Publishing video on your website or blog is now easier than ever, however there are some common mistake which should be avoided. With sites like YouTube seeding over 100 millions videos to users every day, video content is everywhere and there’s something for everyone. Here are some points to set you on the right path towards producing better video content for your site.
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Use an appropriate codec. Codec stands for Compression decompression. Xvid, Mpeg4, DivX, Flv, Mov and Mpeg, are some common examples of codecs. Once you have selected your codec make sure you use it correctly. For the best quality and smallest file size you will want a codec that uses a 2-pass VBR (Variable Bit Rate).
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Work with files that are as close to the original video source as possible. Even if you are compressing the video content down to a miniature size, editing it using the original source file will make a difference in the final quality.
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Don’t mess with the intended aspect ratio of the file. If the video was filmed in wide screen, keep it that way. A stretched or squashed video looks terrible.
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Crop any black borders. If your video is letterboxed, you need to crop off those black edges as they will waste file space in your final video.
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Deinterlace the video if required. If your source video is recorded from TV, it may be interlaced. Interlacing is a process where two fields are merged to form a single frame. When Interlaced video is viewed on a computer the image may have jagged edges, or it may look like it has lines running through it. Most modern video editing applications will have a deinterlace tool.
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Display your video in it’s native resolution. If you have encoded the video in 320×240, then display it in that resolution when you use the video on your site, don’t resize it in the html code when you embed it.
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Use plug-in detection on your page. If you are embedding video into a site, use plug-in detection to ensure that the user doesn’t need to think. There are javascript options available to make this decision for your reader.
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Be careful where you place video on a site. It does use a lot of resources; system memory and Internet bandwidth, so don’t place it to load automatically on your homepage, a user on a slower connection isn’t going to bother. If you really need a video on your homepage, don’t have it starting automatically.
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Consider hosting options. If you have the available bandwidth on your hosting plan or server then you could consider streaming the video, or offering it as a download or video podcast. If you don’t have tons of bandwidth to spare, you need to consider using a service like YouTube, and embedding the video.
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Embed the video in the page properly, don’t just link to the file. Just placing a hyperlink to your video file probably isn’t the best way to get your users to view it. Use the correct html to embed the file so the screen appears within your page.
I hope you find these tips useful for your projects involving online video.
Many of the ideas of this article are sourced from a feature by Jonathan Green in the September 2007 dot Net magazine.
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