How to Get High Quality Audio for Your Internet Videos - Seven Great Tips to Maximize Internet Video Sound Quality
Creating good audio is the most difficult challenge when creating Internet videos as well as for videos and home movies to share with family and friends – especially for those of us who are using consumer types of camcorders.
How to Shoot for the Edit- Hints from a Pro
Get a Tripod Please! - a plea from 4Video
How to Shoot Video for the Net
Why and How to use the Net to distribute your films
Guide to the Best Consumer Camcorders
How to Shoot Your Kids, Pets and other little squirmy, moving and unhelpful creatures
2. Edit and Compress the Video
Once you have all your footage, you need to input it into your computer, edit it together and then compress it for distribution over the Internet. Most editing programs will do all of that.
There are a wide variety of editing programs that range from free entry level programs like Windows MovieMaker and Macintosh iMovie, to affordable and easy use programs from companies like ArcSoft, Dazzle, Nova, Pinnacle, Sony and Ulead. If you want the best, check out programs like Adobe Premiere, Apple Final Cut Pro, Sonic Foundry's Vegas Video, Ulead MediaStudio Pro, etc.
If you are in a hurry, or don't want to bother doing a lot of editing, you can use an automatic video editing program like muvee and then save the final movie as a streaming video file. This program is the best of all the automatic video editing products.
In addition to capturing and editing the video, most of these offer video compression capabilities that allow you to output your finished video in a variety of streaming formats. However, if you are a professional, you will need programs like Canopus ProCoder. Sorenson Squeeze or Discreet cleaner, to get the best possible compression and quality options.
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Remember, the more complicated your movie, the more difficult it will be to maintain quality of the streaming video, especially at low bandwidth rates. You may choose to avoid scenes with lots of layers, special effects, action and moving cameras. The fewer dissolves and effects you use, the happier your compression program will be.
Always use a tripod to reduce the jitter and shaking that severely taxes compression software. It may appear that your camcorder's onboard image stabilization feature is eliminating the shaking - but even if you can't see it, the compression software will!
When you are saving and compressing your finished production - you have two options for compression and distribution - saving it as a streaming media file or saving it as a downloadable file. (Of course, if you have the extra bandwidth on your site, you can do both)
If you want to present your movies in a streaming format, you will have to choose between the three most common streaming media formats - QuickTime, Real Video and Windows Media. In addition, you may want to compress the file at several different rates - one for dial-up users (28 kbps), one for low end broadband (100 kbps) and one for high quality broadband (300 kbps).
Once again, if you have the space on your web site or video server, you can save your movie in all three formats, in all three compression sizes. That means nine files! Another option is to use the variable ratio option with the three formats that enables you to only save the file once. It then plays at various speeds depending on what speed the viewer connects at. The gotcha here is that you often need a special video server for this capability.
If you want to provide your videos as downloads - you have a variety of options as well. The downside is that once downloaded to a viewers hard drive, the videos are out of your control. You can save your productions as mpeg1, mpeg2 or mpeg4 files; standard AVI or even a proprietary format like DivX. Once saved, you can also zip them to provide extra space. Some web video providers zip together the movie as well as text file that explains copyright and ownership.
More info about Video and Audio Capture and Editing
Digital Editing FAQ
Real World Editing Tips - How to Edit Your Digital Video Production
How to Edit - Basics
Automatic Video Editing Programs - muvee Review
How to Compress (MPEG, QuickTime, Real Video or Windows Media MV)
Getting good audio is a lot more difficult than capturing good looking video. Check out this basic guide for getting good sounding audio for your video projects. Also includes a review of SmartSound SonicFire for creating customized soundtracks.
Compression and Streaming
Importance of Bandwidth
Review of Canopus ProCoder
Review of Discreet Cleaner for Macintosh
Review of Discreet cleaner XL for Windows
All About DivX for video compression
You can easily create a customized video player for your web site by using Wildform Flix, Read the review. Nobody offers a simpler and easier to use solution, especially at this price.
3. Put your movie on the web
The final step is to stick your movies on the Internet. This can be very easy - or it can quite difficult and expensive. It all depends on the length of videos, how many you want to post, what kinds of special features you want to include, etc.
