Hello, Im Ron from TDNetworks (
www.tdnetwork.net). I have a client who wishes to have a pretty large script designed with focus on football.
Here is what he wishes to be on the script.
Chance's Website Proposal
I started as a hobby editing together sports highlight videos.
Initially I was using putfile.com for the first couple of them, but
then I started to think of hosting them on my own site. As I thought
about highlights I realized there are no good centralized sites for
sports video highlights. Auburn fans should be three clicks away from
finding all highlights from Auburn against Alabama. Miami fans should
be a couple clicks away from finding Devin Hester highlights. When
people hear about Dwayne Wade's incredible shot block followed by a
half court shot to end a quarter, they should be several clicks away
from finding it. So in addition to hosting my highlight videos, I
decided to start a website dedicated to hosting sports highlights,
where fans can quickly search for specific plays or types of plays.
Core functions:
- Allow fans to upload sports video highlights.
- Allow fans to quickly and easily search for the exact play or
specific type of play they are looking for.
Other functions
- Host my own sports video files (approx 20 MB each)
- A "best / classic / greatest" plays of all time section by sport.
- A "crazy plays or sports happenings" section.
These sections will be designed for browsing, while the general
sports highlights section is intended for searching for specific
teams, players, etc…
- A small "non sports" section
- links to sports or other sites that are awesome
- columns or articles?
- a forum? -a chat room(s) ?
More on "Core functions: uploading highlights"
- Preferably most uploading can be done directly through the site.
But I do not want files to go directly from being uploaded to
appearing on the site. I would like for them to go into a holding
section until I review them to make sure they are properly labeled,
organized, and relevant (not funny videos, porn videos, etc…). Then I
can allow them to load onto the database, enter the site, whatever.
-I'm somewhat unsure of how to limit uploading. I want to be careful
with having my bandwidth wasted on irrelevant stuff. There could be a
size limit, to prevent people from uploading a 10 second clip that's
40MB because it's a way higher resolution or screen size or something
than is necessary. I don't think the majority of single play sports
highlights would need to be over 6MB. So maybe there should be cap of
around 6 or 7 MB's per file. If somebody has a clip larger than 6 or
7 MB that they feel is acceptable than I was thinking I could provide
them a link to e-mail it to me with yousendit.com so I could view it
and decide whether or not to host it without having to use any of my
own bandwidth to see it. I also don't know what to do when it comes
to preventing someone from spamming my bandwidth with uploads. If I
were to make a video about OU dominating Texas recently, or write a
column that somehow reflected negatively on Philadelphia Flyers, I
don't want some angry Texas or Philadelphia fan to come upload an
irrelevant 5MB file or files 100 times. Hopefully this wont be a
problem, but if it is I don't know how to solve this. Can you limit
an IP address to a certain MB of files (maybe 25 or 30 or something,
maybe a little bit higher) uploaded and waiting to be approved? Or
maybe if that's too complicated, and you could make people register
first and limit it by user name? On the other side I don't want to
discourage legitimate people from uploading legitimate files. This
site will only become awesome once its highlight collection starts to
become comprehensive. Especially at the beginning when I am in
greatest need of people to upload files, I don't want it to be a
hassle. If the site just opened and somebody has 100 New York Jets
highlights he has collected spanning the past ten years, I want him to
upload all of them, and not give up because he can only upload so many
at a time before I approve them, or because he has to register. I'm
not quite sure what to do about this."
More on Core Functions: "Allow fans to quickly and easily search for
the exact play or specific type of play they are looking for".
-This really is the heart of the website. For the most part if you
want to find highlights for a specific team or player, you have to go
on a wild Google chase. Depending on the team or player this could be
very difficult to do. At my site people could show up, click search,
input things like the team or player or type of play, and instantly
have a list of all of the available highlights matching their search.
-Right now I can think 6 search categories.
Sport: This is pretty straightforward. They either type in the sport
they are looking for, or (preferably) use a pull down menu with all of
the sports we currently have highlights for.
Team: Sounds simple, although especially with college it might get
complicated, especially if people don't fill out other fields like
sport or player(s). If somebody just types tigers, you want LSU,
Auburn, Memphis, etc… along with any teams named the tigers in other
sports to pop up. If they type auburn tigers though, you only want
Auburn tiger results to show up. Are FSU and Florida State University
interchangeable? Is Seminoles good enough, or do they need to type
FSU Seminoles or Florida State University Seminoles? Hurricanes
should bring up the University of Miami Hurricanes and the (NHL)
Carolina Hurricanes. But will the search realize the "Miami
Hurricanes" is an exact match for "University of Miami Hurricanes," or
will it bring up all results for Miami and all results for Hurricanes?
Player(s): Input the player or players (a TD pass might be labeled
for the QB and the WR).
