In the September issue of the Bugler we discussed where to store web video that you plan to post on your web site. I made a compelling argument (so I’ve heard) in using a video sharing site (like YouTube) vs. storing the videos on your web server. A quick recap of the benefits are Cost: free for most users, Traffic: the sites have their own built in traffic for added exposure to your video, Accessible: they handle the video geek stuff so that people can easily view your view, Stress-less: When your video becomes huge you don’t have to worry about keeping your server up and paying for more bandwidth.

I shared that Tubemogul, a free service, that provides a single point for deploying uploads to the top video sharing sites, and powerful analytics on who, what, and how videos are being viewed.
www.tubemogul.com

Let’s get started.

First you need to sign-up for an account. Their free package allows for 150 videos per month. They will distribute your video to the following sites to 12 sites at once including YouTube & Others. (AOL Video, Blip.tv, Break.com, Brightcove.com, Crackle.com, DailyMotion.com, Google Video, Graspr.com, Howcast.com, Imeem.com, Metacafe.com, Myspace.com, Revver.com, Sclipo.com, StupidVideos.com, Veoh.com, Yahoo Video, Viddler.com, Vimeo.com & 5min.com)

After you logon, click on “Upload” a video. It supports a wide range of video files including avi, wmv, mov, mpg, mp4, flv & m4v as long as the file is 100MB or less.

As your video uploads you can fill enter the Title, Description, Tags and Select a Category that best describes your Video. Tags are the keywords that social networking sites use to help people find your video. Be sure to take some time to enter your tags and separate them all by commas. These tags can bring a lot more eyes to your video.

Add Video Info

Ok, I added my tags and uploaded the video. This took about 5 minutes for my 16MB test movie. You then click the green upload button and it then takes you to Launch and Promote a Video.

This page is a bear. It asks for the credentials (username & passwords) for each of the video sharing sites. Don’t despair it helps you register at each site. Yes @ each site. The good news? You only have to do this for the first video, your login info for all of the sites will be remembered so you can skip this step in the future. < but not this time.

Be sure to click “Yes, store them.” this will save you the hassle of doing it again.

Now click launch.

Get a glass or bottle of your favorite beverage. Sit back. Ok now get to work, you geek! Have you created usernames and passwords and then entered them yet? It is fine, I will wait.

Ok you’ve made it to the bottom to the page.

Now it takes just a couple minutes (at least it did for my 16mb file) and you are set.

SHAPE  \* MERGEFORMAT

Now the fun part is to “Track Videos”. You videos will automatically be tracked on this page. Here is an example of their fancy graphs. TubeMogul includes some powerful tracking reports to learn about the viewers of your video across all of the video networks. Note: You can click on [ track more ] to track the videos of your friends and/or foes.

That’s a wrap.

Don’t forget to add the video to your web site. The individual video sharing sites each have their own special code that needs to be added to your site. Just pick the one you like best and use their code.

You’ve now uploaded and shared your videos with the world.

God Bless,
Oscar Myre IV

Valley Bugler Co-Publisher Oscar Myre IV is not only our geek he is also the creative director for omOriginals.

Vally Bugler Editor’s Note: By the way, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, my darling GEEK! I love you more each passing day. You are an incredible man, and I am blessed.

www.omOriginals.com | 575.9839

My answer is, “adding video to a web site is pretty easy, creating the video is the hard part”.  Let’s assume that you’ve created a great new video. I will outline a few options to get it on your site.

The big question is, “where do you want to store your video?” The old answer was to upload it your web site.  Todays answer is often to upload it to an online video sharing site such as YouTube. There are many advantages for use a free services.

Cost: Disk Space: 1 or 2 videos can easily take up more space than the rest of an average web site. If you create many videos or a few large videos you could quickly run out of space with your web host.

Bandwidth: Popular videos will use a lot of bandwidth. You may quick need more bandwidth. The free services offer sufficient server space and plenty of bandwidth.

Traffic: Good: If you simply ad a video to your web site all of your sites visitors can view the video. Even better: The video sites have built in audiences of people who tune in to watch videos. Your video is now in a much larger arena.

Accessible: To make your videos accessible to the most people it is best to embed the movies in flash. Sure geeks know how to do this, but if you are not (yet) a geek the video sites do this and the encoding for you.
Stress-less: If you store your videos on your own web site space you need to be mindful of your traffic and disk space or you may potentially bring your whole web site/eMail down.

Ouch. You can pay for more space/bandwidth, but with the video sites, they handle the traffic and the space for you.

The trade off: In the digital world (as in the real world) Free is not normally free. There are a few costs involved. These sites have their own branded video players that include their logo on your video. You have no control over what other videos are viewed with yours. Note: You do control what is on your own site, but when your are the videos sites they can show whatever they want along side your video.

YouTube alternatives: YouTube certainly has the most content out there, it is the big dog.  Unfortunately much of it is not what I would call family friendly. They don’t have a way to filter their videos. There are alternatives.  Vimeo.com offers a family friendly service. The draw back for that is “who ever heard of Vimeo!?”

There are many sites to consider for sharing your video. Here are just a few: blip.tv, Google Video, MySpace, Veoh, Vimeo, Yahoo Video.

Which one do I recommend?

Business owners might be interested in blip.tv. They have good statistics and it is high customizable.

For personal use you might consider Vimeo this family friendly choice won’t make you worry when you share your videos with friends and family.

Too many choices? Enter TubeMogul, a free service that provides a single point for deploying uploads to the top video sharing sites, and powerful analytics on who, what, and how videos are being viewed.

Adding to your web site

Each of these video sharing sites will give you a snippet of code that you can (in theory) copy and paste into your site. I recommend adding code vs. just linking to the video site. You’ve invested some resources to getting visitors to your site. Don’t send them away too quickly. If you have any questions, ask your web host or web master. This is really the easiest part of video process.

Now you are ready! Take your best videos and start sharing.

God Bless,
Oscar Myre IV

Valley Bugler Co-Publisher Oscar Myre IV is not only our geek he is also the creative director for omOriginals. www.omOriginals.com