Tip #3951 - Prepare Your Videos For the Web
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Prepare
Your Videos For the Web
Do you have some videos you'd
like to upload to the Web? If so, keep reading for some basic tips on
how you can get the job done easily and quickly!
With Web sites like
YouTube being so popular for uploading movies, more and more people want
to upload their own funnies to the Web. I mean, the Internet is an ever
changing world of shaping technology and to keep up with any trends, one
must read about it on the Internet on various Web sites. One week, you
could have popular software for preparing your video and for adding effects,
while the following week, bugs in the software may have been found or
maybe even a new piece of software professes to be easier to use and with
more features. This is very true when it comes to uploading videos to
the Web.
Compressing and preparing
video footage for the Web, after being transferred from the digital camera
to the PC, is as seamless as the rest of the process. The new and now
very familiar format for the Web is FLV or Flash Video. It is a video
format just like any other in terms of playback on the Web, with the exception
that it has some overriding characteristics. It is much smaller in size
as compared to Windows Media (WMV), QuickTime (MOV) and Real Media (RM).
Flash has been around for awhile now. Also, the Shockwave format (SWF)
has already transformed graphics on the Web in a big way. Most animated
movies playing on Web pages will be presented as SWF files. They will
also be FLV files on many sites, particularly YouTube. The FLV format
can also be played as a stand alone file on the PC.
Now, the existing
video dumped to the PC will always be too large for immediate delivery
to the Web. This is where compression comes in to help by reducing the
file size so that it can be streamed (played) effortlessly across the
Web. This occurs everyday on YouTube, which allows thousands of streams
of video playback per day. So, the video that has just been dumped to
the PC's hard drive will need to be converted or compressed to a useable
format and honestly, FLV is the best choice for the Web today. The other
reason is that the Flash player will only play FLV files anyway, which
makes the conversion process for playback on a Web page necessary. If
you plan to use YouTube, they have a Video Toolbox section you'll want
to read for tips on compressions and shooting video.
There are some great
choices for achieving this: Sorenson Squeeze, ON2 Flix Encoder, Macromedia
Flash 8 and the Riva FLV encoder. Due to the utter simplicity in using
the software and as it is freeware, the best choice here is the Riva
Encoder. It has a very low learning curve, as the interface is
very basic and the settings on the initial panel are very easy to tweak,
if at all required.
Here is how you can
start using the Riva Encoder for yourself:
- Download the Riva
2 Encoder and Riva FLV player (both free) right from this Web
site.
- Once installed,
open the Riva Encoder and you will see the below interface:
- There are only
a few settings here to be concerned about. Note the Movie Size
drop down box. Here it shows 640x480, but this is not recommended. You
should try a lower resolution setting. Try 320x240 or 400x300, as the
file size will be much smaller and the video crisper.
- Leave the
Preset drop down as DSL.xml. This just loads the settings currently
seen in the interface, just like your new movie size. You can save any
changes by clicking the Save icon to the right of the
box.
- The interface
offers quick access to the process of converting the video to FLV. There
are three areas to set: Input, Output and Encode. From the Input
box, click Browse. Find your movie on your
hard drive and open it by selecting the movie and clicking Open.
- The destination
video file will have already been given a name, but that name can be
changed, if required, in the Destination Video File
box.
- Click the
Browse button next to the Output Directory
option in order to choose a folder to store the encoded FLV file. It
will initially be set to the same directory as the source video. This
may suffice and if so, we can move on.
- Ensure the Enable
Audio checkbox on the right panel is checked.
- The other drop
down boxes, like Frame Rate and Bit Rate should
be fine, as the default setting of the frame rate is 25 and the bit
rate is 360. There is also the option for Stereo in
the Audio section that you can select if you want.
Remember, choosing higher frame rates will increase the size of the
video and this tutorial is conveying how to maintain a small file size.
When the Riva Encoder
has finished, the FLV file will be in your specified directory and it
will be ready to upload to YouTube or whatever site you'd like to use.
For example, a personal Web site. That's all there is to it. Happy video
publishing!
~ Stephen Davies
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