Website Video Solutions

CHOOSING THE RIGHT WEB SITE VIDEO SOFTWARE

Let's go back to our three types of streaming video; Head Shots, Desktop Video/Screencasts and Full Motion Video and break down the video streaming software solutions by category.

HEAD SHOTS

Here are some solutions to greatly simplify the process.

If you are not movie star material, the first is the Vhost SitePal from Oddcast.com. It's really pretty cool. You can create your own Avatars (animated talking heads) to deliver your message and they give you three plans to choose from.

Oddcast streams from their server saving you the conversion hassle and bandwidth expense... they charge by the number of times the video plays. They also have other programs available for higher end video marketing.

The second solution is easy - it's just you and a webcam. Some webcams may even have editors or the ability to upload to YouTube built in, but all should have the ability to record yourself. Just edit your video and you're ready to upload it to your site. See the Streaming Video page on how to embed it.

Other solutions especially designed for video blogging (Vlogging) or other head shot video are available from TubeTape.com. They have a whole array of chromakey (blue-screen or green-screen) backdrops and wall paint for creating an in-home studio, plus lighting kits and software for adding background video.

NOTE: You will want to use a microphone in a stand with the microphone out of the picture or Lavalier (clip-on) mike rather than a headset when recording using a webcam.

DESKTOP VIDEO

The king of desktop recording, editing and delivery is Techsmith's Camtasia Studio but, it's somewhat expensive at $299. However, for serious demonstrations of desktop procedures it's a great program.

Watch My Camtasia Studio Review

It can capture screen recordings (including PowerPoint presentations), edit the video, add narration, insert still pictures or video Picture in Picture (PiP), and create a streaming Flash or mp4 player with a 'scrubber' bar so you can go forward or back. It can also convert many video formats including .avi and .wmv to streaming Flash, among other output formats.

It includes Camtasia Theater for adding menus for multiple videos which can be uploaded to your own server, negating the expense of a special streaming server. You can also burn your videos onto a CD or DVD with it's own player for distribution. It's really a great program.

The result will be the video file, the controller files and an html page that plays the video. Either copy the code from the html page and add it to your own page or just link to it from within your own web page.

For those of you on a budget that want to do desktop recordings you can try the free CamStudio 2.0. It's limited to output in .avi or .flv, has no video editing ability and a chintzy looking FLV player, but it gets the job done. For a decent controller, you can combine it with a video converter (see below).

Watch My CamStudio Review

For short screencasts there are now web sites that allow you to record your desktop online for free, usually set up for Internet sharing, like:

Screenr.com  (need a Twitter account)
Screenjelly (3 min. limit)
Screencast-o-Matic  (15 min. limit, can export to edit, has Pro version)
Jing (5 min. limit, can download or FTP, 2GB storage at Screencast.com, has Pro version, from the makers of Camtasia Studio)

FULL MOTION VIDEO

The cheapest way to produce full motion streaming Flash video is to use Windows MovieMaker (see video tutorial on our Video Editing Page) and convert the edited .wmv file to Flash or mp4 using something like the free Any Video Converter. You would then need to embed it into your web page or upload it to a video host.

You can use a commercial video editor like Sony Vegas Movie Studio ($74.95) or Adobe's Premier Elements ($99.99) cheaper at Amazon.com   and then, if it doesn't output to Flash, use a Flash Converter to convert it to a web streaming format.

You should consider one of these commercial video editors if you are also going to be producing video on DVD or doing more advanced editing like replacing green-screen backgrounds.

NOTE:  Video editing is about the most resource intensive software you can use on your computer. A newer computer with a high-end graphics card and lots of RAM is a plus if you are going to be doing serious video editing. 

SUMMARY

Once you've created your video you can upload it to your server, a Content Delivery Network, or use one of the new free video hosts.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video must be worth ten thousand. About half of the Internet users in the U.S. have broadband access and the number gets higher every day.

While slapping videos all over your web site may not be in your or your visitors' best interests, a judicious use of video will really help get your message across to your target market.