos**
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|1. http://www.youtube.com/ - Best video storage| |site ever! I'm sure you've heard. ;) |
|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|2. http://www.heavy.com/ - Haven't actually tried | |but I watched Jimmy Chow here. |
|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|



Ray John E. Alovera said:

I beg to differ. I don't think you have tried it yet. This will explain my point. FAQ
My reason for not using PB is that it's got bandwidth limits. Namely, monthly hits. A major drawback if lots of people are checking out your pics. If you reach your bandwidth limit, they take down your pics.
It depends on your own preference though. If you insist on using Photobucket, then go with that. Main point is, these are few of the sites that can greatly affect our site's file storage limit.

In addition, if anyone wants to upload streaming music, I recommend imeem.com . You can upload your music files(.ogg, .mp3, .flac, .wma, .wav) and you can embed the codes on your page. We seriously need to classify this free online services.

How 'bout a list? Yes, a list.

[Melanie Monido Worden (HS '73, Batch BS-Commerce '78)]

I already uploaded my pictures before read the guidelines, I replaced some of the pictures with compressed one(still have some to do). I will try reducing the size if that will be better that compressing it. I also combine some pictures, I was able to combine 6 pictures to 1 under 300KB. I have a Corel Plus and Paint Pro shop.

[Ray John E. Alovera]

Nice! Maybe you could post how you combined those pics in the Tech Support Thread.

[Florante E. Marcelo]

Hi Ms. Andrea,

Greetings from Jackson! I was thinking of removing some of my videos, but I can't find a way to do it. Anyway, I hope you can help me on this.

Fr. Flo'

[Andrea Lizares Si (HS'73,AB '78)]

Thanks for asking. To delete a video or a photo that you uploaded before, go to the page of the video or the photo and look for "Delete video" or "Delete photo" at the lower right hand side of the page. Clicking on this will remove the video or photo.

Florante E. Marcelo said:

Hi Ms. Andrea,

Greetings from Jackson! I was thinking of removing some of my videos, but I can't find a way to do it. Anyway, I hope you can help me on this.

Fr. Flo'

[Peter Liberth T. D adivas]

thanks ms, for the email link about this issue. thats why i was not posting photos in my page, even i am also a camera bug like anyone else..

but when USArfien came about, and we need to post photos somehow..i did one posting using your site and thought about making a webpage for the group off site of yours. this way we are not using your storage space.

i have this "dot-com" and ftp site storage that i use for my business, coz im dealing with transfering a lot of large data files thru the internet almost everyday.. anyway, there (in our page) we can use raw files off of the camera..and if this activities that the guys are talking about is gonna happen.. we'll eat up a lot of this web space...

anyway, i post here because i just want to ask you about this 9.95 per month thingy. how much space they are adding and what else is available for that price range (eg. we can post larger than 300kb- i got this 15mp dslr and boy its hard to shrink it to 300kb hehehe)

i am just wondering since theres a lot of us here now .. im not promising anything, but lets just put it this way, supremo ed can just stop drinking JW-blue in one party and we can pay this website's upgrades for two years.. hehehe

[Andrea Lizares Si (HS'73,AB '78)]

Thanks for asking Peter. My classmates who are organizing the reunion in L.A. also offered the same thing. $9.95 monthly pays for 10 Gig increments of disk space, a pretty good deal as far as I know. I did not encourage it because as I wrote, if people upload raw camera files of 3-4 MB, we'll keep running out of disk space very quickly. It also occured to me that internet service here is not as good as it is there. Big files will take forever to load and with camera megapixels just getting bigger and bigger. . . .But if the USArfien really would like to sponsor at least the first 10 Gig monthly, I'll let you do so and become strict with file sizes again when we near an additional 5,000 pics. Let me know.

Peter Liberth T. Dadivas said:

thanks ms, for the email link about this issue. thats why i was not posting photos in my page, even i am also a camera bug like anyone else..

but when USArfien came about, and we need to post photos somehow..i did one posting using your site and thought about making a webpage for the group off site of yours. this way we are not using your storage space.

i have this "dot-com" and ftp site storage that i use for my business, coz im dealing with transfering a lot of large data files thru the internet almost everyday.. anyway, there (in our page) we can use raw files off of the camera..and if this activities that the guys are talking about is gonna happen.. we'll eat up a lot of this web space...

anyway, i post here because i just want to ask you about this 9.95 per month thingy. how much space they are adding and what else is available for that price range (eg. we can post larger than 300kb- i got this 15mp dslr and boy its hard to shrink it to 300kb hehehe)

i am just wondering since theres a lot of us here now .. im not promising anything, but lets just put it this way, supremo ed can just stop drinking JW-blue in one party and we can pay this website's upgrades for two years.. hehehe

[Peter Liberth T. D adivas]

ms, actually i have not talk to the group, before i posted my message here yesterday, but i will surely bring up this issue to them. i myself can sponsor a year. and im sure there's a lot more here that would do too. granting what the website has done for all of us.

about the 300kb limit its ok if it will stay that way, coz with USArfien, we'll still be using my site. we upload raw and just link it here.. ( we'll just have nicer pictures than the rest..hehehe joke )

oh, one more question, can we have an option of a one time deal? like per year instead of per month? its just that it complicate things if theres a bill every month...like in my case i paid my website just one time for 6 years and they didn't bother me anymore..

ok we'll just send you a message after i talk to them. thanks

[Joemar S. Sanchez]

Can we upload PDF files?