Using Video on the Web

Tape is dead. Whether it's recording a favorite television show, listening to music in the car, or wrapping a birthday present--er, scratch that last one-using tape to record is old school. Today is all about DVRs, DVDs, DV or anything else with a D in it. The "D" is for digital, and digital is for computers. Digital is forever, digital files don't get eaten by machines or lose quality over time. Digital is sharable. Burn a disc for a friend or email them a file. Heck, post it to the web and share video with the whole world if you want. Digital is modifiable. Pull a clip, edit a sequence, trim off some frames, add music-no problem. What once required special equipment and considerable expertise can now be done with a relatively inexpensive digital video camera, and a website.

Is working with digital video really that easy, and is it really that simple to add video to a website? Well, yeah, it is. A few new tools, some new standards, and a bunch of web-based resources recently developed make dealing with digital video much easier than it used to be.

Flash makes a world of difference
If you've been reading our newsletter for a while you've probably read a subtext that Newfangled is not too keen on Flash-based websites. It's true--we oppose the use of Flash for building entire websites (though not always--after all Homestar Runner is built entirely in Flash). The main reason we advise against Flash-based sites has to do with the significant limitations of Flash in regard to search engines, but we've written enough about that already.

That doesn't mean we're against Flash. Hardly. Flash is an awesome tool, and among the many ways of using Flash appropriately is using it to display video on the web. Without Flash, adding video to a website can be very tricky. There are just too many file types to choose from, and too many ways for hosting and displaying web-based video. Watching a web-based video without Flash requires the use of various browser settings and plug-ins. Often web videos don't display because a plug-in type or version is incompatible with the video. Flash, on the other hand, enjoys a 97.3% install base on web connected browsers (http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/survey) and it's easy to upgrade when new versions are released. The most recent releases of Flash (versions 8 and 9) have excellent video support. When video is displayed in a Flash player, all issues relating to file formats, video display, controls, and streaming are taken care of within the Flash player. Flash is such a good fit for web-based video that virtually all the main web-based video sites like YouTube, Google Video, and Jumpcut use a Flash based player.

As a result of Flash video playback, going from digital video to the web is extremely easy. Ah, but what if you don't have a digital file? What if you have a library of video but it's all locked up on VHS tape?

Getting a digital file from a tape
Steve Martin once gave a great tip about how to get a million dollars and not pay taxes. "First," he said, "get a million dollars..." Declaring that putting video on the web is easy may sound just as ridiculous if the video is locked up on a VHS tape. Actually, getting a digital video file from a tape isn't all that hard. With the proper cables and A/V inputs a VCR can be connected to a computer and magnetic tape can be converted to digital ones and zeros. The adventurous may want to get geeky and give it a shot--but for the purposes of this newsletter let's assume the dang S-Video cable adapter has disappeared, or more precisely that we don't even know what an S-video cable looks like.

The solution--pony up twenty bucks or so and send the tape to VideoSilo (www.videosilo.com) and they'll send it back as a digital file. They have a bunch of options from DVD to raw DV files and even offer rush services. (NOTE: I have received some complaints about VideoSilo and there is a negative comment below--you may want to look for an alternative service.)

So whether the video was digital to start with, transferred from an old VCR, or processed by VideoSilo, now it's time to get it on the web.

A word about DV files
One remaining technical issue regarding the uploading of video to the web is that most online services do have file size limitations, usually between 50MB and 100MB per file. That means hours of video can't be uploaded, at least not as one big file. It also means that raw digital video files, if they are bigger than that, will need to be converted and compressed to get under the file size upload limit.

In order to test out some of the services we're reviewing in this month's newsletter I converted a clip from one of my home videos (see below). I used the capture and editing software that came with my digital camcorder to transfer the video off the MiniDV tape to my computer. It was actually very simple, I just hooked up the camera to my computer using a standard USB cable and followed the instructions in the software. It took awhile to process but was really easy. Using the editing software, I clipped the section I wanted but ended up with a four minute clip that was almost 500 MB-much too large to upload to the web. Forrest, one of our new employees here in North Carolina, recommended downloading DivX to convert the file (www.divx.com/divx/windows/converter). They have a free trial and the commercial product is only $19.95. I found DivX extremely easy to use. I simply dragged and dropped my 500MB AVI file onto the DivX converter window and a few minutes later I had a 30MB DivX file, ready to be uploaded to the web.

