How and Why - Putting Video on the Web 

free places to post your video

There are many different ways to share your edited video movies with your friends, family and associates. You can make copies on videotape, you can burn DVDs and CDs and send those. You can create highly compressed short clips and send them via email, or you can post your videos to the Internet and just send out a url location so that they can visit and watch and/or download your video.

 By posting a video on the net, your friends and family can access it from anywhere they can get an Internet connection. They can watch it over and over again, and don’t have to worry about damaging a tape or DVD.

So how do you put your video on the net? How do you create a video that will look good when accessed by a variety of different computers and monitors and viewing programs?

 The secret is to keep it short, shoot and edit it for the web, and then use an effective compression scheme to make the file small yet still of high enough quality.

 According to Quito Washington, writer/producer – Digital Cinema Pictures, “Watch a considerable amount of Internet video and learn from them. Look at how long you pay attention when the quality is poor, when the sound is bad, when they start and stop due to buffering problems. Note the use of good light in the film and how it affects your being able to see details.”

PUT YOUR VIDEO ON YOUTUBE

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 Shoot for the web

 What kinds of shots look best on the web? Look at your video screen – it is probably not as big as your TV set – it is a lot smaller than a movie screen in your local cinemaplex. This means that big wide screen vistas that need a lot of space to truly appreciate details won’t work well. Adding to that challenge is the fact that most online video viewing experiences don’t even take up the entire computer screen – just a small portion of it. This means you should concentrate your shots on mostly faces and close-ups. Yes, you can occasionally use a wide shot to set a scene but then go to medium shots and close-ups.

 Also because of the small size, scenes with fast moving objects won’t work well. A wide shot of WW1 biplanes dogfighting will probably look like flies buzzing around a screen.

 Keep control of your text as well. What might work fine on your 21-inch monitor, full screen mode, might be a bit too tiny to read when playing in a two by three inch video window.

 According to Peter John Ross of Sonnyboo Films, “The less the camera moves, the better the compression, and the smaller the file size for download or streaming. You may choose to lock down a shot rather than the nice dolly move or handheld shot you originally had in mind. If you truly need movement in your shots, use something steady like a GLIDECAM, steadicam, or dolly to make very smooth movements that will make your compression work much better.”

 According to Kevin Carr, writer, producer and director at 7M Pictures, “You should choose a decent video camera to do the job. HD-Cam and DigiBeta are nice, if you can afford them, but a prosumer-grade video camera will do fine as well. It's preferable to shoot on a digital format - MiniDV if you can, but Digital Hi-8 can work well too. At 7M

Pictures, our primary shooting equipment are Canon GL-1s and Canon GL-2s. We actually prefer these over the higher-level XL-1s, frankly because they're more idiot-proof.

 Don't forget to light your shots well. Just because they're going on a screen 2 inches wide doesn't mean they shouldn't be lit. Getting proper exposure is the key to making a web video look sharp. This is especially important when you're dealing with different end users who may have their monitor settings darker than yours.

 According to Quito Washington, “Light and sound are the two biggest factors in Internet video. Because of compression, your image quality will be less than what you are seeing while you are shooting and editing. Allow for that by having your scene well lit. Sound design is as important because again, your compression will affect sound quality. Mic your actors well, and if need to, have them come back in and re-record their voices. You want someone unfamiliar with the script and story to watch the film on their computer and be able to understand what’s going on.”

Edit for the web

 You should try to keep effects and transitions to a minimum and make the make the compression software’s job as easy as possible. When stressed, compression programs end up taking more time to create the final file. Even worse, the final file will be much larger than it needs to or the final file will lose resolution and quality when played back.  As much as possible keep to straight cuts. Every time you include a transition scene, the compression program has to go through it and figure out how to transform the two different scenes into one.

 According to Peter John Ross, “Fancy 3D page curls just don't look good when they are downgraded to 12 frames per second and in a tiny window even though they might have looked great on your 35" TV monitor.”

 A good example of shooting and editing for the web is the “Waiting for Windell” trailer at http://www.paragonflicks.com/.  It’s mostly close-ups and big text with no complicated effects and few transitions.

 According to Kevin Carr, “The key is to keep it short. Forget credits and flashy 30-second opening sequences. Also, forgot long, drawn-out Stanley Kubrick moments in your web films. The Internet is a global short attention span theater. Whether people are reading the news or watching a video, they want it in small, digestible chunks. Other things to keep in mind while editing for the Internet is to keep your titles BIG. Remember, the screen is really small. Your titles should look annoying large in your on-board editing screen to be readable when compressed.”

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Compression

 So once you got your video edited, the next step is to compress it. Raw video files are BIG, much too large to stick on a web site and expect someone to download and watch it.

 If you have done a lot of web surfing you have probably noticed that most web sites post their videos in a several different formats and in a variety of different compression ratios. You get a low res version for those people who are still using dial-up, a 100Kpbs version for those on ISDN and business broadband, and a 300K version for those with fast cable or DSL connections.

