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If we are good enough to win some contests and get screened at some festivals. most of us count the total audience for one of our movies in the hundreds ...
This puppet tribute to the |
This simple cartoon has |
This tribute to US forces |
Anyone can upload a movie to one of the countless websites which host movies. Many of them allow those movies to be "embedded" - which means they can appear in your club's website, your personal website or sites like this one which celebrate non-commercial moviemaking.
These articles focus on using YouTube - the biggest of the websites which offer free hosting for videos. There are other sites which offer better quality - but YouTube is best known. YouTube is now accepting HD movies - and indeed makes them its first choice - but we will stick to SD movies. The tools and principles we use are applicable to all sorts of websites.
You should clear the copyright on all the contents of your video before uploading. For soundtracks that means in practical terms using royalty-free music from a supplier whose licence specifically allows it. For images it means obtaining permission from any third-party concerned.
This sounds ridiculous when YouTube has mountains of material that is clearly taken from television or professional material and echoes with songs from the music industry. Some artists, especially those whose main appeal is to younger audiences, turn a blind eye to it. Others have insisted that their work is removed. For its part YouTube has been working toward agreements with the major trade bodies concerned. You could take a chance but you might get a lawyer's letter and have the video removed. It is possible, though unlikely, that you might end up in court.
Play safe.
On the other hand you should accept that once your work is out there, it is almost impossible to control what happens to it. People may download it, re-edit it and put it online themselves. The relatively low quality of the YouTube movies means it is not practical for anyone to pass off your film as theirs for any non-computer screening. Our advice is to smile happily and take any such acts as a tribute to your movie.
Internet connections bring files to you (downloading) much faster than sending them out from you (uploading).
| How much YouTube compresses ...
We tried a 46-second trailer:
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YouTube accepts almost any kind of video and presents it as a Flash video of modest size watchable on almost any computer with a fast internet connection. Uploading video from a mobile-phone is easy - the movie is already small. Sending full-sized video of the kind we make is possible but very slow. |
Do not upload full size AVI or MOV files
The shrinking and processing that web services apply to movies degrades quality.
Send them the best quality but in a sensible format so that the result is
as good as it can be:
Many computer editing programs have output options which do this for you. It is possible to use Windows Movie Maker and Apple iMovie - those simple video editing tools have output options designed for internet use. There are also stand-alone computer programs to do it.
Be careful about using standard output settings marked "web". Standards change rapidly. What was appropriate when your editor was written a few years ago is probably out-of-date now. Until recently "web" settings were intended to create tiny, poor quality movies whose only advantage was they were small enough to watch on a dial-up internet connection. Check out any more advanced/custom options offered.
We suggest a picture size of 640x480 ( (480x272 for widescreen) and settings like these:
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Don't worry what all the technical terms mean -
look for settings like these ones in the options of |
That should let you get a 6 minute movie within the YouTube file size limit. For longer films you will have to settle for less than 2Mb/second and slightly reduced quality.
You can do the preparation with a separate computer program. Canopus ProCoder will do a great job, but it costs a lot.
| There are many excellent free encoders and our preference is for "open
source" options.
There are two main "packages" of video compression tools which bundle up other programs and give them a relatively friendly "front end" to use: Super© and MediaCoder. We provide step-by-step guides to using them. |
Most "open source" programs are free - they are written
by enthusiasts who make the program code freely available for others to use
and adapt. With the code open to scrutiny they are unlikely to have any hidden
nasties built-in (though be sure to get "open source" programs from the writer's
own website or through the
sourceforge website.
Other suppliers may have added their own hidden extras!)
The catch is that these programs are often written by geeks for geeks. They work very well but are not always user-friendly. |
Once your movie is prepared, what do you do next ? We have a step-by-step
guide to uploading as well.
