Making Videos in Easy Steps

At our present level of technology, including high speed internet and Flash video, it is possible to stream high quality video to most internet users. Two thirds of all US internet users have high speed connections and 95% already have free Flash players installed on their computers.

However all video formats will quickly eat up your server space and it will take most of your available bandwidth to stream a quality presentation to your viewers. The more viewers you have at any given time, then the more bandwidth you need to deliver your video to each viewer. As a viewer you have no doubt had the experience of waiting for a video to load (buffering), only to have it freeze, re-buffer, and so on. These problems can now be limited with some planning.

Your ISP will likely want to charge you if you exceed the server storage space and bandwidth limits you’re currently paying for. So, a little planning can often save you money and will certainly help you produce and deliver a top quality video experience to your viewers.

Planning Your Video Production. Creating a quality viewing experience for your viewers should be your main focus as you plan your video. Spending time here before turning on your camcorder will pay dividends in the end.

Before you shoot any video, you need to consider the size of the streaming video player you will use to show your video. Take a look around the internet and see what sizes are most popular. These sizes are the most used, measured in pixels, 240×180, 320×180, 320×240, 448×252, 480×360

It then becomes a balance between how much detail needs to be seen on the screen size and the amount of bandwidth used for that screen size. Talking head videos work quite well in the smaller players but some subjects and topics don’t. Videos with action or detail do not view as good in the smaller sizes. If you are getting started in video and just want to use head shots of yourself discussing a topic then the 240×180 and 320×240 are fine. Note these both have a ratio of 1.333r which, to me, looks best.

Presentation videos such as screen capture videos usually perform quite well in the larger video players. But before you load up the biggest player possible for every video, remember that bandwidth limitations usually dictate that you use the smallest player possible. You may need to compromise either in the size of the player used or in the way you shoot your video.