Show The World

YouTube

Now that we have created our content, how do deliver it to our viewers? You can decide to use a service to host your videos or utilize one of many websites on the interwebs that focus on user generated content.

If you decide to use a service or host this yourself, there are a couple of decisions you would have to make. There are 2 types of video delivery mechanisms; progressive download (web server) and streaming (streaming media server).

In the progressive download method, the media file is hosted on a typical web server. The web server treats it like any other file and sends the data out without regards to the contents inside. You cannot view the content until the file has been downloaded. Once an initial amount of data has been loaded, you may watch that portion. You are not able to skip ahead until all the data up to that point has been loaded. Sometimes, you may have to wait until the entire file is downloaded before you can start watching. It works in a very one way interaction. The file is saved on the computer temporarily so that it can be viewed without having to download the file again.

In the streaming download method, the media file is hosted on a streaming media server. The media server has specialized software that knows about the bandwidth, format, structure and the performance of the player receiving the media file. As such, the server streams the data at an optimum rate. Because there is a 2 way communication between the server and media player, there is more control over the stream itself. Users are able to skip around to different points in the media file and the server will send the appropriate data. The video file is not store on the computer as it is done with the progressive download method.

An analogy is to view the different methods as different ways of drinking juice. In progressive download, you cannot drink the juice until it has been poured into the glass. You have to wait for it to be poured. With streaming download, you may drink directly from the bottle, at any time you wish.

To sum everything up, the main reason for downloading from a web server is that it uses existing infrastructure and is fairly simple. It’s good for short video content with high bitrates that also allows users to save the file. Streaming is better when you have longer clips and want to allow a bit of user control or are streaming live webcasts.

But that would be the hard way. You can head right over to any of the dozens of web sites that host user generated content for free. YouTube is by far the most dominant player commanding a 43% market share and being the fourth most visited site on the internet, it is a great place to get exposure and take advantage of the large user base and audience that it provides.

YouTube allows videos that are up to 10 minutes in length with a file size of 2GB. It accepts the most common formats that include .AVI, .WMV, .MOV, .MKV, MPEG, .MP4, DivX, .OGG, and .FLV. YouTube offers 3 different formats. There is a "high quality", an HD (high definition), and also mobile format. One of the best features of YouTube is the fact that the videos are viewable outside of the website. Each YouTube video is paired with a snippet of HTML code that allows it to be embedded on web pages outside of YouTube. Talk about portability! TIme to get crackin!

To read about capturing video...visit Chris' blog

To read about video compression...visit Keith's blog