How To Create And Upload Your Own Streaming Video Commercials For The Internet

This page contains tips on how to create your own video and upload them to the server.

If you have your own video camcorder and can take some decent shots, you should be able to create some commercials on your home computer to upload to this website.

Powerful computers and large hard drives are common today and there are many commercial and freeware professional video editing packages available for PC, Mac and Linux. So regardless of whatever type of computer you have, you should be able to produce and upload your own videos to this website. So what do I do to get started you ask? The first step is to gather together all the tools and equipment you will need. This will be:

1. A good quality camcorder to shoot your video footage
2. A reasonably powerful computer to capture and edit the video from the camcorder
3. Video editing software to edit the videos such as Windows Moviemaker or Apple iMovie
4. Photo editing application to create graphics and titles for your video such as the "Gimp". Although this software is described as a "Poor Mans' Photoshop" because it is Open Source (free) it is top-of-the-line image editing software and can do anything you will ever want for video titles.

After you get the tools to do the job, you will need to learn how to use them. This will only come with practice and experience. We will not tell you how to edit your videos in this tutorial or how to capture video onto your computer. There are many free tutorials available on the Internet to teach you how to use video editing software like Windows Moviemaker or Apple iMovie.

You can buy some very affordable video capture cards for less than $50 and if you have a Firewire or USB Camcorder, you should be able to capture and edit digital video on your home or office computer. Note that typical webcams do not record high quality 30 frame-per-second video unless they are ultra-high resolution.

Getting Started - Capture and Edit Video

Many beginners to video editing using Microsoft Operating Systems start with Windows Moviemaker for Windows XP which is installed with XP Servcie Pack 2. It is not professional, but it is a good program to start with because it is simple, intuitive, and very easy to use.

• You can download the Moviemaker program directly from the Microsoft website.
• Microsoft also has free tutorials on their website that teach how to use Moviemaker.
• Other high quality free video editing programs are available for download such as:

1. JASHAKA (Windows, Linux, Mac OSX)
The worlds first open source, hardware accelerated video editing and special effects editing system! Well worth it to download, install, and to experiment making video. Visit their site at: http://www.jahshaka.org/

2. BLENDER (Windows Linux Mac OSX, Solaris)
model • shade • animate • render • composite • interactive 3d
Blender is the free open source 3D compositing, content creation and video editing suite that is available for all major operating systems. http://www.blender.org/

3. VIRTUAL DUB (32-bit Windows platforms 95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP)
A powerful freeware video editor program with lots of features, including a choice of compression codecs, video splitting, addition of multiple audio tracks. Excellent. Visit their website at: http://www.virtualdub.org/

4. WAX (32-bit Windows platforms 95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP)
Wax is a high performance and flexible video compositing and special effects software. The idea for Wax is to be very general purpose and flexible in video compositing and specical effects, so that you can compose your videos quickly and easily without going through a long learning process to learn how to use it. http://www.debugmode/wax/

5. ZWEI-STEIN (32-bit Windows platforms 95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP)
Zwei-Stein v3 is a freeware non-linear, non-destructive video compositing and editing system which offers many advanced features unavailable in any other program. With Zwei-Stein you can edit up to 256 video tracks, audio and still image clips, each with up to 64 effects chained serially together. Cropping, panning and custom effects are all done easily with automatic key frames. http://www.thugsatbay.com/

Once you have finished your video, you will need to output the file and upload it to your account on the web server. This is where most people have a problems and get stuck. Producing quality results can take a little bit of practice and experimentation. Some people simply give up if they find it too difficult to learn how to create good quality video that will play and download over the Internet correctly.

People who are just learning produce videos most often create video that looks really good and plays well on their computer BUT which streams badly over the Internet once they upload it. Video that stops repeatedly as it is playing on the Internet is caused because the video is downloading slower than it plays.  This condition is called "buffering". To ensure that progressive download video runs well on the Internet,  you must output it so it will play SLOWER than it downloads. It usually takes people some time and experimentation with their software to discover the right video output settings to give them good video quality AND performance.

