by: Karl Knelson
www.SiteMechanix.com
Putting Video on Your Web Site
Your web site can benefit greatly by the inclusion of video. Now that most everyone has access to broadband it is easier for video to stream to your audience. There are different ways to use video and there are a few technical things you need to know.
The Video Brochure
No body wants to read any more so placing a 2 to 4 minute video on your web site is a more gripping way to get your sales message across. Remember that people are searching for information and do not have the time to listen to long drawn out speeches. Use a professional video company like Sonoran Communications to help you deliver a dazzling impactful video. Going with professional video is smart and you may want to consider hiring attractive talent to speak your message for you.
Training Video
What better way to teach your audience than to actually show them. Again, you can try to do this yourself but, using professional videographers is a better way to go. Besides expertise, you get better lighting and editing with professional help. The material you use to train with may exceed 30 minutes in which case you way want to cut the material into parts. Consider even 10 minute parts and dedicate a page to each. This will make your web site more interactive. Any way you cut it, remember that patience is not unlimited and I do not recommend showing 1 hour seminars on the web. The web is still not TV.
Talking Head Videos
Making postage stamp sized videos of just a talking head will stream very well if not immediately because they are small in dimension and the backgrounds are usually static. The algorithms that are used to compress video will save pixel information that does not change. In this manner, the only extra pixel information is the part that is moving like your head or hand gestures. Videos like these compress really well compared to hand held cameras shooting an event where the blurry background keeps changing – every pixel on every frame.
Consider using talking head videos on your site to liven up a page or instruct your viewer to do something. Many web surfers have audio capabilities so being heard is a great way to touch your audience. Audio won’t completely replace text so it would be a good idea to use bullet points or a short outline next to your audio or video feed in case the user does not have speakers on their computer. They will still get the idea and your message will appear better packaged.
How to get the video on My Web Site
It is true that you can host your video on the same server as your web site. Either you or your web designer can FTP (File Transfer Protocol) or move the video from your hard drive to the hard drive on your web site’s server. Then all you need to do is make a link to the video file from a web page. When a user clicks on the link your current video player on your computer will be used to play the video file. If you don’t want the video player to pop up you can also embed the video file into a web page at a fixed display size. Ask your web designer to code that for you.
A very important point to keep in mind is that while you can post video on most shared web hosting environments there usually isn’t any “push” technology. This is something to consider if you are heavily advertising that you have a video on your web site. At some point if you have a lot of traffic someone if not everyone trying to access the video at the same time will get denied. Plus you will see much higher bandwidth usage that could cost you extra dollars or temporarily halt your web site from displaying.
What you need is a special video server that has a video serving application to help make sure that everyone can get access to your video upon request. This does cost extra money but it also guarantees that everyone no matter what browser or operating system will be able to see your video. Plus these same video servers also use streaming technology that will help deliver your video faster than if it were on your shared hosting environment.
Youtube.com is free. At least for now. So if you don’t mind you video sharing space with a bunch of other videos and lots of advertising then YouTube is for you. For advertisers, YouTube is a great place to put your video because of the Video Search algorithm. Your video might get found more easily than your web site.
Cutting Your Own
If you would like to get your feet wet and bring a little life on to your web site you could make a talking head video from the comfort of your own computer. If you don’t have a webcam you can get one for as little as $40. I got a Logitec Fusion for only $70. Warning: Old computers with not enough ram and slow processor speeds can not handle webcam software.
Now all you need is a place to serve your video from. If you are interested check out the Instant Video Generator and see what I mean. I’ve been using this at the Web Owners Club signup page. If you want to see an average Joe sample, click here. The Instant Video Generator does a few things for you all at once.
First it allows you to record and compress your video through your web browser. Second, it stores the video for you and you can easily link your video on any of your web pages. They use a special video streaming technology that guarantees that everyone will see your video. It’s really fun and easy. They even built in a teleprompter so that you can read your script while recording.
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