Type of Play: This would vary by sport. For football it could be
like "pass, run, big block/hit, kick return, etc…" This could also
overlap some. A file might be labeled as both "offense" and "pass".
Here we might need a link to open up a new window explaining the
different types of plays we use to label files for each sport.
Opponent: See "team", except it applies to the team that the team
making the highlight is playing against.
Year: Also could be a little more complicated than it seems. Since
many sports overlap years we might want to label it by season in those
sports. Ex: "2004-2005" season. You might also want to allow people
to search for plays after the "1987-1988" season, before the
"1999-2000" season, or between the "1988-1989" season and the
"1998-1999" season.
A "college football" highlight in which the "University of Miami
Hurricanes" were playing the "West Virginia University Mountaineers"
in the "2003-2004" season, and "Brock Berlin" threw a "Pass"(also
"offense" to "Kellen Winslow Jr." might show up under searches for
Sport: "college football". Team: "University of Miami Hurricanes",
along with all other college football highlights for the University of
Miami Hurricanes.
Or
Player: "Brock Berlin". Type of play: "Pass", Along with all other
Brock Berlin Pass plays.
Or
Team: "University of Miami Hurricanes", type of play: "Offense", Year:
"2003-2004" along with all other highlights of offense plays made by
the university of Miami hurricanes in 2003-2004 season
Or
Player: "Kellen Winslow Jr.", Opponent: "West Virginia University",
along with all other highlights of Kellen Winslow Jr. playing against
West Virginia.
More on Other Functions: Host my Own Sports Video Files
-This should be fairly simple and straightforward. The most recent
couple videos would be (in link form, not streaming form) on the front
of the main page, maybe with a small picture next to the name, and a
link to a page with the complete list of my videos with small pictures
next to their names.
More on Other Functions: A "best / classic / greatest" plays of all
time section by sport.
- On the main page there might be two or three highlights (in link
form, maybe with small pictures next to their names, maybe not) from
this section, as long with a link / button or whatever to a page for
the "Best / Classic / Greatest Plays Of All Time" section. In this
section you would select from a menu of sports, and would be taken to
the page for that sport. This would be different than the general
highlights section in that it is designed to be browsed, although it
MIGHT have a much simpler search function.
More on Other Functions: A "Bloopers / Crazy Plays / Other crazy
sports happenings" section.
- Like the section right above, except for bloopers / crazy sports
things. Once on ESPN I saw a play I think back from the 70s (in the
rivalry game named the "egg bowl" I forget who plays in it. The play
was called the immaculate deflection. A crucial medium length field
goal was kicked near the end of a game. Apparently as it was kicked
the wind flared up very powerfully, against the ball. The ball didn't
just fall short. It was clearly going to be good, when it slowed
down, stopped moving, and then started moving backwards (it was still
more than high enough to clear the crossbar at this point) before it
ended up hitting the ground and being no good. Or once at UTK a fan
ran out onto the field and stole the ball. Stuff like that.
More on Other Functions: Columns.
Pretty straightforward. I might eventually write or other people
might write some sports columns.
More on Other Functions: Non – Sports.
This would be a very small part of the site, if it exists at all. No
videos would be uploaded directly to the site. Either I (or another
person affiliated with the site) would discover them my / our selves,
or people could send me suggestions using yousendit.com. It might
also include columns or other stuff not involving sports.
Initial exposure
- There is a very large network of web forums for all teams and
sports. I frequently see threads looking for highlights of a certain
play, often unsuccessful. Or a small site is hosting a highlight and
quickly has its bandwidth swamped. I plan to go throughout these
forums telling people about the site. It directly relates to their
teams since they can upload highlights and view highlights of their
teams, at no charge to them, so it wouldn't be consider spamming.
Miscellaneous concept
- The site is designed to host clips of individual plays. With the
exception of my videos are perhaps similar videos made by affiliates
of mine, we are only hosting single play clips. We aren't hosting the
"2001 duke blue devils highlight video" or the "2003 Washington State
football highlight video." We may have a section of links to such
videos that fans can suggest (some colleges athletic department's
websites have such videos), but for now we aren't hosting them.
Hotlink Protection?
- I think this is called hotlink protection. I don't want people to
be able to click on a link and open the file off my server without
going to my site. I would like for them to have to come to my site to
open files.
Other Note
Preferably all files, especially mine, would have a viewed /
downloaded counter for the day, week, month, and total. The ones that
aren't mine could get by with just a total counter.
Preferable time completion: Late June
Please post the time frame you would need to do this, a quote on how much this would cost, and at least two contact methods (email, aim, msn...)
You may contact me to discuss things further:
MSN: rdutt at tdnetwork dot net
AIM: TDNRon
Email: rdutt at tdnetwork dot net
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