Technology Tools - Video on the Web

Video on the Web

There are several considerations when it comes to deciding what to put a video on the web and how to do it. If you are producing the video yourself, remember your audience. Everything you put into the video must support the story you are trying to tell.

Thinking ahead to the last step
There are many different ways to share your edited video movies.

1. DVDs & CDs

2. Highly compressed short clips can be sent via email

3. On the web

By posting a video on the web, your audience can access it from anywhere they can get an Internet connection. They can watch it over and over again, and don’t have to worry about scratching a DVD. The trade off is on-screen size. A TV can provide a bigger, clearer picture. The Internet is restricted by its speed so video data is usually compressed and the dimensions of the image is around 25%-50% of TV. Standard definition TV is 720x480 pixels. Online video is around 320x240 (default) or smaller. Sometimes you’ll want both a TV version and an online version of your video. First produce the large version, then either output a small version from your video editor for the web, or convert the larger one to the smaller size.

What content will work for the web?

Your goal is to create a video that will look good when accessed by a variety of different computers and monitors and viewing programs. The secret is to keep it short, shoot and edit it for the web, and then use an effective compression scheme to make the file small yet still of high enough quality.

Learn by watching is the way to start. When you watch a video on the web, how long does it interest you? How long do you pay attention when the camera work is poor, or when the sound is bad? Is the pace too fast or too slow? Does it deliver what it said it would deliver? Did it state a goal or purpose? Were you ever confused about the point? Did it appear to be scripted with cohesion or did it seem to be very loose, too loose?

Shoot for the web
What kinds of shots look best on the web? Look at your video screen – it is probably not as big as your TV set – it is a lot smaller than a movie screen in your local cineplex. This means that big wide screen vistas that need a lot of space to truly appreciate details won’t work well. Adding to that challenge is the fact that most online video viewing experiences don’t even take up the entire computer screen – just a small portion of it. This means you should concentrate your shots on mostly faces and close-ups. Yes, you can occasionally use a wide shot to set a scene but then go to medium shots and close-ups so your viewer can see details.

Also because of the small size, scenes with fast moving objects won’t work well. A wide shot of a line of ants marching across a floor will probably look like a line...if even that appears.

Keep control of your text as well. What might work fine on your 21-inch monitor, full screen mode, might be a bit too tiny to read when playing in a two by three inch video window.

Try to keep your camera movement to a minimum. The less the camera moves, the better the compression will be, and the smaller the file size will help for streaming without long buffer periods. Professionals tend to lock down a shot on a tripod rather than handhold or do much panning or zooming.

Good lighting and proper exposure settings will make your video more watchable.

Sound quality is important too. If you are recording a presentation from the back of the room, you should have a wireless microphone on the presenter with the receiver connected to the camera. Otherwise you are wasting your time and the web audience's.

Edit for the web

You should try to keep effects and transitions to a minimum and make the make the compression software’s job as easy as possible. When a video is loaded with effects, compression programs end up taking more time to create the final file. Even worse, the final file will be much larger than it needs to or the final file will lose resolution and quality when played back. As much as possible keep it to straight cuts. Each time you include a transition like a wipe or dissolve, the compression program has to go through it and figure out how to transform the two different scenes into one.

The key is to keep it short. Forget credits (too small to read anyway) and flashy 30-second opening sequences. Some say the Internet is a global short attention span theater. Whether people are reading the news or watching a video, they want it in small, digestible chunks. People are still not used to sitting and watching a video on a computer for a long period of time, the most popular (not necessarily the best) Internet videos are short, under 3 minutes, catering to people’s attention span. Also consider that if you have a long video and your audience has to leave their computer and come back to it later, it will be difficult for them to scan through the video to pick up where they left off. If they were watching a short series of videos they are more likely to complete each segment and be able to keep track of what is next.

Compression
Once your video is shot and edited, the next step is to compress it. Raw video files are BIG, much too large to stick on a web site and expect someone to download and watch it. Those are formats like AVI for the Windows and QuickTime for the Mac.

How do you compress? Most video editing programs have basic compression options already built in. Almost all will let you compress your video in a variety of formats, but the goal is to get it out as Flash. If your editing program won't do that, you'll need software to convert your editor's output (WMV, MOV, AVI, etc.) to Flash (FLV).

Posting the video

After your video is shot, edited and compressed into one or more files, it is time to get it out on the web so your audience can see it. One option is to simply email it to them – this is not really video streaming as the video really is never posted to the web. You are simply sending a compressed video file – streaming format or not – to them. The most important rule is to keep it small. Many email accounts will not receive a file bigger than 2 or 3 megs at a time. By the way, if you do need to transfer large files (up to 400MB) for any reason, use the ANR File Vault.

The most common way to distribute your videos is to simply post it to your web site. In ANR’s Site Builder you can upload your FLV just as you would any photo. You will then have a code like *file1234* that you put on your page and the video will be displayed along with player controls.

Then what?
Get the word out that your video is posted and where to find it. Send out emails or newsletters to your audience and stakeholders. If you have a blog, you can post the video there as well and they can subscribe to it. Anytime you post a new video, they'll know about it. Again, with the ANR Blog system, the video is uploaded in the same manner as a photo.

For more information,contact Mike Poe mlpoe@ucdavis.edu or 530-754-3905

For details on embedding video on a non-Site Builder site:

Embedding Flash Details