Your Online Presence > Delivering Services Through Your Website, Strategy & Development

An Introduction to Effective Use of Video on the Web

By Simon Fairway, Juvi Media

This article provides an overview of the major issues that are faced by anyone that wants to include video as part of their web offering. It provides justification for the use of video in website, and outlines the major points to consider during the production phase. It discusses the major file formats and looks at the different distribution options. Finally, it analyses some of the legal and accessibility issues in using video.

Introduction

In recent years, the website has become an increasingly important medium for communication between third sector organisations and their supporters. As the technology has developed, consumers of digital information have become used to an ever richer mixture of content that blends video, audio, and interactivity to the web staples of text and pictures.

Appropriate use of video can transform a text heavy website that is difficult to digest, into a rich multimedia experience. A three-minute introductory film can give a visitor a more compelling and profound introduction to a charity’s work than a page of words and pictures. A video case study is more evocative than a written account.

When choosing how to incorporate video into your web strategy, you will need to consider many factors including budget, accessibility, and quality. Usually your decision will involve some kind of compromise between these.

Production Considerations

In any video production it is crucial to remember your audience, but this can be even more important when you are distributing video via the Internet. Your typical viewer will be sat in front of their computer at their desk, having made a decision to come to your website. They have found you, but they have an almost infinite number of distractions a single click of the mouse away.

• Keep it Short. There is no strict rule about the maximum length of the video, but it is sensible to try and keep it under three minutes if possible.
• Use Appropriate Equipment. You do not need expensive camera equipment to produce good quality video, especially as your video is going to be compressed for the web anyway. Good DV cameras start from around £400, but for ‘broadcast quality’, expect to pay around £2,500. A good tripod is an absolute necessity.
• Think Small: To keep the size of files down, video is generally displayed with a relatively small frame size (typically around 320 x 240 pixels).  Viewers will not be able to see small details on the screen in the way that they would on television, so bear this in mind when filming. Also make sure that any titles take this into account, use a large font size and keep the amount of text on the screen to a minimum.
• Good Sound: A viewer will forgive video that is not perfectly composed or camerawork that is a bit shaky, but if the sound is bad, you will lose them instantly. The onboard microphone on most cameras is generally not up to scratch, so invest £100 on a good clip or boom microphone.
• Music: The choice of music is critical to any video production. The right choice will evoke strong feelings of empathy and add meaning to the imagery. For small budgets, go for Creative Commons music or a royalty-free provider such as IB Audio. If you have a bit more money, then professional production music is a good option, with Extreme Music being a good place to start.
• Appropriate Editing Software: For simple video pieces, Moviemaker (for the PC – requires Windows XP), or iMovie (for the Mac) are free and quite easy to pick up quickly. Other free editors include the open source Avidemux and Avisynth. For more professional work, consider Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro.

You may find yourself in the position of wanting to use existing video footage on your website. Where possible, you should start from the original uncompressed editing ‘project’ and export the video to a file and format suitable for the web.

If you only have a copy of the film on DVD, it is possible to ‘rip’ the footage and convert it into an appropriate format for the web. There is some free software available, but a good professional option is DVDXDV Pro. AOA Media provide decent DVD ripping software, and their free trial version allows users rip up to 10 minutes of video (which should be plenty for any web use).

Generally speaking the quality of ripped footage is fine, but it is a lower quality source than original footage (video is compressed before it is added to a DVD).

Clearance

To avoid expensive reworking, additional editing, and litigation in the worst case, it is important that you have clearance for all elements in your film. This includes any individuals who are the subject of the film, anyone that is interviewed, or anyone in any other way important to the narrative of the film. These individuals will need to sign a ‘release form’, A good example can be found at the Media College website.

File Formats

The most commonly used formats are Flash (.flv or .swf), Quicktime (.mov), Windows Media (.wmv or .wma), Real Player (.rm or .ram), and MPEG (.mpg or .mpeg).

There seems to be consensus within the new media industry that Flash will cement its place as the format of choice for video on the web in the next few years. It is considered the most efficient medium for distributing videos, with a smaller file size for an equivalent quality relative to the other formats. It integrates exceptionally well into websites, and it has much more scope for interactivity. Flash is also the most accessible form of video with around 95% of Internet enabled PC’s able to play it (compared to 83% for Windows Media, 67% for Quicktime, and 55% for Real Player).

