TO RECORD A FREE DV CARD™
1) Make sure your webcam is connected. If prompted, select allow from the Flash Warning telling you that this site is trying to access your camera. If you don't see a live image after about 5 seconds, something is wrong with your webcam or computer drivers. Adjust your camera and wait about 5 seconds for the lighting level to be detected and adjusted.
2) Press the record symbol to begin recording. Only the first 2 minutes are recorded on the remote server. Nothing is recorded to your own computer.
3) When completed, Press Record again to stop, then click the link below left, "Preview your Recording & Send a DV Card™".
To Preview & Send your DV Card™
1) Preview the Video. If you wish to record it, click the Tab above named "Record a DV Card™". For video quality tips, visit Support.
2) Fill out the form and hit send.
3) Both you and the recipient will be emailed a link to view the card.
Welcome
This is a public BETA site, that means there are significant areas for improvment and a lot of work in progress. Development is ongoing as there are many issues, looks, and backend. One of the most notable is bandwidth detection is not setup yet, so this will really only generate great looking cards for those with very high outbound internet speeds (not download speeds which are generally different). Another side effect is Firefox users and users with flash debug tools are likely to see a popup error message related to this on the initial page (record view) - you can safely ignore this error.
What you need to receive a DV Card™.
A computer with an internet connection, sound card, browser and flash (often comes with browser). You do not need a webcam to view a card sent to you.
Virtually anyone you send a card to will be able to receive it.
What you need to send a DV Card™.
A computer with an internet connection, sound card, browser, flash (often comes with browser), and a webcam installed. You need a webcam to record a card to send.
Video Quality Questions.
Reasons for Low Quality in order of frequency:
1: Outbound (upload) internet connection speed of the card sender.
2: Latency and other technical issues caused by the senders internet provider.
3: The quality of the sender's webcam hardware and drivers.
4: Our website being swamped, it hasn't happened yet, and if it does we will upgrade systems.
By default we currently record cards at 640 x 480. Unlike viewing cards, or other video streams online (YouTube etc), the video from your camera to our media server is uncompressed and is not optimized, this means the file size is unusually large. We record at 15 frames per second, so this means it will use over 576kilobits per second (X x Y x fps)/8000 plus TCP/IP overhead (0ver 0.5Mbps outbound). Many people's broadband internet connections are asynchronous, this means that you have a much faster download than upload speed, sadly when recording video like this with a remote media server, upload is what counts. Having 16Mbps down is of little value when you have only 0.25Mbps up (a dialup up modem in ideal circumstances has approximately 0.033Mbps up). To find out how fast your internet connection really is, and not just the well advertised DOWNLOAD SPEED, but also the UPLOAD speed, we recommend visiting http://www.speedtest.net. Of course the quality of your camera also counts, as well as a number of other ISP factors such as latency.
If your recording has a low quality when you preview it, try not to move as rapidly. Also wait a few seconds on the record page before you start recording, you will probably notice the light quality improve within 5 seconds of the image appearing - this is due to your camera calibrating for the light color. When recording the nice image you see is what your webcam is capable of, the reduced quality of the image you see on the preview page is generally a function of what your internet connection is capable of.
The quality of a DV Card™ sent to you is a function of the quality of the internet connection the sender has. If it looks really terrible, view the card in the smaller size by selecting the appropriate menu tab when you go to view a card sent to you from the email link we send.
DV Cards™ is a brand new service, and will be constantly improving. One of the improvements we are working on is to allow your camera to send higher quality video over less bandwidth. Until then however, remember, you are streaming and recording to our server live, it's not the same as uploading some HD video file which does not have to transmit in realtime, and as already encoded it can take all the time in the world to compress. We work live.
Sending the same video to multiple recipients.
Right now, you can not send the exact same video to multiple recipients, you need to record a video for each recipient. We expect multiple recipient sending to be available before the end of February. For now now efforts are being focused on bandwidth optimization to improve video quality for those with slower outbound internet connections.
Privacy
Sender and recipient names and email addresses are only used to operate the DV Card™ system; for the display, sending and collecting of DV Cards™.
User videos are private, and will not be shared. DV Cards™ you create are only accessible via secret URLs we send the recipient and the sender. Someone guessing the url faces odds of 1 in 89 billion - personally we recommend lottery tickets.
Individual DV Cards™ are automatically deleted every 10 days, this includes sender and recipient names and email addresses, and the recorded video file.
