Web Developer Class: Getting Your Video On The Web
You will need a few things to get started: a computer with internet access, video edtiting software and a video recorder of some type,
Video Recording Device
A digital camcorder is the best way to go. Most of these have built-in hard drives and accept flash memory cards. These are better simply because your video is already in a digital format.You may also use certain digital cameras that are capable of both video and audio capture. These are normally stored on a removable flash memory card and can be accessed much the same way you access your pictures via a USB transfer cable, Firewire or a memory card reader.
You may of course use an analog camcorder but then you must also have a video capture device and encoding software like iMovie or Windows MovieMaker to convert the signal from analog to digital.
Whatever you use the goal is to get your digital video in to your PC so we can start the video editing process.
Video Editing Software
Now that you have captured your video and moved it to your PC you are ready to edit it using whatever video compression software you have chosen. There are a few free ones, but I prefer either Camtasia or Pinnacle Studio though these can be pricey.First we must choose what format we want to use to get our video on the web. There are several formats out there, .avi, .mpeg, .wmv, .flv, .swf, .mov and more. Most browsers these days support Flash so I prefer .flv.
Now that we have chosen our format we need to reduce the file size. Digital videos can be very large and must be reduced to shorten the download time for users, you can do this by, editing out the unnecessary parts, shrinking the resolution from 640x480 to 320x240. or reducing the frame rate. In most cases the latter two options are normally found within the "Produce Video" settings of the video production software.
