Internet Video Publishing Advice, Best Practices and Tips ~ Social Media Channel

Mark R Robertson | December 4, 2009

Last month, I had the pleasure of speaking on several panels at PubCon 2009, an industry trade show put on by WebMasterWorld that is programmed specifically for web professionals and website site owners. My favorite, was a session titled, ”Best Practices for Video Creation, Integration and Marketing” where I presented along with our friends Gregory Markel of Infuse Creative and Michael McDonald of WebProNews.

I was asked to cover how best to integrate internet video within your website and I discussed everything from file formats and players to hosting (self-hosting, online video platforms,”social video platforms”) to general best practices for internet video publishing. Below is my presentation – enjoy

Video Publishing & Website Integration Best Practices
To Host or Not to Host – 3 Options for Website Video Publishing Environments
- Self-Hosted
- Online Video Platforms (OVP, e.g. Brightcove)
- Post & Embed (Social video, e.g. YouTube)
- Things to Consider
  - Purpose for video?
    - Sales & Marketing
    - Customer Service, How-to
    - HR, Internal Marketing, Training
  - # Videos
  - Monetization strategy (ROI)
  - IT resources?
  - Need deep integration?
Advantages / Disadvantages
Self-Hosted Video
- Use-Cases
  - Few videos
  - No need for integration
  - Good technical resources
- Advantages
  - Complete control
    - File formats, delivery, players, monetization
- Disadvantages
  - Need resources for:
    - Storage
    - Delivery
    - Integration
Video File Formats
- Use Flash Player/Container – Ubiquitous
  - SWF NOT a movie – player only
- File Formats & Compression?
  - Flv vs. mp4 vs. m4v vs. mov vs. wmv, etc…?
  - .h264 vs. MPEG-2 vs. Vorbis, etc… ?
Recommendations
- Mp4 .h264 codec w/AAC (audio)
  - Highest quality for file size
  - Supported by:
    - Mac, PC, Flash 9+, iTunes
    - Mobile devices (iPhone, etc…)
    - Broadcast
    - Blue-Ray
- Tools for Transcoding
  - Sorenson Squeeze
  - Macromedia Flash Media Encoder
  - Handbrake (free)
  - Encoding.com
  - VideoRX.com
Delivery Best Practices
- Lots of video? – You’ll Need a CDN (content delivery network)
  - Recommendations
    - Amazon S3 + Cloudfront✔
    - Akamai
    - Bitgravity, etc…
- Players
  - Custom branding, interactivity, analytics?
  - Recommendations:
    - JW Player/Longtail✔
    - Flow Player
    - Macromedia Flash
Video Hosting Platforms
- “An online video platform is a free or fee-based self-service platform that offers hosting, encoding, customizable & embeddable players, and metrics for organizations that wish to upload and distribute their own video content.”
Dedicated Video Hosting Platforms – Shopping for an Online Video Platform
- Evaluate Options
  - Monetization
  - Customization
  - Interactivity
  - Analytics
  - DIY or plug-n-play
  - Plugins & API
- Get under the hood – test-drive
  - Most offer free trials
- Month to month agreements
  - What’s their migration policy?
Dedicated Online Video Hosting/Delivery Platforms
- All-Purpose
  - Brightcove
  - Vzaar
  - Fliqz
  - Bitsontherun
  - Ooyala
  - Kaltura
  - Sorenson 360
  - 60 +
- Sales & Marketing
  - Veeple
  - Wistia
- Live
  - Ustream.tv
  - Livestream.tv (formerly Mogulus)
  - Justin.tv
- Wordpress
  - Tons of plug-ins available (JWPlayer, Kaltura, etc…)
  - Video press
Post & Embed – “Social Video Platforms”
- Advantages – Less Expensive, simple to use, social nature
- All – Social nature, destination sites…
- YouTube = Free, easy to use, large audience, etc… (rights->YouTube)
- Vimeo= Inexpensive, HD, customizable player (no products)
- Blip.tv = Cheap, customizable players, ad support, syndication, iTunes
- Viddler= Customizable players, HD, syndication, in-video commenting
Uploading to YouTube
- Recommendations/ Guidelines for Uploading to YouTube
  - HD – best quality, multiple options
  - 16:9 Aspect Ratio Recommended (4:3) letterboxed
  - Resolution
    - HD = 1280×720
    - Else = 640×360 (16:9), 480×360 (4:3)
  - Mp4 file format
  - .h264 video compression
  - AAC or MP3 audio compression
  - Frames per second: 30
  - Maximum length: 10:59 (we recommend 2-3 minutes)
  - Maximum file size: 2 GB (still says 1G, but trust me)
YOUTUBE Hacks & Tricks – Customize Embed Code
- New embed code will be changing soon – currently not XHTML complaint
- Turn off title & ratings
  - &showinfo=0
- Turn off search and related
  - &showsearch=0&rel=0
- Turn off annotations
  - &iv_load_policy=3
- Custom Size? = Use 16:9 + 25px height
  - Width(9)=Height(16) – 25px
- Want a custom player?
  - Use Chrome-less Player (YouTube API)
    - JW FLV Player
Web Video Integration Best Practices
Creating a Video Section – (Multiple Videos)
- Subdirectory vs. subdomain
  - Depends on resources
  - Subdirectory preferred – i.e. site.com/videos/
- Don’t make it difficult for users to find
  - Prominently link to your video section
  - Incorporate video results within your own site search
- Help search engines find your video content
  - MRSS feeds, XML Sitemaps
Creating a Video Landing Page
- 1 Video/URL
- Unique URLS w/Keywords
- Use Embedded Players
  - Not Pop-ups, not lightbox
- Optimize the Video Landing Page
  - SEO principles for titles, URLs, metadata, H1, etc…
  - Keyword anchor text to URLs
  - Provide Context to Surround Video (accessibility/SEO)
  - Contextually related links (products, videos, articles)
  - Related on-page text (tags, transcripts, comments)
  - Best Practices for Video Landing Pages
  - Video Landing Page Anatomy
Other Tips for Website Video
- Consider distribution outside your site
  - YouTube for sure
  - iTunes
  - Tools
    - tubemogul
    - heyspread
- Enable social interactivity
  - People like to share videos
  - Social bookmarking, embedding, commenting & rating
- Create compelling thumbnails
  - Eye-catching
  - Relevant
  - High Quality

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Internet Video Publishing Advice, Best Practices and Tips

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