Web Promotion Video Samples
 

I do both video, photography, and design work. On my website its easy for me to post samples of my non-video work. With video I run into a variety of problems:

I only have 100mb web storage space. This is adequate for everything I do except video. I don't want change to another provider because I get a good deal $2.50/per month.

The other problem is that the client or prospective client often can't view the video sample because they don't have the right plug-in/codec.

So, am I better off going with something like youtube or some other video hosting service? I'm curious what other videographers do for their web site.

Btw, mine is http://creationdream.com

I've neglected it for a long time and I'm trying to update it to reflect my increased skill and experience with video that I've built up over the last year.

IMO it's not worth it giving up full control over your video. You can do a lot better on your own website.

I have 5GB storage for less than 4 dollars a month and GoDaddy allows me 250GB of transfer per month.

I agree that keeping all your video on your site is very important. You really wouldn't want anyone clicking off your website to go anywhere.

I would just try and upload several formats, then you client has a better shot at watching, although if your client can't see flash, .mov, or wmv, they should update thier freakin machine.

I would recommend Flash Video as your web delivery medium. It has a 99% adoption-rate of Internet-capable computers, compared to a mid-80s rate for QuickTime, meaning they don't need to deal with codecs or other third-party apps like RealPlayer.

We use Flash to deliver our work on our site and it comes out in great quality with acceptable filesizes for broadband users: http://www.titusfilms.com/work/kaddisfly.php

John, your flash video is fairly high quality, but I suspect the bitrate is at 500 kbps or above as my corporate LAN is choking... is that straight flash or ON2VP? What software have you used to compress it?

The 80% QT rate is arguable... most work computers nowadays are PCs (except maybe printing and media businesses, those tend to lean toward Macs) and IT people don't like additional software installed, so they lock computers down; home users are also increasingly aware of the risks of too many programs installed. Even if you want/can install it, without extensive fiddling the picture is washed out on PCs... one of these days Apple should make a more compatible PC version of the QT player...

Windows Media Player on the other hand comes standard with all PCs and in my opinion the picture is much better than both flash and QT at the same bitrate - I have done extensive testing on my own. Keep in mind, I'm talking PCs, I don't know how Macs display these formats.

good feedback thx.

Looks like I need to spend couple of extra bucks on web hosting so I can show my video samples. I'll give godaddy a look.

I think for now I'll try flash delivery because of its high adoption rate. Later down the road I can add Windows Media and/or Quicktime.

I would recommend a flash web based player. This allows everyone to view your work almost instantly if they have a broadband connection. Then, you can add downloadable versions that are in other formats and also offer a higher quality for those who are interested. I think the most important part is to have it playable online, Flash is my recommendation but you can do the same with Quicktime and WMV but just make sure they can click a button and it starts playing while it downloads. People can be impatient. The other benefit of flash as others listed is not only its higher penetration but its install size. If someone doesn't have flash its a 3~4MB download and restart of the browser and your done. Quicktime and Windows Media are upwards of 30MB and normally require a whole system restart.

In the end you will do well to get another web-host or plan that gives you the storage that you need.

I use flash for all of my online videos and then use WMV as my download choice most of the time. If I am putting it into a RSS feed for a vidcast I will use .mp4 with H.264

Josh, that's a very nice flash player interface - where did you get it from?

One observation - clicking on the down arrow does not start the wmv file download; it starts the player and I have to wait for it to buffer before starting to play.

Yeah, I need to work on a PHP script that forces the download, if you are using IE I know it will hand it over to Windows media player to progressive download if it is a wmv. The flash player is one you can get @ http://www.jeroenwijering.com/?item=JW_FLV_Player

I use another tool call Thickbox @ http://jquery.com/demo/thickbox/ to have it come up in its own window on top of the content.

Hopefully I will have some time to work on the download thing a little later this month. It works fine in Safari, Opera, and Firefox though. IE just likes to be helpful :-p

Josh what resolution and frame rate did you use on your web video?

480*270 for widescreen stuff or 320*240 for the 4:3. The frame rate is usually set to source but I later on discovered that my player only does 20FPS, so the newer encodes will only be @ 20FPS. Bit rates are 850Kbps or lower.

Pete,

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You can sign up for the viddia.com partner program and just drop a DVD of your demo in the mail. We do very high quality Flash video encoding and we'll host it for free.

All you have to do is copy and paste the code we generate for you in your website.

Your business will also gain a listing in our upcoming videographer directory to drive new business.

Hope that helps.

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