Putting Videos on the Web

“Distribute Your Videos Online”

Content

1. Overview
2. MP4
3. YouTube
4. Video Sharing Sites
5. Private Videos

Overview

1. Web Video for Fun
   Are you making videos just for fun, filming your pets and your family members? Are you filming a family event, like a wedding or a birthday? Or are you filming a vacation and holiday? I like to classify these as personal videos which are meant to be archived for posterity.  Hence I suggest saving these videos on DVDs instead of on the web because the web is a very volatile media.  However, you can still put up a clip or two from your whole video just for social fun!
2. Web Video for Learning and Marketing
   On the flip side of the coin are web videos made for education and business.  Are you making videos that drive a message? Are you making videos to teach your expertise?  Or are you making videos to make money?  Making web videos for learning and marketing is my specialty and that’s what the team at VideoLane.com does day in and day out.  The differentiating  factor between a business web video and a video for fun is the MESSAGE.
3. Web Video for iPhone
   Web Video is not confined to the desktop and laptop anymore, they are now being watched on mobiles especially the iPhone.  More and more people are using their mobiles to watch web videos.  I can tell from my web video stats.  What that means is forget all that talk about the importance of flash videos, because flash video don’t work on iPhones, iPads and iPods, which are the upcoming majority of mobile video users. So which web video format should you use?

MP4

1. Why MP4?
   MP4 or MPEG4 is my favorite web video format.  The picture quality is sharp and the file size small.  We all know file size is problematically huge for most video files.  MP4 video solved that problem.  What’s more? MP4 videos are playable on the web and on mobile devices. You can even set the MP4 video quality to full high definition quality… and beyond.
2. Best Settings
   For best web video quality, I like to set my MP4′s to high definition size 1280 by 720 pixels, frame rate 25 fps and bit rate 1500 kbps.  For audio setting of the MP4, I choose AAC 44 kHz.  This is the general setting that apply across all editing software that allow you to customize video format (most free and cheap software cannot customize).  I use Sony Vegas Pro to convert my videos to high quality web  video format.
3. Alternatives
   MP4 is not for everyone though.  Some companies have their own servers that run on a tight requirement.  That being said, the other popular formats for web videos are WMV and MOV.  The government agencies and big companies tend to like WMVs.  MOV is used by those trapped in the Apple world (hey I am an Apple fan too).  WMV and MOV video files can be very huge for a high quality video.  So if given a choice, I would take MP4.

YouTube

1. Open a YouTube Account
   Do you have a YouTube account yet?  If not, go sign up for one.  If you have a Gmail account, all you need to do is to activate your YouTube account.  Whenever you are signed in to Gmail, you are signed in to YouTube as well.  Yes, Google owns YouTube and I love that.  Why do I love that? I make web videos for learning and marketing and I want as many people as possible to see my videos.  Google will list my video on its search engine straight away after I submit it.
2. Uploading Videos to YouTube
   In order to upload a video on YouTube, you need to have an account first.  Uploading is as easy as ABC.  You will see the “Upload” hyperlink almost on every page of YouTube.  Click on it and it will ask you which video file you want to upload.  Select and upload the MP4 file you have created.  It may take quite a long time if you have slow internet.  Just be patient.  Go for a coffee break.  You will be happy to see your video online when it is fully uploaded and ready for use.
3. Embedding Video on Your Website
   One way to use your video is to embed it onto your website or blog.  It can be a personal blog or a business blog. A unique YouTube page will be generated for your video and in it is an embed code you can use to insert into your website or blog.  So easy!  Now many people ask me how to remove the YouTube logo which appears on the bottom right corner of the embedded video.  You cannot.  It’s a free service.  If you really don’t like the logo, then pay a video hosting site to host your video.

Sharing Videos

1. Email and Social Media
   In your YouTube video page, there is a “Share” tab which you and your viewers can use to share your video on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and other social media sites.  Can you see how powerful this can be if the video is about your business?  Unlike TV commercial air time, YouTube is totally free!  I have a video that was viewed by over one million people.  Made some money from there.  I have another video that stayed on the first page of Google search for over 3 years and is still there. Another powerful way to spread your videos quickly is to email it to all your contacts.
2. Other Video Sharing Sites
   YouTube is not the only video sharing site, but the most popular one.  My videos not only sit in YouTube, they also sit in Vimeo.com, Metacafe.com, Dailymotion.com and many others.  They are all free.  The more I spread my videos, the more people will watch.  Always keep a backup of your videos on your hard drive because you will never know when these video sharing sites shut down.  Most of them have suddenly shut down on me.  Anyway just spread your video far and wide.
3. Optimizing Web Videos
   Please note… uploading your video on the web is not the only thing to do.  There are 3 more things to do that will make your video stand out from the crowd of millions of videos online.  The 3 things are  Title,  Description and Tags.  You have to manually key in these 3 text items and if the texts are well researched and carefully crafted, it is optimized.  Why? We want people to find our video, so we have to use texts that people are searching for and NOT texts that we think they should be.

Private Videos

1. YouTube Video Privacy Setting
   So you do not want to spread your video.  You just want to share it privately with only a few people.  Did you know that YouTube allows you to set privacy controls?  This is a wonderful feature.  Not all my videos are public videos, especially family videos and in-house company communications videos.  First you go in to your YouTube video page edit mode.  In the edit mode you can change the title, description and tags as well as privacy settings. When you set your video to private mode, you have to specify the emails of the people you want to share the video with. The people you specify have to log in to YouTube to watch the private video… and yes they have to open a YouTube account to watch!
2. Facebook Video Privacy Setting
   The other popular way to share video privatley is via Facebook.  Not everyone is on YouTube, but almost everyone you know is on Facebook.  Right?  So upload your mp4 video directly on to Facebook instead of YouTube.  Upload using the private messaging feature to a group of people you want to share with.  My sis regularly shares video of my niece’s latest pranks to the rest of the family who are living in different countries.  We can leave comments and all of us within the group can view the comments.  Of course remember to backup a copy of the video just in case another site takes over Facebook.
3. Cloud Storage
   The most private way to share web video is to put it on a cloud storage and then email it to some one you want to share with. Services like YouSendIt.com, SugarSync.com and DropBox.com. Again everyone in the loop must open accounts on these services.  We use them for work where clients send their videos, images and music to be edited and we send the edited version back for preview.  It is like passing around thumbdrives to each other in real life. Very neat for private collaborative type of activity.

Conclusion

That brings us to the end of our Online Videography Course!

If you did not know what videography was all about, I hope you have discovered many new things.  If you already know what videography is all about, I have just shared with you a lot of valuable information.

The course is by no means a comprehensive course and is meant for a beginner to get started.  I you have submitted your email to access this mini e-course, you will receive more information and tips on videography and video production from me.  Keep in touch!

Enjoy!

Adrian Lee
http://VideoLane.com

PS: Please ask me questions on Web Video Production using the comment form below.

Learn Videography in 5 Days -  Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5