Web Hosting?

[HPDZ]

OK. I have a problem.

The web hosting service I've been using for HPDZ.NET for several years is complaining I'm using too much disk space. This seems silly since I pay a fair amount of money to them, and I'm only consuming 37GB, which is about $3 worth of storage on a retail hard drive. But still, that is their position. They want my footprint under 25GB.

Now I have a dilemma. What should I do?

Do I delete older videos? Move to a new hosting service? Or just not publish HD videos to the site anymore? The 40Mbps videos are the real storage hogs, at 1+ GB or so each.

I've never considered this a commercial operation, but maybe I could offer subscriptions to paying members, for a small fee, like $10 per year? If just a few dozen people sign up, I can cover the cost of a lot of additional storage. Currently, I'm paying about $70 per year to host HPDZ.NET. I don't mind, but I'm not sure I want to pay a whole lot more than that.

Does anyone know of a hosting service that won't gripe about storage use and still charge a reasonable, non-painful amount?

Alternatively, I can delete the HD content from the web site (which will cut about 20GB of space and make the hosting service happy again) and offer it on Blu-Ray discs, but they would cost about $10 each, just to cover the cost of the disc, the box, shipping, etc.

I am really happy that I can get these 20-40 Mbps animations out to people, but they are so huge that it may not be practical. YouTube just doesn't cut it!

[David Makin]

I can't really help - my host charge more PA and give less space but make up for it in quality of service etc.

[cKleinhuis]

Hmm this is hue stuff fractalforums is just using 6gigs of webspace because of my rigid attachments policy... So my first thought was to suggest a hosting service just for the files but hence you have such massive file sizes it could be hard to find a provider my first thought was google pages

another thing you might think of would be usin a torrent to distribute your files but you must have running the seed on a computer that is always available but i think the download counts are not that high that a torrent could help here

[taurus]

i think, what you are looking for is similar to a hire car for a fixed fee with fuel for unlimited kilometers. noone will offer that. prepare to make compromises - the suggestions for that, you made yourself.

good luck!
taurus

[cKleinhuis]

searching for "webspace" on google lead me to this hosting of a 100gig webspace (german)
http://www.toptip.net/

[taurus]

i recommend a real close look on agb (terms and conditions) and account specifications. some of those low-cost-big-space offers have a file-size-limit for example.

[HPDZ]

Thanks for all the suggestions.

It is kind of like wanting unlimited mileage, but when you think about it, 100GB of storage these days is really cheap, even factoring in electricity, real estate, etc. I'm sure if I offered to pay more, we could negotiate something, but they're just demanding I remove my excess content and not even trying to work with me, or even to be courteous.

There is indeed fine print in the "unlimited" storage offers, and they should not be allowed to use that term. My current host's Terms of Service say I have to use a "reasonable" amount (or some word like that) at it is up to them to decide exactly what that means.

[Fractal Ken]

HPDZ, you might want to contact Sam Monnier. I believe he's dealt successfully with a similar issue: Gigapixel images are back.

[cbuchner1]

Most certainly I would truly miss your web pages, as I recently consulted it for some advice on bignum programming...  Why hasn't your web hoster offered an affordable upgrade of your hosting plan?

[Oppenheimer_]

searching for "webspace" on google lead me to this hosting of a 100gig webspace (german)
http://www.toptip.net/

hands away from that site, they'll rip you off! 
sadly they have multiple sites with offers like this. be warned.

you can get 50gigs at dropbox for 100$, pretty expensive, but maybe a cloud-solution and hotlinking could be way.
ever tried vimeo? if u manage to get your codec right, it beats yt in quality.

[Madman]

It seems that your provider actually has blocked your site. I can't get there anymore.

I also think you're asking a lot from your provider: You're not only asking for 40 GB storage, but also high data transfers. I don't think that "cheap" hosting services offer anything above a couple of GB/ month.

My advice would be to split up your content and put your HD videos to Vimeo (if you don't like youtube) or Utube and have people contact you if they want a high resolution / high Mbps copy. I agree, it's a compromise, but the other option would be a premium business account and I don't think you would like the cost  

Edit: Oops... made a typo in your website  It's still very active!! My bad...

