Your video upload should not take more than a minute or two if you have kept it to 50MB and it is around 2 or 3 minutes in length. If you feel like your upload has stalled, it might be wise to simply stop the Upload and try again. The easiest way to do this is to simply click on your browser's "reload" button. That will clear the upload form and allow you to try again. You should verify that your file is OK, it shouldn't be longer than around 50 MB. Also, make sure the file type is .mov, .wmv, or .flv which are our supported file types. Finally, be sure you haven't put any spaces or special characters in the file name. If you continue to have problems, we monitor the webmaster email regularly. Please email us at webmaster@peerypiano.com.

iMovie comes free with all Macintoshes. If you are attaching a video camera to your Mac via Firewire, you can use iMovie to record your movie. If you have used another program (like Quicktime) to record your movie, you can use iMovie to edit it. iMovie provides many tutorials on making and editing videos. Once you have completed your video, here's how to create a .mov video (this was written to match iMovie 9).

1. In iMove, choose the "Share" menu
2. Choose "Export using QuickTime ..."
3. Name your file (please don't use spaces or special characters)
4. At the bottom, there are two "pop-up" menus.
Export: Choose "Movie to Quicktime Movie"
Use: Choose "Broadband- Medium"

5. Click "Save"

Now here's more information than you need, so ignore the rest if you like. If you use the above approach, this is the set of settings you'll have:

Video
Compressor: H.264
Quality: High
Frame rate 15
Key frame rate: 75
Bitrate: 220 Kbit/sec
Frame reordering: yes
Encoding mode: multi-pass
Dimensions 320 x 240

Audio
Format: AAC
Sample Rate 32,000 kHz
(recommended)
Channels: Stereo (L,R)
Bit rate 80 kbps

This gives you a sense of a nice set of settings for PPO videos.

Here's some quick guidance that should make it easier for you to upload videos. This feature is for you to share your creativity and talent with fellow musicians. Entertain us!

- The maximum size to for your video should be 50MB

- The name of your file must not contain any spaces (can can use letters, numbers, the under bar character, and the dash character).

- An odd one: if your video is less than 10 seconds long the icon below the player will not display properly because it taken from the 10th second into the video. So if you want to control what goes there, be sure something nice is in the 10 second spot

- If you use a Mac, create an .mov file (you can use iMovie or Quicktime).

- If you use a Windows computer, create an .wmv (you can use Windows Movie Maker).

- You can also send an .flv file (Adobe Flash video). Most webcams come with software for recording videos. All are fine as long as you can create a .mov or .wmv file with them.

- Make sure you have good light when you make your video.

- If you have a movie or video in a different format, you will need to convert it to either .mov or .wmv before you upload it.

- We are working on expanding the kinds of videos we will accept.

- Once you upload your video, you and other students can watch it on your "My Student Page".

- Be mindful of our Terms of Service. Do not upload copyrighted material and please, no profanity or vulgarity.

- Let's keep this a friendly place! Use your common sense and be supportive of each other!

Of course the PPO reserves the right to remove any videos it deems inappropriate.

More questions? Email us at webmaster@peerypiano.com

Right now we only support "flv", "mov" and "wmv" files..m4v is coming!

In the meantime, you can only use these file formats. IF you are using one of them and you're still getting the bad file name error, be sure you do not have any spaces in the file name. Go back and check -- many Mac users are accustomed to being able to put spaces in their file names. Eliminate any characters other than letters, just to be safe. If you continue to have problems, please email the webmaster, we monitor that email regularly.
webmaster@peerypiano.com