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Adding Video To A Web Site | ||
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This is entry #1 in the What Are You Struggling With? series. If you’d like to submit one of your struggles for consideration please post a comment in this original post. If you want to view all the posts in this series visit the Struggling Series category.
Jackie, Thanks for your submission. You’re not alone. You’re dealing with TWO factors here… 1. Creating Your Multimedia Files CREATING YOUR MULTIMEDIA FILES When creating your multimedia files there is a lot that will affect the QUALITY of your final files. But it all starts with YOUR SOURCE. For example, many people complain that quality of their online videos are poor when in fact the camera (or settings) they used to create their original video was poor. So it’s important to note, you can’t get quality multimedia files without starting with a quality source. If you know you have a quality video source (for example) then it comes down to converting that video file into something usable on the Web that will be compressed (so it’s not a huge file size) but will still look (and sound) great. Here’s a great tutorial on converting video files into high quality YouTube videos. That tutorial will most likely solve most of your problems. It links to some free software tools and some additional resources. Another great tool is Tracy Childers’ FLV Producer software. It quickly and easily converts video files into FLV files. As far as your MP3 audio files are concerned, it sounds like a settings issue with how you are trying to convert them. Start with the highest bit rate possible, create a version that way, and see how it sounds. Then try the next quality down. Try different versions until you find the smallest file size that still has quality you are happy with. Then just make a note of those settings for future file output. HOSTING YOUR MULTIMEDIA FILES I linked to a tutorial above for creating great looking videos for YouTube, but many marketers don’t want to host their videos with YouTube because it doesn’t look very professional. So let’s talk about how you can host them yourself… There are two main types of Flash Video: 1. Streaming Video Streaming Video is where the video actually “buffers” and starts playing before the entire video is downloaded. It also allows the user to ’scrub’ forward or back to a certain point in the video and start watching it from there. In order to serve streaming video you will actually need a streaming video hosting provider — or you will need to purchase a license for “Flash Media Server” and have it running on your own server. DON’T WASTE YOUR TIME! In my opinion (and many others) there really is no need for true streaming video. 95% of the videos you see online today are PROGRESSIVE video — and they work just fine. In fact, Internet users are more use to progressive video than anything else. YouTube videos are progressive Flash videos. Progressive Video is where the actual video downloads (in most cases to a temporary directory) on the user’s machine. The user can watch the video when it downloads enough where there is something to watch. If the user’s connection is downloading the video at a faster rate than the video will play the user can watch the entire video without stopping BEFORE the entire video is downloaded. If the user’s connection isn’t fast enough then they will have to wait until it’s downloaded. A user can ’see’ how much has been downloaded with a ‘progress’ bar. The great thing about progressive video files is that THEY CAN BE HOSTED ANYWHERE! You don’t need a special video hosting service. You don’t have to pay for special licensing or other fees. You can simply upload the video files to ANY web hosting account and it will work. BUT… You raise an important point… if a lot of people start watching your videos at the same time you WILL run into a problem. It will slow your server down and can cause others to have viewing problems. You definitely want to avoid this — especially if you’re going to be running a membership site and the multimedia files are what your users are paying you money to watch/listen to. Here’s what I recommend… Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) Amazon.com started an amazing service called “S3.” You can basically rent server space on their massive network of computers. When you upload your files it will automatically make a backup of the files across their network. Amazon has so much bandwidth that you could have MILLIONS of people trying to watch your videos at the same time and no one would have a problem. And the great thing about this new S3 service is that you only pay for what you use. There are no monthly fees. AND… their bandwidth/data transfer rates are extremely reasonable. They start at 18 cents per gigabyte transferred. So just to give you an example… if you have a 30 minute video that is 50MB in size, and you have 1,000 unique people watch it one time, here’s how much that would cost you… 50MB x 1,000 = 50,000MB. There are 1,000 megabytes (MB) in a gigabyte, so 50,000 divided by 1,000 = 50. So 50,000MB = 50GB (gigabytes). 50 x 18 cents per GB = $9.00 So it would cost you $9.00 total to have 10,000 unique people watch that entire video once. If you had 10,000 views of that same video file then it would be $90.00 in total cost. And Amazon’s prices drop if you end up doing a lot of data transfer — as low as 13 cents per GB. As you can see, their prices are very inexpensive. When hosting your videos with YouTube just won’t do, this is a great option. Income.com is currently hosting all of its video files with Amazon S3 and so far we’re very happy. * Special Note: If you go with Amazon S3 it would be good to have a ‘geek’ (any competent programmer type will do) that you can hire to get you setup. S3 can be a little complicated at first. Jackie, I hope that answers all of your questions. If you have related questions to these issues please feel free to post a comment on this post and I’ll try and answer it for you. ~John
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July 19th, 2007 at 4:05 am
Hey John. Great tip!!
