Ok, so I’ve been pretty harsh to EA lately, so I figured I should give a little back. Sure, their online presence with NCAA 08 leaves a little to be desired, but they’re trying. They’re even doing things right. So I decided to put up a little how-to on sharing your uploaded videos of NCAA 08 with your friends. Hit the jump to read on.
I’ll say upfront that these aren’t the only ways to do this. There are always work arounds. But as it stands now, with no direct links to EA Sports World profiles or videos, I recommend three different ways to share your videos:
- The first way is obvious and probably the easiest way to do it — have your buddy sign up for an account on EA Sports World. As far as I can tell, you don’t have to have an Xbox Live/Playstation Network ID to sign up, so it’s just a matter of your friends registering with the site and then adding them to your friends list. Bingo! They can watch your videos.
That may be a little impractical, but it works. - Second, you can download the actual file off of EA’s servers and share that with friends. This requires a little more legwork, but is also fairly easy.
One of the things EA does right is let you download the actual file of your video. Unfortunately, it’s a “.flv” file (Flash Video) which is a little harder to use. Why they don’t let your download an MPEG or AVI file is beyond me. Either way, you can download the file and then watch it locally. You can try some work arounds to watch an FLV file with Windows Media Player but that’s a pain. I downloaded the Riva FLV Player and watched my video locally. Riva is free to use and is a competent player.
Again, this is a little clunky, but you can share your videos this way, as well. - Finally, you could use a video sharing site that allows uploading FLV files. For some reason, YouTube does not recognize FLV files as a valid input file (even though they use Flash as their format of choice) so you’ll have to look else where.
I’ve recently been using Brightcove for this express purpose. Brightcove lets you upload an FLV file directly and then have all the functionality of a YouTube video — you can share it via email, directly link to it or embed it in your blog. I’ve done just that with my little OSU/Michigan video:
(The video isn’t much, but as an Ohio State fan, it makes me smile. Never mind the little hop I did there near the end of the run. I was still getting used to the buttons)
As I’ve said before, this should have all been built into EA’s website but it isn’t. So we find work arounds and do it anyway. Hopefully this helps someone, as it sure would have saved me some time.
(A big thanks to Pasta Padre for the heads up about using Brightcove hosting FLV files. That was a big help!)
I love the phantom fairy hop near the end. But where is Jeff Swoboni running onto the field to inject your helmet with instant ice?
PS- for FLV files I use VLC Media Player, that thing plays EVERYTHING!
There’s no audio?
Love the hop.
If I was his coach I would give him grief about the hop. It looked like it almost cost him the end zone not to mention fumble possibilities. (It was cool though.)
Is there anyway to turn the camera angle so the entire Wolverine team can be seen being left in the dust?
@DR – You remember the most amazing fumble recovery I ever made?! Against Medina in the eighth grade? Awesome. The was the slowest anyone ever ran 50 yards.
@Nat – Nope, no sound. Not sure why, because it certainly wouldn’t have been a file size issue. Laziness, perhaps?
@Bobster – You can view different angles while your playing the game, but I don’t think you can pick which angle the replay is in.
I recently tried to do this with brightcove, but they’ve started limiting uploads from individuals. I found a site that will handle the new .flv files with the same or better quality than brightcove, and I posted a tutorial up at http://www.pregamelobby.com to show how to do it. Hope it helps some people.