One thing I've noticed in the past couple months is the total lack of submissions to the site, but there are a huge amount of people who post to Youtube and then post the link on the forum.

I recently put a couple films on Youtube so my friends at home could see my films as soon as I finished them (I won't bother to post a link). Anyway, after going through the long process of getting the files down to 100 MB, I post the films up and what do I find when I watch them on Youtube, the sound is out of sync by a split second. This might not affect most videos but my films had very specific sound cues and it was just unnerving and I haven't even mentioned the video quality. The quality of video on Youtube just isn't there.

All that aside, I noticed that in the course of a couple of weeks I got like 30 views on my films a piece, half of which are my friends. I have posted one film to this site thus far (link in my tagline) and I was so happy with all the views that I was getting for my film as well as the constructive reviews I got (not all good but it helps the learning experience).

I am very pleased with the experience that I got on this site for my film and I plan to post my films that are on Youtube on this site because I know that Chris will take the time and care to make sure it gets up with no errors or issues whatsoever. The $10 you pay for the hosting fee (for most films) is a piece of mind fee, that your film won't disappear in the shuffle of crap on Youtube and that it will be of a high quality.

So this is a challenge/request to all the people who constantly post here and ask to watch their film and link to Youtube or Google Video, etc. If you're going to be a true member of this site's community put the film on the site. I understand the extenuating circumstances like its a portfolio film and you have to submit it in less than a month, but that still shouldn't stop you from later posting the film on the site.

Let's support the community that we get so much support from and pay the tiny fee to put our films on the site. Sorry for the long post but I felt I had to get this off my chest and expose people who just want the quick advice and reviews but don't want to support the site that facilitates the giving of said advice.

Youtube will eventually kill this site unless there are some changes. Youtube is community based, I can upload anything for free and within a day or two i can show it to anyone on any web browser. With student films I have to mail it in, pay and it generally takes a month to get posted.

I think this site can be a hige resource for student filmmaker's but there needs to be a bigger push for a community.

Well - the forums alone are one reason why this site will never go away - even if posting films on the site slows down.

BUT - that being said - we are working on a way to make is easier to post films to Studentfilms.com which will hopefully boost participation. It's slow going though - as the site makes hardly any money (enough to pay for hosting) and I'm having friends work on it for free in their spare time. So I can't really push them to work faster.

But I do have some great plans for the site - can't really go into them in depth right now though.

-Chris
Studentfilms.com

what would be the limits for filesize on this site?

Right now there's just a 45 minute time limit.

-Chris
Studentfilms.com

Firstly, short films on YouTube don’t get as many views as funny ones and I’ve experienced that myself... If you go and take a look at http://www.youtube.com/vtkproductions (Sorry for the posting ) you'll see that a funny video, of which I’ve had over 10, 000 views, has been watched more then a short films trailer. Another example is http://www.youtube.com/DulwichStudios. Secondly the response on the funny videos is greater then SF but as you gather from the examples, the views are greater on SF. Lastly, i think if you get the videos on SF into FLV format, where it streams on almost every browser with FlashPlayer, then it will increase views. This is because your MP4 files only work with the original QuickTime and not alternative and many people don’t want to bother downloading QuickTime where is they will download FlashPlayer as there is a greater need for it... unless you have a MAC.