Add Video to Your Website or Blog Overview

Video is a great way to communicate effectively or get people's attention on the Web there are lots of reasons to add it to your website or blog. While it is easier than ever to make videos and websites today, there are some tricky parts you need to pay attention to.

Some Issues to Remember About Web Video

• Hassel Factor - Working with video can be complicated , but many times the effort is worth it if you really want to get your message across to your audience or to make your website stand out.
• Web Expense - Web video can potentially require substantial resources -- storage costs (server hard disk space) and bandwidth costs (server web traffic costs). Everytime a person clicks on one of your videos, depending on the size, It can raise your overall monthly expenses and capital costs. However, there are ways to dramatically reduce the impact video might have on your IT budget by using a web hosting provider.
• Computer Expense - You need a reasonably NEW computer (something with at least a pentium 4 cpu or equivalent) and some spare hard disk space to work with videos. This is not necessary if you don't plan to edit your videos

The following presentation gives you an overview of the video publishing process. It's helpful to have an understanding of the "big picture" before you dive into the details.

LARGER VERSION: Open above presentation in new window

Why is Web Video So Complicated?

It's amazing to think back to the early days of the Web when video editing systems we're only available to professionals who needed to shell out anywhere from five to twenty thousand dollars. Now, the incremental cost of what you need to process and publish simple web video is close to zero -- it's included with most computer systems. Even though much of the expense and complexity have been squeezed out of the digital web video process, some trickiness remains.

Web video is part of the larger category of multimedia. Multimedia on the Web includes images, sounds and videos. The first Internet browsers only supported text and over time have included more and more support for different multimedia formats. Publishing multimedia on the web requires data compression -- making a digital multimedia file smaller so fewer bits need to be transferred over the network.

But unlike GIF or JPEG compression standards for images that have formed, no widely accpeted open standard for video has been established. The Ogg Theora standard is in the process of emerging, but it is not yet finalized or supported. Because of this lack of web video standard, many non-standard video formats exist and that makes things complicated.

Too Many Non-Standard Video Formats

Web video creators want to avoid a situation where their content is unable to be rendered by the average person's browser. An Internet browser needs to know how to interpret video, but because no standard has emerged, the browser must be equipped to render many different types. This video format dominance battle has been faught by Adobe (flash), Microsoft (wmv), RealMedia (rm), Apple (quicktime), and DivX(divx) these days.

We tend to prefer the flash (flv) format because it is the most widely accepted video format. We'll go into the options and tradeoffs on the format and conversion page.

Getting Started with Web Video

As we've mentioned, you probably have most of what you need to get started publishing video on your website or blog. The checklist includes the following:

• Computer - You'll need a Mac running on OS X or a PC running on Windows XP or Vista. Generally, you are looking for a CPUw with the power of a Pentium 4 or higher. Anything "earlier" that this can possibly work, but you'll suffer through the process
• Internet Access - You'll need a DSL or cable connection if you're going to work with a lot of video. Video files tend to be very large and dial-up connections will make your life difficult. A typical compressed one minute video can be about X KB and will take about Y minutes on a dial-up connection.
• Camera or Camcorder - There are many different options for creating your video. You can make your life easier staying in the "digital" vs. "analog" area of choices. Tape video cameras (analog) will require the extra step of "capturing" your video.
• Video Viewing Software - this is the desktop software you use to view videos on the computer you use. On a Mac it could be QuickTime. On a PC it could be Windows Media Player.
• Video Editing Software - This is the software you will use to edit your videos. Most Mac computers come equipped with free video editing software called iMovie. Likewise, most Windows PCs come equipped with Movie Maker.
• Video Compression/Formatting Software - Depending on your final solution choice for publishing your videos, you may or may not need software to convert your videos to a more web-friendly file format.