The question we are asked most often is, "how do I output my video so that what I upload will be the maximum level of quality?". The second most common question is, "what format and size do I output to give me maximum quality and performance?". We will answer these questions and more in this tutorial to help you get started.

The Video Encoding Process

The video format we use on this web server  is Adobe Flash FLV.

This is because it provides high quality and can be played on any web browser regardless of the operating system that is installed. People viewing video do not need any special player installed other than the standard Adobe Flash plugin installed their web browser. This includes all major web browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape, SeaMonkey, Safari and Opera. Other video formats such as WMV, MOV, and Real Video do not play universally in all web browsers on all computer system without special software installed whereas Adobe FLASH has become a standard format on the Internet. After you have finished editing your video and are ready to output the file from your software, you will want to give some thought to the following technical issues:

1. What should be the FRAME SIZE of the output video?
2. What is the FRAME RATE for the output video?
3. What should be the CODEC of the output video?
4. What should be the FORMAT of the output video?

When you capture the video on your computer using a standard DV Camcorder, you will be recording at a full screen size of 720 x 480 pixels that will allow it to play full screen in high quality. The compression ratio for DV video is 5:1 so every 100mb of video would actually be 500mb if it was not compressed. Such high quality requires very large hard drives for storage and editing and they must be converted to another format for them to download and play properly over the Internet.

Regardless of whatever format of video you choose to upload to web our server, all videos are automatically converted to Adobe Flash FLV format at a screen size of 425x350 pixels so that they will fit into the video player that you will be able to embed onto your website. Although they are stored a half screen size, they can be played back in the web browser at full screen.

The videos are converted using the highest possible quality setting using the On2 VP6 FLV codec from 300kbps up to 700kbps so that will stream over the Internet properly. Everybody wants the highest possible quality for their videos that they upload; but remember, people with slower Internet will not be able to play them until they download 100% onto their computers. If you upload video at a streaming data rate that is TOO FAST such as 1000kbps or greater, you get perfect quality BUT the video might not download fast enough and it will stop playing half way through playing. Remember that PROGRESSIVE DOWNLOAD videos play as they download. They should be made so they PLAY FASTER THAN THEY DOWNLOAD otherwise you will get very poor streaming performance. To create optimal quality for the videos you upload to our server, we suggest you follow these steps to produce videos: 

1. EDIT THE VIDEO using your software so they look and play the way you want at a small screen size.
2. OUTPUT THE VIDEO from your software at a frame size of 425x350 OR 320x240 if you are using DV.
3. OUTPUT THE VIDEO at a frame rate of 250kbps (fast downloads, good quality) up to 700kbps (slower download, high quality). To make the video smaller, change the video from 30fps to 15fps speed.
4. OUTPUT THE VIDEO to FLV (using Premiere Elements) OR as DV (in .avi or .mov format) or mpeg2.
5. CONVERT THE VIDEO using freeware software like Riva Encoder if you did not output to FLV.
6. PREVIEW THE VIDEO on your computer using a player such as Free FLV Player v2.
7. UPLOAD THE VIDEO to your account once you are happy with the results and everything looks good on your computer. If you encode the video to high quality FLV before you upload, the results will be "WYSIWYG" so that what you see is what you get.
8. TEST THE VIDEO to make sure it streams properly with the settings you used to create the video. Sometimes a video will play very well on your computer but will perform badly over the Internet.

It is not necessary to encode the video before you upload it to the server. The server will automatically convert your video into the right Flash FLV video format and screen size when you upload it. 

However, the conversion process will take some time to complete, from 1/2 hour up to 2 hours depending on how many videos were uploaded by others before you. As a basic rule, the bigger the file is, the longer it will take the automatic conversion system to encode your video and post on the Internet. If you upload in any other format than Flash FLV, will not be able to view the quality of the final video until it is done. By uploading the video as FLV, you skip the conversion process and get precise results.

There are two different types of FLV formats; one is the Sorenson FLV and the other is the On2 VP6. The On2 FLV usually produces outstanding video quality and is incuded in commercial software such as Adobe Premiere Elements v3. Video that is not encoded to FLV can be uploaded in many different formats such as:

* Standard MPEG1 or MPEG2
* Microsoft Windows .avi, .asf and .wmv
* Apple Quicktime .mov and .mp4
* RealVideo .rm and .ram
* Standard DIVX .avi 

Uploading Video To The Website

To begin to upload your video you must first login to your account you have previously setup on the website. You must also verify your email address. From the main screen, click on the UPLOAD screen link and enter your username and password.

