File Format Selection for Video Blogging and Uploading

Unlike podcasts, which should be uploaded in .mp3 file format, videos can be uploaded in one of several different formats. The format you choose depends largely on how big the video file is, the player that you are using the call the video on the server, and of course on your personal preference.

There are easy ways to get your video to display on your blog, and hard ways. Obviously, you want the easiest possible method, so that is all we are going to cover here.

The easiest possible way to display your video on your blog is to first upload the video file to a site such as Google Video at http://video.google.com or YouTube at http://www.youtube.com.

Install a video plugin for your WordPress blog. There are numerous plugins to choose from, and they can be seen in the WordPress Codex, which is located at http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins/Video. The one that seems to work the best is call WordPress Video Plugin.

You can choose any file format that is supported by the site where you are uploading the video initially. We’ve mentioned Google Video and YouTube, but other possibilities are Clip Fish, Daily Motion, Vimeo, Video Tube, Uncut, Grouper, Revver, Blip TV, Metacafe, My Video Break, and Seven Load.

You simply save your video in a supported file format, upload it to the external site that you have chosen, navigate to the control panel for your blog, and use the WordPress Video Plugin to get your video to appear on your blog. You can then edit the blog post, where the video appears, to include your text.

Again, this is the easiest possible method. Furthermore, you won’t have to worry about using up your server disk space to store your videos, as they are stored externally. However, this only works if you are using a WordPress blog, with the WordPress Video Plugin.

If this is not the case, you will have to use a harder method. First, let’s discuss file format. Choices are MPG (Moving Picture Experts Group), RAM (Real Audio, Real Video), MOV (QuickTime Files), AVI (Audio Video Interleave), ASF (Advanced Streaming Format), WMV (Windows Media Video), SWF or FLV (Flash).

Make it easier on yourself, and your users, by either choosing the FLV/SWF format or the WMV format. Note that Windows Media Videos (WMV) can be played on computers that are not running Windows software, such as Macintosh.

Once you’ve uploaded the video – either to your server or to a file storage service – you have to do one of two things to make it available to others. You either have to link to it, or embed it. The best course of action for a video blog is to embed it. Of course, you need code that is specific to the file format for embedding to work.

Code can be extremely hard to understand. Your best option is to have video file converter software that will convert your files to the format that you’ve chosen, and then generate the code for your page for you. Some video editing software will also do this for you. You can also use one of the various free, online generators as well.

For software that will convert and give you the code to embed your video, consider using the same software that was recommended for both podcasting and video blogging: Internet Audio and Video at http://www.internet-audio-video.com. This will convert your video to the best possible format, and generate the code that you need to instantly publish the video on your webpage or blog post.

A fantastic web based code generator can be found through the Center for Instructional Technology at http://cit.ucsf.edu/embedmedia/step1.php. It supports Flash, Real Media, Quick Time, and Windows Media. It is free to use.

Once the video is appearing on our site, you will of course want to watch it completely, and consider watching it on different computers with different Internet Connection speeds. Be absolutely sure that it is working correctly, as sometimes things get scrambled during the uploading process. If this happens, delete the file from the server, and try uploading again.

You may also consider adding a simple link to the video file so that users can opt to download it in order to watch it locally on their machine, in the event that they have a slow connection. This will also cut down on some of your bandwidth usage.

As mentioned earlier, you must include a paragraph that describes your video blog post. If you don’t, it won’t get indexed in the search engines, because as far as the search engines are concerned, there won’t be anything to index. A paragraph is sufficient, but you shouldn’t go anymore than two paragraphs with the text, and be sure to include your keywords.

You may also want to consider adding any website links that are mentioned in the blog post to the textual part of the post. After the description, you could just make another paragraph with ‘referenced links.’

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