Here are some of your choices
a. You can post your videos on "free" video sites - there are anl assortment of web sites that specialize in posting and hosting videos for free. Most are linked to a specific hardware or software manufacturer who has an interest in selling you more stuff. Most of these sites seem to specialize in "home" movie" type clips and only provide limited storage space. The advantage is that they are FREE and make it very easy to upload and post your movies.
Free and Cheap Video Hosting
Online video and film festivals are also a great option - checkout
Online Film and Video Festivals - Get Your Work Seen
Create stylish and professional-looking video montages quickly and easily online from your digital photos and video. One True Media.
Another option is to post your video files to free sites. Because they are free, you can expect to share your site with the sponsors advertising and promotions. Also, because they are free, you can't expect much in the way of video streaming support or technical help. It is likely that you will not be able to use fancy customized players or be able to host videos that require specialized video servers.
Many of these free sites only offer a limited about of traffic and storage space. An option is to sign up for a bunch of them and then ink them together. Use one as your home page and then store the actual videos on other sites.
There are many inexpensive and affordable web hosting options - in general the more money you pay per month, the more traffic and storage space you get, as well as more handholding and special capabilities. Check this page for links to various affordable web sites.
Another option is to host it yourself. This is the most complicated option but provides you with the most security and control of your videos and content. Aside from requiring a big pipe Internet connection, you will need to invest in, and maintain, one or more special video servers, as well as possibly a standalone web server.
Check out the Internet Video Server pages at Microsoft, Real and Apple for more details on how to set this up for yourself.
Microsoft Internet Video Server
Apple Internet Video Server
Real Internet Video Server
Another option, especially if you are a large organization or business that plans to distribute lots of high quality video streams is to use a professional video hosting service. Yes, this can be expensive, but they can provide the expertise, technology and bandwidth to handle even the most demanding events and distribution programs.
You can also submit your video to a "pay for play" video site where they host your video for a fee. Fort example, MP4.com's "Show It" program will give you up to 50 Megs of video/flash file storage, up to 5 Gigs per month of streaming, and Inclusion of your uploaded content in MP4.com's genre-based listings - all for $9.95 a month. Obviously, this is targeted to those who want to just stream a few short films or projects. Another good inexpensive option is Apple's .mac site for posting QuickTime movies and projects..
Finally, another way to get your videos on the net, is to submit them to one of the many online video festivals like iFilm. TriggerStreet, AtomFilms, etc. Some of them are free - some charge a small handling and posting fee. IFilm for instance, has a sliding scale. If they think your film is really good, they'll host it for free. If not, they'll charge you.
Check out our online links to the 10 Top Video Web Sites, the 10 Coolest Video Web Sites, and our Guide to the Best Video Web Sites. Many of these are online film and video festivals that are looking for new content and materials.
* Check out these links for more info - How to put Your Short Film on the Net and Online Film and Video Festivals - Get Your Work Seen
Read the fine print before you enter into any deals- some of them want a percentage of your video or film - you may be giving up some ownership rights. Be careful regarding exclusivity deals. You want your film being seen by as many people as possible.
Other Good Links and Pages of Interest
The new muvee AutoProducer - the best automatic video editing software
Looking for Links to Free and Inexpensive Web Hosting - check out this Top 20 Page
Top 100 Free Web Space Providers
CNET Guide to Free Web Space Providers
Microsoft MovieMaker 2- Maybe the easiest way to create your own movies
Microsoft How To page -
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/howto.aspx
Real Video Helix Producer-
Helix Producer converts live and/or existing audio and video files into RealMedia files, ready for delivery on the Internet or corporate intranet. FREE. For an extra $200, you can get Helix Producer Plus that provides enhanced quality, flexibility and productivity capabilities.
Online Film and Video Festivals - Get Your Work Seen
How to embed a Windows Media Player in your Web Site by Adam Powell of Web Monkey.
How To Add Windows Media to Your Web Page by Microsoft
Online video and animation festivals
Real Video for Small Businesses - Basics of Using Real Video
Free Places to Host Your Personal Videos
How to Create a Video Production Using RealVideo
You Got To Read "Creating Web Video" by Thomas Luehrsen THIS IS GREAT!
Read This - 10 New Years Resolutions for the Video Maker - How to make your family and event videos look and sound better
