Distribution: Web Video for Beginners

The advent of video-sharing websites and the increasing ubiquity of broadband internet connections are shifting the role of video on the web from an occasional bit player to a regular lead actor. Web-based video technologies have exploded in number and complexity, making it more confusing than ever to figure out how to integrate video content with your website. So where to start?

This article won't get into the nitty-gritty details of programming code, but we will give you the basic information necessary to make informed decisions about how and where to add video to your site.

Before you begin thinking about the technical details, the first thing you need to consider is why you want video on your site. If your answer is something like, "because I want everyone to see my home video of my granddaughter's birthday party," your subsequent decisions are going to be very different from those you'll have if you're putting a demo reel up in the hopes that some Hollywood producer will stumble by your site and decide you're the next Spielberg or Scorsese.

Once you know why you want video, your next step is to consider its presentation on your site: where does it go, and how will it look? Do you want to embed the video in your website? In other words, do you want a little screen, on which the video plays, to appear right in the middle of your home page?

Perhaps your video is too large to embed, or you might have too many videos on one page of your site to comfortably fit them all. In that case, you may prefer to have your target audience click a link that opens the video in a separate window, either for immediate viewing or a later download. For the sake of comfort and eyestrain, it's typically more acceptable to embed short, small clips, while giving longer, larger movies their own windows.

Whether you're embedding or not, there are a couple of rules of thumb to follow when putting a video on your site. The first is to put any video or audio at least once click deep. You should not assault visitors who have just arrived at your site with motion and sound; instead they should click an item to request that playback.

The second rule is to have a caption and graphic for every video you're embedding, with some indicator of where to click. Even if it's just a small still shot with a "Click Here" caption, it's important to give the viewer some sense of what they're about to watch and how they're supposed to get to it.

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