If you have forgotten your username and password you can have it emailed to the address you signed-up with originally. Click on the Forgot Your Password? link to go there. Once you LOGIN you will go directly to your PROFILE SCREEN where you can EDIT your personal profile, UPLOAD a photo, or ADD COMMENTS to describe yourself. Click on the UPLOAD button again to go to the Video Upload Screen. 

In this screen you will be able to give the video a title, a description and (most important) the TAGS that will describe the video when someone does a search for it on the main page of the website.

You will also see a list of pre-defined VIDEO CHANNELS that your video will be included in. Click from one to three channels you think that apply. You cannot do any more than three. The video title should not be long but should be detailed; you can give a detailed explanation of what the video is about in the description. Don't worry if you make a mistake...you can also EDIT THIS VIDEO later if you want.

A good example of a title might be, "Monthly Computer Store Specials" or "Learning How To Sell Real Estate". Click the CONTINUE button when you are done. If you forget to complete something you will be alerted before you will be able to continue.The next screen that appears will allow you to BROWSE FOR VIDEOS on your computer to upload.

Click on the BROWSE button and locate the file you want to upload to the server on your computer.

Videos you upload cannot be larger than 100MB; this is one other good reason you should convert your videos to FLV format before you upload them; they will be smaller than if they were uncompressed.

If you make your video PUBLIC any person that visits the website can view your videos. Private videos are not displayed automatically; they can only be viewed if you click on a link at your website or in an email. Videos can also be embeddded into your business website so that they will display and play on your site but will be stored on our web server. This is important because many web hosting companies do not allow streaming video on their servers.

Make your videos PRIVATE if you don't want the competition to see your advertisements. We reserve the right to delete any video if we determine it to be obsene or offensive to the public.

When you finished, click the UPLOAD button to begin the process of transmitting the video file to the web server. A progress bar will appear indicating how much of the file has been received.

After the file is uploaded, you will receive an email notice that the file has been put into your account but it may take a while to display on the internet. PLEASE BE PATIENT WHILE YOUR VIDEO IS ENCODED AND PUT ONTO THE WEB SERVER. The server processes video files one after another, so if one or more persons have uploaded really big files before you it might a while to get done. There is no way to tell how many people have uploaded videos into the system before you.

Once completed, the UPLOAD SUCCESS screen will appear that will provide you with a link you the location of your video on the server. You will need to record this link address if you video is private. Two different links will appear; one is the VIDEO URL (permalink) used if you want to send someone an email, and the other is the EMBED VIDEO link that you can use to copy and paste onto your website.

You can optionally fill out date, time and location details about the video, also the city, location and country it where it was recorded. If you want to upload another video to your account click on the link at the top of the page. When you are done, make sure you LOG OUT of your account.

Testing Your Videos on the Internet

The last thing you need to do once you have uploaded your video is to check to make certain it is streaming properly over the Internet to your computer.

To do this, you should click on the video link at the top of the final UPLOAD page that appears and you will go to the video. Do this BEFORE you upload any more videos to check that everything is working properly with the videos you are uploading.

If it is not streaming correctly, you may have created it with a BITRATE that is too high OR your high speed Internet connection may not be working properly in your home or office.

However, if all the other videos on our website and on other sites such as YouTube are playing poorly on your computer, you should contact your Internet Service Provider (ISP) to troubleshoot your network connection.

The Internet will slow down in some cities on weekends and holidays due to network traffic so your location might not be able to view the video playing correctly from our web server.

If this is your problem, please check with other people on the Internet to see if your video is playing correctly with them. You might be having Internet connection problems or a slow computer, especially if you are using a wireless network.

Please do not contact us about problems with your ISP as we cannot do anything about slow Internet service.

THANK YOU FOR CHOOSING TIPWIZE.COM

Revised June 30, 2008