< BACK TO ARTICLE INDEX
How to get video on a website
Since about two-thirds
of home web users and nearly all office workers now enjoy
broadband connectivity, video has become extremely popular
on the web — for both business and pleasure. Fortunately
there are now easy and effective ways to get video content
on your site. This article will cover these fundamental issues
about adding video to a web page:
- What video formats should
be used
- Options for where the video
is hosted
- Embedding YouTube (or similar)
videos on your website
Video file formats
While there are many different
video file formats — DV, AVI, ASF, MPEG, Windows Media
(.wmv), QuickTime (.mov), Flash (.flv) — not all video
formats are web-friendly. In fact, no video will play natively
in a web browser without some type of plug-in ("add-on" software
that allows a web browser to handle non-html content). Posting
video in Windows Media (.wmv) or Quicktime (.mov) video formats
is not the way to go. Those video formats require the
user's computer to have Microsoft Windows Media Player or Apple
QuickTime software installed. Many web users do not have those
applications and people will resist installing new software just
to watch your content. A much more universal format for web video
is Flash. Adobe
estimates that over 98% of personal computers have the Flash
player installed. The Flash player is a plug-in that, unlike
Windows Media Player, allows video content to play inside the
web browser, right on your web pages. What's more, Flash files
are much smaller, faster loading and, therefore, typically smoother
playing than Window Media files.
The easiest way to place Flash
video on your website is to use a video sharing site like YouTube.
More on how to do that after a brief detour to discuss hosting.
Hosting your video
You essentially have three choices
for where to host your video:
- The video file can be placed
on the same server with the rest of your website.
- You can upload the video
file to a specialized server designed specifically for hosing
streaming video.
- Place the video file on a
public video sharing site (like YouTube).
The first two options require
you to upload your video content in the right format to play in
a web browser. That means (if you take our advice about avoiding
Windows Media and QuickTime) that you must first convert your native
video file to Flash video (.flv), and embed a Flash controller
(.swf) on your web page. Creating these files requires Adobe Flash
Encoder and Adobe Flash software, and is beyond the scope of this
article. You can read more about it on Adobe's
website.
Hosting video on the same server
as the rest of your site is typically not advisable. Streaming
video content requires special servers, and most normal web servers
are not equipped to handle the load. Your situation may be an exception,
but before you choose this option, check with the technical administrator
of your web server. Explain how many videos of what size and length
will be hosted, and how many visitors you think may access it at
any given time. From this information, your tech should be able
to advise you whether or not hosting your own video is a good idea.
The second option — contracting
for video hosting on a streaming server — is usually a better
option than hosting video on your own server. There are many hosting
companies that offer streaming video hosting. These services are
set up specifically to handle the load demand created by many simultaneous
viewers of your video. One big advantage of contracting for your
own streaming server is that you will not have the advertising
that you get with public video sharing sites like YouTube. The
disadvantage, in addition to the expense, is that most of these
services do not automatically convert your video from its native
format to Flash video (like YouTube, Google Video, Vimeo and similar
sites). Therefore you have to upload your video to the streaming
server in exactly the right size and file format for your website — preferably
Flash video (.flv).
The third option — using
a public video sharing site (like YouTube) has a lot of advantages.
To start with, it's free. Hard to beat that one. Next, these sites
automatically handle converting your native video file to the web-friendly
Flash video format. They make it easy to embed the video so it
plays right on your web page. And finally they offer the advantage
of socialization of your video content. In other words, not only
can visitors watch your videos on your site, but they can see them
where they already are watching other video content — on
YouTube and other well-known video sites where extremely large
audiences congregate.
When you view your video on
YouTube (or similar sites), one down side is that you have to put
up with the advertising. But when you embed your videos on your
own site (rather than linking to them on YouTube or whatever site
you are using) you can avoid much of that advertising.
Embedding YouTube videos
We'll
go through the steps with YouTube,
but most of the other video sharing sites (like Vimeo or others)
work in a similar way. Essentially there are three simple steps:
- First, upload your video
to YouTube (or locate a video already on YouTube).
- Second, copy the embed code.
- Third, on the desired page
on your site, paste the embed code into the HTML code where you
want the video to appear on the page.
The specific steps are detailed
under the screen shot of the YouTube
page below.
Step
1 Go to YouTube and find a video that you want to place
on your website.
Step
2 Next, look for the "Embed" button below the
video (A). Click to to expand the view, which will look like
the image above.
Step
3 Choose the size and skin color options you desire (B).
Step
4 Copy the embed code (C).
Step
6 Open up your blog or site, and in the HTML view, paste
the video embed code into the spot on your site or blog that
you want people to see the video.
ShareThis