 In addition, some sites are also posting extremely low-resolution versions for us eon mobile devices and phones, as well as extremely high-resolution versions for those who have 1 Mbps and better Internet connections.

 According to Quito Washington, “If you are considering streaming your film, size still plays a factor as you have to have enough room on your web server to host your file. The average streaming rate for seamless viewing is about 100 kbps, making a 3 minute video 6Mb (100kbps * 60 seconds). Also consider that people are still not used to sitting and watching a video on a computer for a long period of time, the most popular (not necessarily the best) Internet videos are short, under 3 minutes, catering to people’s attention span and that if they are watching at work, less likely to be seen as goofing off. Also consider that if you have a long video, it will be subject to buffering problems which can affect playback, performance, and enjoyment of your video.

            Try to avoid encoding at 56kbps as the video will appear choppy and the sound will be poor. Simply post a link that will allow people to download the larger file as an alternative to streaming.

            So how do you compress? Most video editing programs have basic compression options already built in. Almost all with let you compress your video as one of the top three streaming formats – Windows, Real or QuickTime. If you have limited bandwidth and space on your web site, and you can only use one, I’d recommend using Windows Media file format (wmf) as probably almost anyone would be able to play it back.

 There are some other options as well especially if you are OK with the idea of people downloading your move onto their hard drive and being able to watch whenever they like. You can use an MPEG-4 type of compression or something like DivX, which is rapidly growing in use worldwide as one of the most favorite, and most effective, technologies for squeezing media files down small while still providing high quality. The Divx player is free from the Divx website. You can buy the DivX encoder (to do the compression) for about $20, or you can get it for free bundled into various video editing software and hardware packages like Ulead VideoStudio, Roxie VideoWave, muvee autoProducer, Magix MovieMaker Deluxe, WinDVD Creator 2 Platinum, etc.

 However, if you are serious about web video, it might make sense to get a more advanced product like Discreet XL for Windows, Discreet cleaner 6 for Mac, or Canopus ProCoder. Not only do these support all popular streaming and video compression technologies, you can do batch processing and fine-tune your output videos to get just the right look and file size.

  “Compressing for the web has become like a buffet of options & choices”, says Peter John Ross. “The big three remain REAL PLAYER, with it's annoying installation & options that you never want to choose. Next is Quicktime, which is a great cross platform player between Mac's (native) and PC's. With Quicktime, the images and audio are fantastic, but the files sizes are generally bigger to get that quality. And Windows Media Player with all it's varying ever changing codecs (short for Compressor/Decompressor) and multiple formats, can be confusing. However, Most people surf with Windows, and most people do not care what codec was used. They want to click and play, and Windows Media Player is already installed with Windows, so it winds up being the weapon of choice, statistically. Know your audience & let that dictate the compression scheme.

  Post

 After your video is shot, edited and compressed into one or more files, it is time to get it out on the web so your friends and relatives can see it. One option is to simply email it to them – this is not really video streaming as the video really is never posted to the web. You are simply sending a compressed video file – streaming format or not – to them. The most important rule is to keep it small. Many email accounts will not let you send and receive a file bigger than 2or 3 megs at a time.

 The most common way to distribute your videos is to simply post it to your personal or business web site without using any special type of server equipment or software. Most commercial ISPs support video and you shouldn’t have a problem.

  If you are using a common web site authoring program like Microsoft FrontPage, you simply find a spot where you want your visitors to click on the video to play it. Put up the name of the video, a graphic or an image icon and then use FrontPage’s Insert Video command. Another way to do it is to simply upload the video to your site. I usually create a special directory called “Hosted Videos”. Then create the title, graphic or icon and simply create a html link to the video.

 Depending on the speed of the viewer’s internet connection, and what kind of format you saved your video in, your visitors will be able to either see the video as a streaming video or as a downloaded file which they can then play back on their computer. By the way, it is always a good idea to include instructions on how to watch or download the videos jus tin case your visitors are not very techie minded. Another good idea is to include links to the various free players found on the Microsoft, Apple, Real and Divx web sites.

The third way to do it is by submitting your video to a free video hosting site like SingleReel that specializes in providing free space to video hobbyists and independents. Another option is to submit your video to professional and industry-oriented sites like iMovie, StudentFilms and TriggerStreet.

Another trick to consider, especially if you are on a tight budget, is to sign up for a one or more free web site services. Supported by advertising, these sites usually enable to upload 100 megs or more of content – perfect for home and personal videos.  Checkout www.freesites.com and www.thefreesite.com for lists of free sites.  You can also check out one of the many sites that provide web video hosting at affordable prices.

 For example, Xdrive at www.xdrive.com offers 500 megabytes of storage for just $9.95 per month and supports a variety of video formats: MPEGs, Windows Media Player, Real Player, Quicktime, etc. Once Xdrive members upload their digital videos to the site, they are stored in a private, secure, and advertising-free environment. Members' content is password-protected and available only to those who are invited to view.

 Finally – you got to get the word out. Send out emails to your connections and buddies, to your friends and relatives and send them the web address of the page where they can find the video.

 See Free & Cheap Places to Host Your Videos