Online Delivery: Getting Your Video’s to YouTube and More.
Today I am conducting a Meetup at the SAE institute convering Getting your videos to YouTube and more. In this Meet Up we will explore the online delivery of video content, its purpose and benefits. In particular we will discuss the use video sharing website Youtube, and then briefly look at how to optimize your video content for this site. Next we will also discuss alternatives to Youtube then conclude with the hidden benefits of this Social Networking Platform. The goal of this Meet up is to provide you with a better understanding of how to publish your video content to the web by use of YouTube and the hidden advantages.
History:
YouTube is a video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips. YouTube was founded in February 2005, and has become one of the most popular web portals in the world. Allowing users to submit videos and wade through the massive video section by searching for keywords, YouTube has taken the idea of viral videos to a new level.
So what’s the big deal? Here are some interesting stats about YouTube*:
- March 17th 2008: 78.3 million videos- These numbers suggest that there are now between 150,000 to over 200,000 videos published every day on YouTube.
- Average length of a YouTube Video 2 minutes 46.17 seconds
- Average age of submitter: 26
- Most commonly used tags: (the following were the only tags used 4 or more times in the sample)
video, sexy, sex, music, rock, rap, funny, news, pop, dance, film, short, TV
Why use YouTube? Ease of use, cost effective, great marketing tool
Why use YouTube? Ease of use, cost effective, great marketing tool
Cost effective: Bandwidth consumption- Utilizes YouTube’s bandwidth, so there is no monthly or subscription cost associated to its use.
Great for SEO: Owned by Google
Social Networking: Everytime you post a video in your account, YouTube creates a profile channel. Avid viewers can be part of that channel and subscribe to it. Businesses can then send newsletters via e-mails to those subscribers.
Optimizing your video for YouTube:
The first step in optimizing your videos for YouTube starts from behind the camera. When shooting your content it’s always important to know the targeted audience, example Web, DVD, or TV (I wish). When possible your newly formed video should be set to the YouTube-native size of 320×240. In some cases setting up your camera to the correct output may not be an option, in this case we would need to use a third party application such as QuickTime Pro, CS3 Video Converter, and Sorenson Squeeze. QuickTime Pro is not a free application however at $30.00 it is defiantly affordable and very easy to use with its drag-n-drop editing interface.
What is the perfect setting for a YouTube video you ask? Unfortunately for each video clip that you intend on uploading you will be required to tweak the setting a bit based on the file size and quality of the video that you have in hand. For general purposes I typically start with this setting when using QuickTime:
- H.264 video codec set to 2000Kbits/sec (2Mbits/sec or 250KBytes/sec)
- 320×240 video size (deinterlaced or simply use one field)
- Mono audio with AAC codec at 64 Kbit/sec (or 128 Kbit/sec for stereo)
- Recommended Sample Rate
- Best Encoding Quality
Advise:
- Use a bitrate* as high as you can, somewhere between 700kbps and 1000kbps should work well.
- YouTube has a compression feature that will also compress your video regardless of what you upload so this really becomes a balancing act between what looks good your desktop and online.
- Your file size cannot exceed 1 GB and 10 minutes long
*Bitrate refers to the size, over time, of a video or audio stream. Although most computer oriented applications measure bitrate in terms of binary kilobits and Megabits where 1kb (1 kilobit) = 1024 bits and 1Mb (1 Megabit) = 1024 kilobits, bitrate calculations use standard metric values for these prefixes, meaning 1kb = 1000b and 1Mb = 1000kb.
References
Video Compression tools:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/pro/
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/quickstart/video_encoder/
Bit Rate Calculator
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/apps/flv_bitrate_calculator/
Other video Sharing websites
Blip.tv
Metacafe.com
Video.Yahoo.com
Vimeo
Video.Google.com
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/tutorials/h264.html
Making Money on Youtube
- Join the YouTube partner program
- Blogger.com also owned by Google you can embed your videos then blog about your video content. Revenue is obtained by Google adsense and overall impressions to your site.
- Great way to sell your product or service at no cost.
Tags: Video