[HPDZ]

Ugh. For now, as a stop-gap measure, I've deleted the largest WMV files, retaining the MP4 versions. Really since Windows Media Player can play MP4 files, there's no good reason to have both WMV and MP4. This saved about 10 GB of space. Hopefully that will make the hosting service happy.

Vimeo, YouTube, etc. just can't provide the stellar quality that a real 20-40 Mbps encoding can provide, and I do want to share this level of quality with the world. The question now is becoming whether the world has enough interest. I hate to think that the future of my work is publishing stuff to YouTube that looks crappy, while only I get to see the full glory of these animations at 40 Mbps. I think the only solution is to solicit donations on the site and/or send Blu-Ray discs out to those who want to buy them.

[HPDZ]

Regarding the offer of the affordable upgrade, that is exactly what has me so infuriated with them. You'd think that after many years of loyalty, they'd want to offer a solution, rather than present this comply-or-die attitude to me. They gave me 3 days to cut my content down from 37 GB to 25GB! Geez! Maybe if I were a commercial operation, OK, but I just do this for a hobby, and I can't drop my life to deal with deleting all that content, removing links in the site files, updating the sitemap files, etc.

Certainly if I were them, I'd just ask for a bit more money to cover the additional storage. But no, all I've got is a warning that they WILL delete all files not in compliance by tomorrow. No negotiation, no flexibility, no interest in maintaing business, nothing.

[HPDZ]

To cbuchner1:

I am glad my pages on bignum programming were of some use to you! In addition to publishing the videos, that is another big part of what I want to be on the web -- a useful reference for those who are trying to learn the elements of what goes into this from a computer science or mathematics perspective. I wish I could publish more on it, and I am limited by HTML, but realy this is a very complex and rich art form, but visually and intellectually. It pushes the limits of computing in ways that few other applications do, but, unfortunately, there is only an artistic application, not much of a pratical one for this.

Bignum arithmetic is probably the most mainstream offshoot. I really believe all serious computer science folks should get their hands dirty writing at least a bignum multiplication function, and really, bignum floating-point division should be a requirement in all CS curricula. Not because it's got tons of mainstream applications, but because it is seriously hard, and if you can tackle this, you are better equipped to deal with other problems. Sadly, in these days of .NET programming, so few CS students really learn the guts of what's under the hood.

Artistically, really, the colorizing is the most difficult thing. I think I've broken quite a bit of new ground here, and I'm able to generate better colored video than anyone else. The math that goes into this is nontrivial, and is worth study. I've only published hints of it, again, limited by HTML's mathematical expressiveness.

Also, the noise-reduction techniques are worth looking at. These have widespread applications. Considering the median filter opposed to a linear filter like the mean filter is a great undergraduate exercise, and this is great medium for that. There's a lot of research that could be done here, looking at ways to define a modultion transfer function for a median filter, looking at how the fractal data passes through it, etc.

But also looking at the right way to implement stochastic supersampling, for example, is a very good teaching exercise. There are not many practical applications for this, but the theoretical foundation is essential to a deep understanding of digital signal processing. And of course, the frame interpolation math is a fantastic example of some very practical, widely used math that every CS student should master, knowing how to interpolate 2D or 3D images, and understanding the visual analog of the Nyquist theorem, which is usually presented in the context of time-sampled data, but which has such wider applicability.

My work with 3D camera angles and quaternions has been very primitive and limited, but again, this is an important topic for math students and CS students who want to learn computer graphics.

So again, I am glad my limited writing on bignum arithmetic was useful. I really try to teach as well as entertain, and this field of fractal art is a rich area for both endeavors.

[Don Whitaker]

I sometimes use Archive.org to host large video files for free. It's only for open-source style licenses like Creative Commons, tho.

I've also used Blip.tv to host large files. They used to allow unlimited access to downloads of the original video files. Now they only allow that access for 30 days unless you pay the  $8 a month for pro account.

Vimeo is my current favorite option. You can allow folks to download your original files, but only from the video's Vimeo page. I think that basic accounts are limited to 3 video downloads a day. Their pro account gives better access and more HD options.

Might as well mention my Web host while I'm at it. MediaTemple.net  I pay less than $20 a month for very reliable service. 100GB storage and 1 Terrabyte transfer bandwidth per month, split across as many websites/domains as you like. Aimed at folks who are comfortable setting up and configuring their own sites.