Getting Your Video Seen
by Gary Woods

Okay, you've got the itch to put together a very cool video but how do you go about it? And once you've got it done, how do you get it seen by as many people as possible?

One of the first things you should look at is what video editor to use. There are lots of video editors out there ranging from free to cheap. One of the coolest is Adobe's Premiere Element's retailing for $99, and another very inexpensive solution is Ulead's $50 editor called MovieFactory. With these programs you can edit your video and then add chapters either manually or automatically with the program's scene detector.

The next thing to do is choose the right format for your production. Windows Media (.wmv) QuickTime (.mov) and Flash (.swf) are all possibilities. Your video editor should offer presets for various connections for this. It's important to pick a slow frame rate and/or a small playback window size, unless you're sure that your viewers will be using broadband connections.

Now to get your video seen, there are free or cheap video-hosting services such as Neptune MediaShare www.neptune.com. Neptune's service costs $59 per year and gives you 150MB of storage space. They even give you a free 3 day trial to see if it works for you. There are also sites which will compress and host your video for free after you register with them. You Tube (www.youtube.com), Ourmedia (www.ourmedia.org), and Google Video (video.google.com/) are all possibilities.

If you have any suggestions or questions for me please drop me a note at garyandlaury@santabarbaraproperties.com or see my column on the Internet at http://www.santabarbaraproperties.com or call me at (805) 729-0910