Monday, 21 September 2009 20:56
There are many reasons to use YouTube as a way to increase the potential for viral marketing with your video. There are also reasons that hosting video privately has benefits as well.
But regardless...let's look at what YouTube will support.
1) You can upload videos for your organization as long as it is less than 10 minutes in length.
2) When you upload video to YouTube, you can use the embed html code to put the video into your website, blog, and even Facebook.
3) YouTube supports High Quality compressions, so if the video has been produced in High Definition it can be uploaded to YouTube to maintain a High Quality appeal. What does this mean? The video has to be exported for YouTube as an H264 .MP4 format.
4) Also, when you upload the video to YouTube, as part of the membership agreement with YouTube, they (YouTube) retain rights to the video.
What does
VIEW Digital Media, LLC ("VIEW") produce? We acquire (video tape), edit, and produce video using a High Definition quality standard known as HDV. After we produce the video, we have to export it as a a Flash Video format (.FLV). This format has a great "curb appeal", yet it is exported so that many different users with many different connections can access the video and play it quickly/smoothly within many types of browsers.
VIEW Digital Media, LLC hosts and distributes the video on servers owned and operated by
VIEW Digital Media, LLC. What does this mean for the client and the end user? We can put up video that can range in length from 1 second to 2 hours (and longer if necessary). Length is not a concern for
VIEW Digital Media, LLC.
So
VIEW Digital Media, LLC can upload videos to YouTube and the projects we produce for our clients. We can do this two ways. We can use the Flash Video file (FLV) we produced to play off of VIEW's servers to YouTube or re-export a higher quality video (H264 .MP4) to upload to YouTube. This Flash Video (FLV) file is located on
VIEW's Servers and is readily available for
VIEW's clients to download and then upload to YouTube. But here is situation that arises:
1) If one chooses to use the FLV file already produced by VIEW to upload, YouTube will accept it but it will not be in it's highest quality possible. Once a video is compressed from High Definition content to a Flash Video file (FLV), it has lost lots of the information that makes the quality High Definition. It is like taking a pretty picture with a great Digital SLR, then cropping and making web ready. Once it is cropped and made web ready, it is has lost the quality necessary to look good on a full color spread in a magazine. But since it has already been exported as a Flash Video file for a project, it is ready to be uploaded to YouTube.
2) If one chooses to use the Flash Video file (FLV) to upload to YouTube, it must be less than 10 minutes in length. So if it exceeds this requirement, YouTube will allow it to be uploaded; but once it is uploaded and is processed, it will then be discarded.
Here is the value in having
VIEW to re-export it as a higher quality video (H264 MP4) for YouTube. You maximize your investment; basically one has hired VIEW to use High Definition Quality Camera's to produce your video content. Why not try to display in the highest quality possible? So here is what has to happen:
1) Let
VIEW know that you want us to re-export the video for YouTube taking advantage of the high quality settings of H264 MP4.
2) Know that if your video content exceeds 10 minutes, ask us how we can reduce the length of the video content.
3) Know that it will take a few days for this request, we have to re-open your project then re-export it at a higher quality standard.
If this is something that you as a client would like to consider when
VIEW or any other group is producing your content, it is helpful to know this during the beginning stages of developing your video project. This helps your production group plan accordingly for the proper workflow and so we can appropriately meet the expectations all stakeholders involved. This also helps because once the video is completed and approved by the client, it is exported for web display.
Every time we export a Flash Video file (FLV), it takes 4 to 5 times the total length of the video to export the video to be ready to post to the web. Basically, if your final video is 5 minutes in total length; it could take 20 - 25 minutes to have it ready for the web. If your video is 15 minutes in total length, it could take anywhere from 45 minutes to over and hour to have it ready for the web. If we export that same project as an H264 MP4 compression, it takes half that amount of time.
Now, it is compressed and web ready, it has to be uploaded to the web for viewing. For every minute of final video content (of that particular project):
1) Flash Video file size (FLV) is roughly 4 MB (megabytes) of file size per minute of final video (
VIEW Digital Media, LLC's compression).
- Example: if your video is 6 minutes long, it is roughly going to be 24 MB in file size.
2) H264 MP4 file size is roughly 40MB (megabytes) of file size per minute of final video (
VIEW Digital Media, LLC's compression).
-Example: if your videos is 6 minutes long, it is roughly going to be 240 MB in file size.
Now this has to be uploaded to the server. That can take a while to upload via an Internet connection.
There is value in hosting and distributing in both arenas (private video hosting and social media hosting like YouTube). With private hosting, you can control the compression, protect the publicity of the video, and track the analytics of the video's usage. What do I mean protect the publicity of the video content? Well, sometimes the content is not suited for public display or the video is for public display but you do not want individuals to "hack" the video and download to change the message. Private hosting provides safeguards against these situations. The advantages of hosting in social media outlets is that you can allow the public to search specifically for a video as a piece of content. And if the public finds it and likes the content; they can re-post the video to their site or blog, share it with other social media outlets, and it is another place to put that video in the digital world so more audiences can enjoy the content.
Bottom-line...there is tremendous value in hosting the video privately then posting to YouTube and other social media outlets. Ultimately it is about reaching your target audience!
Interested in learning how to compress for YouTube?
Click this link to learn about the export settings for YouTube!