It is possible to convert video between formats, and there is free and low-cost software available on the Internet such as Aone Converter, or the more expensive but better quality Autodesk Cleaner.

Distribution

Once you have a finished post-production of your film or made the appropriate adaptations to existing films for use on the web, it is time to think about your means of distribution.

Download from Website:

This is the simplest and quickest way to get video onto the Internet.  Video is uploaded to the website, and is assigned a URL. A link to the video’s URL is provided from one of the website pages. When the user clicks on the link, they are directed to the page that contains the video. You may also want to offer different sized versions of the same film so that viewers can pick the appropriate one for their Internet connection. This could be important if a significant number of your audience are from low-income families or live in developing countries.

The big advantage of this approach is that, so long as users are consuming video on a relatively small scale, you will not incur any additional costs and will not have to change your existing hosting package. Unfortunately, the calculations made by media players to ensure smooth playing of downloading material do not sufficiently allow for fluctuations in connection speed, meaning that pauses are common, even with a broadband connection.

Secondly, video files tend to be relatively large, meaning that if you have monthly data transfer limits on your web hosting package you may find that you reach these quickly and will need to upgrade your package if the volume of viewers increases significantly. 

Embedded Video (Free):

A great zero cost option is to take advantage of new video sharing sites such as Google Video, YouTube, or MetaCafé to embed video content in your website.  They encode your video into their respective versions of the Flash format, before making it available within their online community. They also provide a piece of HTML code which you can add to your own website, allowing you to ‘embed’ the video (view an example). The portion of your web page that appears to contain your video, is essentially ‘pointing’ to hosts site.

Apart from being free, the main benefit of using the video sharing sites, is that you do not have to worry about hosting the video yourself and there is no limit to how many people download your video. The size and power of the hosts servers means that the service works well, the video streams smoothly with a good connection with rarely any buffering.  However, the quality can often be disappointing.  Also the hosts have complete control over the distribution of your video and they retain the right to remove your video without explanation.

Embedded Video (Paid):

If you have a budget for the distribution of your video, then a good option is to pay a specialist company to host your video for you. This works in a very similar way to the free services outlined above, in the sense that you provide a copy of your film, which they upload onto their servers. You are then provided with some HTML code to include in your website. Hosting services are available for all of the major file formats and prices start from around £20 per month, although if your video becomes very popular, you may incur extra costs.

When you pay, you get far more control over the quality. The providers can give you expert advice on the optimum size of video to ensure that it streams properly at the highest possible resolution. You have control over the branding (if any), and as a paying customer, you have a comeback if there are any technical problems.  Reputable companies are IWS Hosting and Stream City.

Video Emails:

A relatively new medium, but a potentially very exciting way of communicating with your supporters. The company that offer it, Stream City, claim that this system will work for the ‘vast majority’ of emails. 

Video Podcasts:

If you are considering producing and distributing video on a regular basis, then a video podcast is an excellent way of doing this efficiently. Basic video podcast hosting packagaes such as the offering from Podcast FM start from around £10 per month.

Accessibility

Accessibility can be a big issue when it comes to including video on your website. Reaching the international standards of best practice will not always be possible, so a pragmatic approach is important. Try to ensure:

• Video is used sparingly, and only where it enhances the message
• Links to video content should include the format and size of video downloads, and the length in minutes of seconds.
• Links to video content should be coded so that they are identified by ‘screen reader’ equipment allowing them to be recognised by visually impaired visitors
• An alternative delivery method for video should be provided where possible. Users may not be able to hear the video but still require the information. Provide a text transcript as an alternative.
  Media Access Generator (MAGpie) is free tool for generating video captions and there's also documentation on creating MAGpie video subtitles to help.

Publicise It!

Once you have successfully included video content as part of you web offering, it is important to try and make sure that as many of your supporters as possible get to see it. If you use a electronic mailer system, you can publicise new video content to your supporters as and when it is uploaded. You could also provide a link to this page on the bottom of your email signature, so that everyone that you correspond with is one click away from accessing your film. If you have supporters taking part in events, encourage them to include the link to the film in their fundraising correspondence.

Further Resources

For a more detailed look at this issue see the extended guide (PDF 373Kb) on the  Juvimedia website.