Basics

Here I will cover the basic steps to putting a video on the internet, focusing on the second to last step, choice of format.

The Steps

The poor person's guide to putting a video on the internet go as follows:
  1. Shoot video with digital video camera.
  2. Plug camera into computer and upload the footage you like.
  3. Edit the footage into a nice movie using your favourite software.
  4. Export the video in a format which is recognised or easily played by all known systems.
  5. Find a webserver and write a web page with the video in it.

I will dwell on the fourth point. Basically you need to export your video in a format which will allow anybody's web browser to see and play the video. The video player comes as a "plug-in" which must generally be downloaded separately and installed on the computer of the person who is viewing the video. This last point to do with choice of video format is a difficult one to justify. I chose the quicktimeformat because I liked the controller that was offered and I like apple computers. The other two common players are realplayerand Windows media player. I think they all work fine as far as I can tell. They are cross platform and can be downloaded for free. One point though. If you use imovie for your editing, you can only export in quicktime format.