What physical media do you use?

[Tom Hanmer]

I have several possible subjects to be used in a film who live very remotely, I need to send all of them some video. Internet wouldn’t be possible for even very small video files so a physical medium of some sort is required. There seem to be three main alternatives DVD, BLURAY and Flash drives. I am just wondering what everyone else uses to physically deliver stuff.
There are obviously problems and positives with each of the media.

DVD probably the lowest common denominator, everyone everywhere has access to a player, however I can’t bring myself to down sample footage to 720 x 576 (pal). Easily brandable.

Bluray- At least it is full HD but I feel it wasn’t a particularly well adopted format (only 15% of households in the UK), there is every chance that people won’t be able to play them. Easily brandable.

USB Flash drive- Played through a computer. Pretty much everyone has access to a computer but not necessarily to USB3. Even USB2 is fast enough for reasonable quality HD so I could have a UHD and an HD version on a drive and be pretty sure everyone could play the content at at least HD quality however there are a few problems with this. Played through a computer although the image is likely to be ok, sound quality is often awful. I would like to include several example films so it would be useful to have a menu system on the drive. The only method of doing this I know of is to export a blurray as a flash file through adobe encore however I don’t think it supports 4k and also flash is being phased out.
If plugged directly into a 4k TV if the drive is fast enough, image and audio can be excellent however it is only possible to access the files individually rather than to have a menu system. Also highly unlikely to have access to these TV’s in this area. Need to be professionally branded.

I seem to be going towards supplying stuff on flash drives but would be great to be able to include a menu structure. Unfortunately my coding is non existent. Does anyone know of a software solution to this.

Would be great to hear how others are solving these issues.

 

[Mark Phelan]

If it's just for viewing, how about uploading to Vimeo and give them each a password?

 

[Craig Parkes]

Coding a HTML5 page to run off a flash drive is dead simple, given that modern browsers all support h.264 video embedded in a HTML5 page with no additional plugins or anything required.

Getting someone to do up a basic webpage that can be delivered purely offline linking to local media on the drive should be REALLY trivial. Learning how to code such a thing yourself no more difficult than learning how to author a DVD for the first time. I'd say these days, if it HAS to be delivered in a physical medium rather than put up online, simply a USB stick with a .html page for them to open in a browser is by far the most universally acceptable option in terms of physical media.

 

[Marc Wielage]

FedEx and small hard drives are a better solution to me, provided you can budget for that expense.

 

[Tom Hanmer]

Thanks for the responses everyone. Mark that is my usual way of doing things but unfortunately I need to send content to people who live in an area where 56k/s is considered fast. Probably unrealistic to expect them to tie up their internet connection for a week. I also like the idea of sending physical media especially flash drives as it is an object that they may find useful themselves and if branded may help to keep me in mind. Craig thanks for your response, I hadn't realised that it could be so easy, looks like I need to get over my resistance to learning to code. Need to find some basic HTML 5 tutorials now.
It seems that flash drives are going to be my best bet at delivering content of at least HD quality whilst ensuring almost everyone can play it. I wish there was a way of plugging a flash drive directly into a television that allowed the use of a menu system to access the files, this would solve the issue of poor audio when people are playing through their laptops.
Luckily I don't need to send more than about 30mins of content so can avoid the small hard drive route as this could get quite expensive for this particular project.
In a few years time this question will no longer be an issue but for now there are definitely times where it may be better to output to DVD or Bluray.
If anyone has any other suggestions it would be great to hear them.

 

[Misha Engel]

Thanks for the responses everyone. Mark that is my usual way of doing things but unfortunately I need to send content to people who live in an area where 56k/s is considered fast. Probably unrealistic to expect them to tie up their internet connection for a week. I also like the idea of sending physical media especially flash drives as it is an object that they may find useful themselves and if branded may help to keep me in mind. Craig thanks for your response, I hadn't realised that it could be so easy, looks like I need to get over my resistance to learning to code. Need to find some basic HTML 5 tutorials now.
It seems that flash drives are going to be my best bet at delivering content of at least HD quality whilst ensuring almost everyone can play it. I wish there was a way of plugging a flash drive directly into a television that allowed the use of a menu system to access the files, this would solve the issue of poor audio when people are playing through their laptops.
Luckily I don't need to send more than about 30mins of content so can avoid the small hard drive route as this could get quite expensive for this particular project.
In a few years time this question will no longer be an issue but for now there are definitely times where it may be better to output to DVD or Bluray.
If anyone has any other suggestions it would be great to hear them.

Most TV's have a built in media player these days, just make a USB big enough to fit the file and don't use DTS because lots of TV vendors don't want to pay the license.
A 12 Mbit/s 30 fps mp4. h.264 or x.264 should do the trick or when you want top quality go upto 16 Mbit/s, for 30 minutes a 4 GB USB will do.
Just make sure you encode it in such a way that almost every (built-in) player can play it.

 

[Elsie N]

Depending on the length of the video, if it is short enough I encode in three or 4 different ways, like Windows Media, Apple Quicktime, H.264 and H.265 @ 4k. I put these onto a USB 3.0 thumbdrive.

That way, the person's TV or Computer decides what it can and can't see.