What do you think about Camtasia. I have Camtasia. It allows you to save you videos in many different formats and actually builds a page to present the video. Which you can then ofcourse edit in yur fave html editor. Currently my problem is with my freaking Micro phone. Gonna have to get a better one. Camtasia allows you to record the screen, record a powerpoint presentation do slideshows (how I have used it) You know to do family photo slideshows. You can add music clips to it and and a whole whack of other things.
July 19th, 2007 at 4:08 am
Really nice analyzation. I will sonn write an article on my blog reffering to some of your calculations here.
July 19th, 2007 at 6:08 am
It was very useful John. Thank you, it’s the first time I heard about this S3 Amazon hosting. It’s awesome.
July 19th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Thanks so much John, Video is something we are currently working on implementing into our marketing plan. We have been using the trial version of Adobe Visual Communicator. Since they are offering a trial of this program for free right now, there is of course no manual to go through, but the program itself is very easy to use. There are still a few bugs with the program so we have not been able to achieve peak quality, but the quality (in my opinion) is still better than most youtube videos.
Do you have any idea when Adobe plans to release the final product? I’ve looked on the web and I can’t find anything.
Thanks for that tutorial reference John!
Kristen
July 19th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
50MB x 10,000 = 50,000MB
Are you sure? Looks like it should be 500,000MB to me.
Great blog.
Pearson
July 19th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
the squidoo link was spot on
July 19th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
Hello Jackie, I have come accross a guy named mike stewart, that can teach you everything you need to know about audio and video for a very small price. This guy really knows his stuff and if you want to checkout his website here is the url : InternetAudioGuy.com
July 19th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
PEARSON - Oops! Thanks for pointing that out. I corrected it.
July 19th, 2007 at 4:36 pm
John,
THANKS for taking time to personally answer my question!
I wish I would have known about Amazon S3 before I made the decision to go with a managed dedicated server for $300 a month.
The squidoo article was very helpful too.
I actually received several emails from your readers who “claimed” to be video experts. But, when you look at their site, it is obvious that they know less than I do.
Video and audio are the “next big thing” but it sure is hard to find anyone who understands how to make it easy to get it on web sites. It’s been trial and error then trial again for us to get video and audio that is acceptable quality and reliable.
Through it all, I’ve learned a lot…
The more conversion you have to do to the video, the more quality you lose. So the fewer steps the better. That means that it is better to shoot the video on a camera with a hard drive.
When quality matters… instead of using SUPER or ULead to convert the video, it is better to just take it to a video editing/conversion company and get it done professionally ( $20 per hour of video)
I’ve tried a lot of different media players and I like the Wimpy the best. The player REALLY does make a difference in the clarity of the video. Some have controls that are confusing or just don’t work.
Any video files over 50mb seem to get dropped by the server. So I’ve got to keep my video in less than 30 minute segments. Even going to 31 minutes will cause it to not upload.
It’s been a LOT of work and a LOT of learning curves.
But the end result will be a membership site for real estate investors that ROCKS with the best content anywhere including audio, video, articles, lessons, webinars, and more
We had our soft launch last weekend and brought in a little over $17,000 - all before we go live in 2 weeks.
John, thank you again for your personal attention to my question.
Jackie Lange
http://www.CREWealth.com
p.s. You may remember that we were on a panel discussion together at Ken McCarthy’s first Systems seminar in Cincinnati 4 - 5 years ago. I was talking about my first membership site that I launched 7 years ago.
July 19th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
Jackie - sounds great! And YES of course I remember meeting you.
July 19th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
Nice post John. I read your rebirth e-book and came to the conclusion that video content would be very useful for a new site that I am starting.
I just recently started making some videos for the site and have posted a good deal of them on youtube. Judging by the number of typeins my site has received so far, I would say youtube will be a great (and free) way for me to attract visitors to my site.
For anyone with a Mac looking for a screencast application I would reccomend using iShowU by shinywhitebox along with QT Pro (for encoding to h.264).
July 20th, 2007 at 6:53 am
John how can you be such a great thought leader on the big ideas AND a detail geek guy both at once (without going crazy)! You dag! (friendly Aussie-talk for “crazy guy”)
You are an amazing man - many thanks for the very helpful tips.
I’m also a big fan of Wimpy products (but have yet to use the video player seriously, only using the audio player - which is sensational and a walk in the park to set up).
Cheers - can’t be long now to Income.com? That last 14-day teaser was July 10 …
Robert
http://www.instant-self-esteem.com/
July 20th, 2007 at 9:57 am
Anybody got any thoughts on a software product or website that can help me make videos directly from a webcam? I used to belong to Hello World, but dropped it. But they were good. I am so new to this stuff, it’s scary.
July 20th, 2007 at 10:13 am
Here’s another video hosting site that I found
25GB for free
http://www.streamload.com/
July 20th, 2007 at 10:25 am
Great post John!!! I can’t wait until the site opens!
http://www.makemoneywithaffiliateprograms.info
July 20th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
Thanks again for reminding me of the importance of video. But can you suggest a good, easy to use software I can use to create good looking video online?
Thanks…
review of making-you-richer-review
July 21st, 2007 at 1:06 am
Why not just upload any videos you have to Youtube and then embed it on your website?