So if all of this is free and we don't abuse your confidential data, how does it pay for itself? DV Cards™ is a new site, started in late February 2009; whilst building site popularity DV cards is operating with no revenue. Once traffic builds, we will begin to show some ads on the site, and will also offer users the ability to pay to permanently download video files generated by the system for off-line use. Sending and receiving DV Cards™ will always remain free. For more information, see About Us.
Links (Mainly sites that list services such as DV Cards)
The Free Site
Marc McDonald, I've known since the mid '90s; Marc invented the concept of websites' listing free services and products online in the mid '90s, and his site, "The Free Site" is still going strong today. I strongly recommend checking out The Free Site.
Totally Free Stuff
Huge online directory of free stuff. Check out Totally Free Stuff.
Cool Freebie Links & THUNDERFAP.com removed, not back linking.
Link To Us
The more popular DV Cards™ gets, the more effort will be put into improving the DV Cards™ experience, so we strongly encourage you to tell everyone about DV Cards™!
If you have a website, blog, or profile on my space. Text links can simply be pointed at http://www.DVCards.com. If you would like to use a graphical image, you may do so using this code, or however you see fit. Of course we encourage myspace users to post this code as a comment to friends.
Contact Us
For all matters except abuse complaints, please contact DV Cards™ at .
If you got an abusive or unwanted card from someone please forward the entire notification email to for investigation, your notification message includes the exact time and IP address of the sender.
Welcome
This is a public BETA site, that means there are some minor problems, however the site is good enough for general public use. This is where we need your help with suggestions, feedback, compliments and complaints to make this a better service. Development is ongoing on many issues, looks, and backend. One of the most notable is bandwidth detection is not setup yet, so this will really only generate great looking cards for those with very high outbound internet speeds (not download speeds which are generally different). Another side effect is Firefox users and users with flash debug tools are likly to see a popup error message related to this on the inital page (record view) - you can safely ignore this error.
About Us
In 1997, I designed the world's first multi-media streaming greeting card site in the world, as well as one of the world's first Greeting Card / eCard™ sites, Radiocards.net. Initially it lived on a variety of free hosting providers. In 1999 I moved it to it's dedicated domain name and paid hosting, eventually on a server cluster. Traffic spiked massively during major holidays and was so high that even paid hosting facilities gave Radiocards.Net the boot twice! Radicards.net is still online, though it has been untended since the early part of this decade, and by modern standards is primitive. The main feature, live stream radio in cards is no longer functional as I have decided to just leave the site up for posterity with no maintainence. In 2009 it was only getting around 500 Uniques per day. In it's heydey, Radicards.net peaked with a stunning 1.6 million unique page views on St. Patrick's Day 2000 due to significant media interest which tended to surround the site on holidays, particularly Irish ones. In 1997, when I started what became Radicards.net, there were less than 2 million websites on earth. In 2008 that number was around 200 million.
Since then I've been involved in a lot of web projects, on my own and with others, such as ammado.com. However I have always wanted to create a next generation Radiocards, and Video has always been on my mind; however using 3rd party video has significant copyright concerns, so I had to keep thinking.
In 2009 broadband is widely available (though in Ireland there are some revisionist definitions of broadband), and many users have webcams set up on their systems. Flash has come a long way and can now provide a very stable interface for video streaming. Open source flash media servers provide phenominal performance, so now it's time to allow web surfers to create their own video messages and send them as cards. Why type a message when you can say it and show it?
I have many different audiences in mind for DV Cards™, however one that I am most interested in helping is the elderly. Of course, many elderly people will not have webcams set up on their computers, or have much knowledge as to how to interact with other people's webcams; however more and more members of the now adult Generation X have been buying and setting up basic computers on broadband to assist their parents in keeping in touch, and managing bills and accounts online. When you send a DV Card™ to someone, they do not need a webcam, or any significant computer skills. All they have to do is click a link in their email to see your creation. What better way to interact with your elders from far away.
Of course DV Cards™, currently a side project of mine, isn't about philanthropic efforts. DV Cards™ is a new site, started in late February 2009, and whilst I am building site popularity DV cards is operating with no revenue. Once traffic builds, I will begin to show some ads on the site, and will also offer users the ability to pay to permanently download video files generated by the system for off-line use. Sending and receiving DV Cards™ will always remain free, just like Radiocards.net has been for the last 12 years - an eon of time in the internet world.
For more information about me, visit http://www.linkedin.com/in/draiocht.
Cian de Buitléir,
February 2009.