Putting video on the web
There are a number of free options for uploading and hosting video on the web. The common denominator for all free services is that their branding will appear when the video is viewed, whether from their website or any webpage that it's posted on. But in exchange they provide free hosting of the file, automatic conversion to the proper size and format, and a snippet of pre-formatted HTML code that can be placed on any webpage to display the video. Some of these services even include video editing tools that allow trimming, cutting, and arranging clips, as well as adding transitions and titling.

If using these free services is not a professional enough option, there are other online services (not free) that provide hosting and do not place third party branding in the video or video player. I'll mention a couple after describing the free online options for digital video.

Free web-based video hosting, streaming, and player services

YouTube - YouTube is clearly the front runner in video upload and hosting. All of the sites were discussing. There are pretty similar in their use and function. YouTube had a nice feature that most others don't--it showed an upload progress bar. This is handy because when uploading large video files it can take several minutes and it's nice to see how far an upload has to go and confirm that the file is, in fact, still going up.

Google Video - Google video is very similar to YouTube. But of all the third party branded players, the branding on Google's player is the least obtrusive. They simply place a button in the bottom right of the player that will click over to the Google video site. It also has a nice playback feature in which a viewer can move the position of the playback anywhere in the video and it will re-buffer the download stream to play the video from that point. This allows viewers to skip to any part of the video without having to wait for the whole thing to download first.

Jumpcut - Jumpcut, in addition to hosting videos, is an amazing web-based video editing service. Having uploaded a file it can be trimmed, divided up, re-ordered, cut and even have transitions and titles added to it. Using Jumpcut on my sample home video I was able to easily add some music and a couple of titles using Jumpcut's editing features. By the way, just before this newsletter was published Yahoo! announced that it had purchased Jumpcut, congratulations Jumpcut!

VideoEgg - VideoEgg has some light editing capabilities and shares the progress bar feature of YouTube. Its main differentiator is that its player offers a full screen mode that when clicked opens a much larger view of the video. VideoEgg does require a piece of software to be downloaded for their upload system to work.

MotionBox - MotionBox does not currently have editing controls. But it does have a couple of unique features. Video owners can add selection points to their videos so viewers can jump to pre-determined sections of the video. Or viewers can select their own portion of the video and share just that clip with their friends. Also, while browsing MotionBox videos on their website, each clip can be scrolled even while still in the gallery icon view.

Not free, unbranded video hosting services

Adding video using these services is free and easy. However, sometimes for professionalism's sake, a branded viewer may not be appropriate. In these cases there are services that offer video hosting, streaming, and even custom Flash player development. While these are fee based services, they provide upload and hosting without a branded player. Of course Newfangled offers these services to our clients, and our new site, to be launched in October, will feature three new videos we produced this summer. They use our own Flash player. The nice thing about a custom Flash player is that it can be designed to suit any look, feature or capability requirement. It also stays nice and clean without the branding of the hosting service being added onto it.

So let's review the procedure for going from video tape to web-based video.

Step one: Send a tape to VideoSilo (NOTE: I have received some complaints about VideoSilo and there is a negative comment below--you may want to look for an alternative service) and request a DV file instead of (or in addition to) a DVD.

Step two (optional): If the file size is over 50MB download DivX and drop the file on the converter window to get a compressed DivX file.

Step three: Decide which online service you want to use and set up an account with them.

Step four: Upload the file to the service.

Step five: Copy the "embed video on a web page" code snippet they'll provide and paste it onto your web page. Videos can be added to any page of a Newfangled site by simply pasting the code snippets into the text area field on any page's editing screen.

That's it. The video will display in a player on the page to be enjoyed by all. With the exception of sending a tape to VideoSilo (see note above), I followed all these steps with each of the services we've mentioned. And I've embedded all five players below to show how each service's players look and how they work. Quick and easy video on the web--now that's a good thing.

The Jumpcut version of this video (below) has music and titles added using Jumpcut's video editing features.