Alternatives to YouTube for the poor video maker, and some great news.

NOTE: While the news of Rogers layoffs in their publishing and media departments wasn't very encouraging, there was some very good news to be had - mastheadonline.com is going to keep on trucking and stay online. Congratulations to Marco Ursi and Doug Bennett! The site is a treasure, and an anchor to those of us in online publishing.

I had to start out with that, as it has made my day. Alright, back to work.

Man. Making videos is expensive. (my segues need work)

I love making videos for web, and when I do it for work I use pretty decent equipment and software which they provide for me. Since most of the costs were more or less transparent to me, I had little idea what I was getting into when I decked myself out with video gear.

I bought a high-def camcorder, a bag, a lens maintenance kit, a tripod, some microphones, an audio interface for recording vocals into my editing software, a new MacBook, and some other goodies.

That was the easy part. In 60 or 70 more months I'll have most of that stuff paid for.

The software for working on video - if you choose to be legal and above-board like I do - costs at least as much as the hardware (at least at the level of my gear - hardware and software both can go through the roof for top-notch stuff). I have software for video editing, audio recording and editing, motion graphics and 3D modeling, plus a slew of other software tools to get my videos looking slick. Never mind the cost of stock images, video clips and sounds.

All told I spent roughly 91% of what my wife's lawyer said she would need me to spend for a judge to believe I had gone crazy and grant her that divorce she's been gunning for.

That said, I'm still 9% on the good side of that pitfall, so a-videomaking I will go. I have learned some filming techniques, some tripod tricks and have been given some audio guidance from a couple of broadcasting gurus and some friends I've made playing in bands over the years.

Well, now that I've got all of that stuff and know what I'm doing I can show the world what I'm capable of. Since I don't own a television station (yet) I'll shoot it online. As it turns out, a solid streaming server costs more than all of my gear and software combined, so that's out of the question. I could rent server space, create a video player in Flash and embed that in my website, but that sure seems like a pain, and it sounds like an expensive route to go as well.

To get your video online without breaking the bank there are a number of great websites for hosting videos.

Let's take a quick look at some of them. If you know of any great ones that I've missed, send me a comment or write to me at rfairley@gmail.com.

First of all, there are some common features which make all of these sites attractive to Web content folks, such as the ability to generate code to embed videos right into your HTML, low-cost Pro accounts that allow for bigger specs like video length, storage space and file size.

Check out russfairley.com/video.html to see some videos embedded from Vimeo, Photobucket and Blip.tv.

Let's go:

YouTube - This is the biggest video site on the Internet, and for sheer exposure nothing beats it. Now that it offers an option to watch videos in "high quality" it doesn't have to feel like watching cell phone videos anymore. With community-oriented features such as the ability to set up your own "channel" and subscribe to other peoples' channels, and email back and forth with other users, YouTube has retooled to compete with newer offerings as well as other Web 2.0 community sites like MySpace and Facebook (not all of us want to show off our personal info but we might just like showing off videos).

Vimeo - with Vimeo you can upload 500MB of high-def videos to your profile for free each week. The videos are stored in your profile and you have the option to make them public or private. Community-based features such as groups, digg.it-esque features such as "likes", the ability to download your original video file which Vimeo hangs on to for you, a nice looking player, and the awesome video quality make Vimeo a really sensible choice. Pro accounts up your weekly limit to 2GB.

Blip.tv - a super-cool newcomer, blip.tv basically encourages you to create your own online program, like a TV show, and it doesn't charge you a dime. Your profile is your channel, and the videos you upload to it are your episodes. You can choose to show advertising in the forms of preroll, postroll, an overlaid ad at the bottom of your video, or a sponsored links page after the episode, and you get paid for the clicks you get. You might not get rich, but maybe you will - your videos are probably better than mine! Blip.tv also features community-type stuff like commenting and subscriptions to programs. The player is also really nice, so you'll feel good embedding it within your website.

Photobucket - more of an online image and video storage site with a few community-oriented features, Photobucket is a decent option with nice video quality if you're not looking for high-def support (if it's there I haven't found it, and I've got a Pro account), but as the #1 image storage and display site in the United States, they aren't really gunning for the video crowd. Still, back when uploading to YouTube degraded your video quality to near-garbage, Photobucket seemed like the ONLY option.

Flickr - Another still image powerhouse, Yahoo's Flickr has recently added the option for Pro members to upload and share their videos, but short, small-file-sized videos are the order of the day. Limitations are 90 seconds or 150MB (whichever comes first, I guess). They don't seem to want your attempt at a feature-length film - they want artistic video shorts, or a "long picture". Cool idea, but I'm making an episodic program called Space Movie chock full of terrible effects and lame dialog (dialogue? I need to go back to school...), so I need more juice than Flickr.

There are many others, such as Google Video (which keeps getting better) which I've played around with. I kind of wonder if Google will roll their technology into their chief Flickr competitor, Picasa/Picasaweb, and give artists the ability to upload videos longer than 90 seconds to their artsy profiles (I could add my Space Movie - can you imagine?).

Well that ought to help you get your masterpieces online and looking sharp. I'll give you tips with editing footage and creating cool graphics for your movies in upcoming blogs.

A quick opinion: With advertisers pulling back on Web budgets it is my opinion that right now it is imperative that publishers progress their New Media plans so that they are in a strong position with plenty of products to market when the economy picks back up - they need to proove that they can create compelling, sponsorship-worthy content. Many companies are getting rid of Web content staff and video creation talent. If you want to have video online and you want to make money with it at any point in the future, keep at it now and hang on to your staff so you're in good shape down the road.

I digress...

Have fun and keep making videos! The more the merrier. I'm going to go look up dialog...dialogue...dye a log? Meh.

Rock on!

- Russ