Introduction

Broadcasting your video on the internet has become very popular. Musicians and bands seeking to promote their music, people making video blogs of their lives, viral producers and makers of short independent films are all taking advantage of the new technologies.

Arguably the 3 most popular ways of getting your video seen on the web are ...

1. Upload clips to your own web site in a compressed format which surfers can download and watch.

2. Setup a streaming server to "broadcast" your video to multiple users.

3. Upload your video to a free video upload site.

The first of these is covered in our articles on preparing video and integrating it into a web site. This article covers the 3rd option.

Video upload sites

There are an ever growing number of video broadcast sites. There are 2 basic types ...

1. File sharing sites which allow you to upload video and then tell your friends about it.

2. Broadcast sites which present uploaded videos and allow users to search, rate and evangelize favourite stuff. These are the sites that surfers return to again and again to browse. They function more like TV channels than mere file sharing sites.

Here are some of the most popular broadcasts sites with some advice on preparing your video so it will look the best.

myspace.com

MySpace.com allows videos to be uploaded in almost any format/codec you can think of. The advice is almost non-existent on this site and you are not told what formats are recommended until the 3rd page of the upload process! We've had success with Windows Media Video and these settings ...

Format/Codec	Windows Media Video/WMV (MPEG-4)
Size	320x240 (4:3), 320x180 (16:9)
Frame rate	20-25
Audio	MP3, 128kbps, 44.1KHz sample rate, mono (speech), stereo (music)

YouTube.com

YouTube.com has better advice on preparing video and although they support a wide range of file formats, they recommend DivX.

Format/Codec	DivX (MPEG-4)
Size	320x240 (4:3), 320x176 (16:9)
Frame rate	25
Audio	MP3, 128kbps, 44.1KHz sample rate, mono (speech), stereo (music)

veoh.com

Veoh.com publishes a list of supported video formats. Because it is a peer to peer file sharing network it seems that video is presented in the format it is uploaded in. We have had success with these settings ...

Format/Codec	Windows Media Video/WMV (MPEG-4)
Size	500x375 (4:3)
Frame rate	25
Audio	MP3, 128kbps, 44.1KHz sample rate, mono (speech), stereo (music)

mobsvideo.com

Mobs Video is a video for mobiles download service. You can submit content by email under 1Mb in size and they will add it to the library if they think it has any entertainment value Its a business!). We haven't tried this service yet.

download.com

download.com offer a free upload and view service. There is a filtering process whereby your submissions must pass an "approval process" before being posted. We used these settings ...

Format/Codec	Windows Media Video/WMV (MPEG4) or QuickTime (Sorenson)
Size	500x375 (4:3), 500x251(16:9)
Frame rate	25
Audio	MP3, 128kbps, 44.1KHz sample rate, mono (speech), stereo (music)

video.google.co.uk

We haven't tried video.google.co.uk yet but you appear to need a Google email account.

mediamax.com

We haven't tried mediamax.com yet either.

www.ifilm.com

www.ifilm.com We tried these settings but our 16:9 video was squeezed back to 4:3. Very nasty! but it played fine.

Format/Codec	Windows Media Video/WMV (MPEG-4) or QuickTime (Sorenson)
Size	500x375 (4:3)
Frame rate	25
Audio	MP3, 128kbps, 44.1KHz sample rate, mono (speech), stereo (music)