Hi Michael,

>> I think they are a win all around

Yes, but if you want to distribute a software via Internet, the huge installation package won't be appreciated so much; so I hope you aren't going to compete with Autodesk's Inventor LT 1GB package... :)

Petr

Yeah that's true, the size is the one downside.

It is awfully nice having MoI's download be in the 5MB range or so.

Maybe what I will do is only distribute the non-video documentation directly with the download package and have the tutorial section as links to separate downloads.

That should keep me well under the 1GB mark! :)

- Michael

If I may recommend, actually. For marketing purposes.

YouTube the videos.

Use them as a marketing tool.

It's easy to share them with other people, etc.

Plus, no bandwidth issues from your end.

I'd love the free bandwidth. But it looks like YouTube will resize videos to a max of 320x240 resolution... That may be a bit too small for a screenshot type tutorial.

- Michael

Google resized my animation, even through it was already at a low resolution. So, I don't know about google either.

Joe used a service called blip.tv for one MoI tutorial here: http://bitreality.blogspot.com/ - that seems to have worked well.

I'd like to chime in on providing videos via YouTube. This author of a book on SketchUp got me to buy his book with these tutorials (which are meant to accompany the text).

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Aidan+Chopra&search=Search

Mr Chopra's U tube tutorials are quite good in the size format U tube provides. However some of us have to blow it up to see it better and they look terrible when blown up it is blurry and becomes a visual challenge. Michael I vote for your choice where the visuals will be clean and easy to follow especially for some of us whose eyes are not perfect. My 2 cents. Peace

Hi Michael G.

I was wondering, Will the current beta (mine says it's good thru Sept. 25) be extended in case you have not released V1.0 yet?

Not trying to be selfish, but I would probably go into withdrawl if I had to wait between beta and release!!

Just kidding about the withdrawl, but would the beta be extended if this were the case?

Hi Michael, yes I'm planning on releasing a new beta with an extended expiration soon, I think maybe tomorrow.

There will definitely be plenty of overlap between the last active beta and version 1.0 .

- Michael

Whew!

Thanks Michael G.

My birthday is towards the middle of this month and I've already told my wife that MoI3D released version is the only thing on my list. I also told her could be applied towards the next few gift giving holidays! :-)

Thanks again Michael G. This is a great tool and I certainly hope it pays off for you!

May I recommend using the OSS XVID - Codec at www.xvid.org. It allows to generate astonishingly small HQ movies.
In addition you can decode that not only on Win. You could use VirtualDub with XVID to transcode your movies.
Lemme predict: It will shrink them up to 10:1 with no seriously visible loss of quality. Try it, it's free for all.

Hi 3d-penguin, thank you for your suggestion!

Unfortunately I've already spent quite a bit of time messing with different video types, I just don't have enough time to experiment with that right now.

If you'd like to give it a try, you can grab the first video here: http://moi3d.com/1.0/docs/CrownOfClubs.wmv
- if you're able to transcode that into 1/10th the size with no noticeable loss of quality I'd certainly be interested!

- Michael

I find divx: http://www.divx.com/divx/windows/ to be very good. Here is a site that plays high resolution videos using this codec only. http://stage6.divx.com/

what about QuickTime or Flash (most popular) Every One Happy ?

I tried quite a lot of variations of flash, but to get the same quality took about double the size of WMV.

I didn't try quicktime very much, I was also having problems getting high quality in there as well.

As far as I could tell WMV seemed to work the best for my particular situation - highest quality and lowest size. Other things tended to blotch up the grid since it is a kind of gray on gray subtle thing.

Maybe I can produce alternative versions at some point.

- Michael

Oh yeah and the other problem I had with Flash is that it doesn't work well for downloading for later viewing, the flash video is kind of made up of a bundle of separate files.

- Michael

STAY away from quicktime please. nothing but problems on three different computers i use, and i've done searches and it seems many people hate this format.

What will the price be?

I need something that can export to STL. I'm thinking about buying SketchUp Pro, but I may hold off depending on MOI's price.


Thanks,
Brad

back to school