This allows you to SAVE bandwidth, and get additional exposure to your message/website via searches at Youtube’s site…
FREE!
July 23rd, 2007 at 10:58 am
Donovan, there are two main reasons not to use YouTube.
First, it may not appear “professional” depending upon your niche. I wouldn’t overly concern myself with this, but it seems to be the first thing mentioned in the article above.
Second, and the much larger reason, is that YouTube video compression leaves a bit to be desired. I haven’t seen many YouTube videos that are all that impressive from a quality stand point. If you don’t mind things being fuzzy or out of sync, then YouTube is a great way to go (and I use it myself).
July 23rd, 2007 at 11:09 am
The math is close, but not exact. A GB is actually 1024 MB, and there is also a storage charge of 15 cents per gigabyte per month.
So a 50 MB file downloaded 1000 times in 1 month would have a total charge of:
(50MB * 1000 users * $0.18) + (50MB/1024MB * $0.15)
(~ 48.8 GB * $0.18 ) + (~0.049MB * $0.15)
~ $8.79 + ~0.01
~ $8.80
So, while you didn’t factor in all of the charges, it still comes out to less than what you estimated it at. And I managed to waste a couple of minutes doing the math. Heheh.
July 23rd, 2007 at 6:38 pm
Very good article, lots of great information. I can see where including a video on your website would be to your advantage, particularly if it was pertinent to your niche. I’ll be looking into this further. Thanks, John!
July 24th, 2007 at 11:43 am
For a membership site, do you think it is better to offer multiple formats without any viewing limits..ie.. someone can download inside membership area and send to others or view only option or offer 1 format such as windows media and use a protection option like vidlock? which is a little cumbersome since you have to type in your email before watching the video.. and thanks for the great tip on the amazon s3 service.
August 7th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
dreamhost is the best option for hosting + streaming
August 22nd, 2007 at 8:36 am
[…] Share This […]
August 22nd, 2007 at 7:14 pm
John
I had already returned the package more than a month ago and have not heard anything about my refund yet. My ticket (Ticket ID: ZLV-87908) has been deleted from your helpdesk as it is showing non-existence when I tried to check the status. And, I submitted a note via the contact form here 2 days ago and have not heard a reply from you.
Please tell me this is not how you treat your customers! If I don’t hear from you within 3 days, I will get my bank to chargeback the purchase.
Yvonne
— quote —
# John Reese Says:
July 15th, 2007 at 2:12 am
Yvonne - Rest assured that your request will be handled as soon as possible. Don’t worry about any deadline. We’ll take care of it. But please know that it’s the weekend and even my hard working staff can’t work 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
— unquote —
August 23rd, 2007 at 11:42 am
A little typo:
“So it would cost you $9.00 total to have 10,000 unique people watch that entire video once.”
I believe that 10,000 should be 1,000
Fantastic Article!!! Thanks a bunch!
August 29th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
[…] Share This […]
September 3rd, 2007 at 7:14 am
For those doing screencasts with Camtasia another great option is Screencast.com Techsmith’s video hosting service. You can directly “publish” to the site from Camtasia Studio 4 and include MP3’s and iPod versions. They have several pricing plans with heavy-duty bandwidth and storage (Premium Plan is 100GB storage and 100GB bandwidth for about $20 a month).
Lon Naylor
http://screencastprofits.com
September 26th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
Couple of adds to this post - We chose not to use Amazon S3 simply due to their stated User Agreement. It says “we offer no SLA”. No uptime guarantee, no guarantee that in a virtual server environment that all of your info won’t be deleted.
You can take the risk to save a few $$ but serious marketers should be wary.
As for using YouTube - its great to generate traffic, but when you choose to embed those videos into your site, it looks unprofessional, sends a message that you are cheap, and most importantly eliminates the control over your video. YouTube is running ads on top of users videos (so its not REALLY free). If you are ok with that - great.
A better choice is Mike Filsaime’s NewVideoPro.com product.
It converts video from any source camera instantly into flash, No software or technology skills are needed. Then a simple copy/paste into the HTML of your page and its done.
A fully hosted video from a tier one server that can serve thousands of viewers at a time. And its very affordable too. It was just released this week so check it out…
October 14th, 2007 at 11:02 am
But NewVideoPro.com costs a lot!!! Compare it with Amazon S3!!!
March 10th, 2008 at 11:05 am
download tubeinator…
Tubeinator will help you dominate youtube…
March 13th, 2008 at 9:20 am
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March 20th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Cracks House…
I can not agree with you in 100% regarding some thoughts, but you got good point of view…
March 24th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
AdSense Money Maker…
Do you know how to make money from AdSense automatically? You don’t!? I’ll teach you how!…
April 1st, 2008 at 11:43 am
Video Editing Services…
Thanks for creating this blog. I thought it was a very interesting read. It is so interesting reading other peoples personal take on a subject….
April 6th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
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April 9th, 2008 at 3:49 am
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April 16th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
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May 5th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
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