Video Formats for the Web

Video Formats for the Web

Today I wanted to touch on the various types of video formats for the web and why ultimately I choose the one format I did for our film.

As many of you know there are many different ways to compress your film for the internet. It seems like there are new ones coming out all the time.

The top formats are Flash, Windows Media Player (WMP), Real Player, and Quicktime. Your final choice should depend on your market as well as your goals for distribution.

As I learn more about various formats for mobile media, I'll post a blog telling you about what I've learned. At this moment, I'm experimenting with some but our film isn't available yet on an iPod or iPhone.

As tempting it is to have many different choices to get as many possible viewers, simplicity for me ultimately won and I chose the most universally available player Flash. When customers have too many choices, they short circuit. They want the best and most obvious choice available to them easiest.

Most of us as filmmakers have the ability to create .mov files (quicktime), .avi files (quicktime or wmp) as well as many others depending on your editing software. The problem with these formats is that not every computer user has the appropriate software loaded on their computer. Yes it's hard to believe that every computer user out there doesn't want the best experience possible and isn't spending all their time watching everything on the web.

If you are on a PC, there is a good chance that your computer doesn't have Quicktime. (I don't know what they are doing without Apple Trailers).

If you are on a mac, you need either flip4mac or you may need to download windows media player from the darkside in order to view .wmv files.

The bottom line is that if your audience needs to install software to watch a movie/video, there is a really good chance that you will decide to pass on that film and do something else (Example: In order to watch the 2008 Olympics Online users had to install Microsoft's Silverlight)

Thanks to youtube, just about everyone has flash video player installed on their computer. If not, chances are that person isn't going to watch your film or their computer is so old that they can't.

The problem is that most of us don't have a way to compress our movies into that format.

The two best solutions I found out there are

1. ON2 Flix Pro

Buy On2 Flix Now! $249

Trust me, you'll need to buy the Pro version in order to get all the compression tools that you'll need like 2 pass video encoding and the ability to deinterlace your video. I'll try to cover some very basic video compression settings in another post. If you buy from this link, I get a couple of bucks, thanks.

2. Sorenson Squeeze $499 but I think you need to spend more to get the plugin that will allow you to convert your video to flash. This is a great program that allows you do a lot, but it is more complicated and more expensive. I believe this program is the program of choice for video compressionists. Honestly, I don't have as much experience with this program.

I've searched for free programs that will allow me to convert a .mov to .flv (flash file) but was unsuccessful.
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Once you've created a .flv file, the next trick is finding a .swf wrapper to play the file. In my next entry I'll talk about the various players out there and the one's that I've used. Each one has different pros and cons and I'll help you sort through the choices.

Until then,

Happy Promotion
Adam
Blind Lyle Films

See the film I'm promoting now for only $3.99 and support my journey. The more success I have, the more I can share!

Facebook - A very powerful networking group

I've been playing around on Facebook for a few days now and I'd have to say that I've been very impressed with the networking potential of this web site.

The most important thing I'd have to say so far is make sure that you are well organized when you start building your profile with them.

You have the ability to connect with former classmates of College and High School, many of these people you haven't spoken to in many years. When you first request a friendship, you are given an opportunity to tell them a bit about what you are working on and inspire interest.

Once you've made the friend connection, you may have missed that golden opportunity to talk about your project.

So far I've noticed that it is a time consuming way to contact people and it is best to make sure that you have personal messages to the people that you are reaching out to. I've been making a real point to be genuine with my messages because people can see through you if you really are being transparent and just trying to sell them something.

My plan is to give away my film to all my friends and then encourage them to spread the word about the film by giving them an affiliate partnership.

Since I'm still honing the experience of our main film viewing site, I've held off networking more on this site. I think timing is key and when people "friends" take the time to write you, you should respond quickly.

I've been discovering all sorts of great niche areas within Facebook and I'm really excited to dive deeper within this site.

In a future post, I'll talk about some of the other opportunities within Facebook and talk about some of my successes that I've had with this slick site, currently the 5th most popular site on the web.

Until then
Happy promotion
Adam
Blind Lyle Films

See the film I'm promoting now for only $3.99 and support my journey. The more success I have, the more I can share!

Don't let perfection stand in the way of success.

I'm writing this post to talk about a potential problem for good ideas. There is nothing wrong with trying to be the best at what you do. This is an honorable quality in people.

I would love to have a doctor who strives for perfection. I would love to see a film when everything in it is absolutely perfect. To have a chef who knows how to make the perfect meal would be divine.

The logic behind these statements are absurd however because it is impossible to be perfect. As humans, we always have flaws, that is what makes us human.

The problem with the goal of perfection in any project is that it can prevent you from moving forward and actually learning more about what you may have done wrong or right so that you can continue to improve.

Let me give you my latest example.

I was just about ready to give away my film to all my friends so they could see it and then pass it on to their friends. I then came up with the idea of using affiliate marketing to help promote the film. (A future post is in the works highlighting affiliate marketing).

Suddenly, I've created a whole new project that can potentially delay my project for weeks, if not months. There is finding the right affiliate, have the right plan, having all the tools in place, making it easy, making sure the incentives are appropriate, and the list goes on.

The thing is that I came up with a simple solution in one day that will allow me to offer affiliate partnership to my friends. Then I can get feedback and learn more. I can decide what type of affiliate plan might be best, which program is more attractive, which incentives are more effective, etc.

I've decided to compromise between perfection and reality. I'm going to spend one more day making a simple affiliate program available to the friends of my friends without postponing the release of the film.

There is something called the 80/20 rule, otherwise know as the Pareto Principle.

The basic idea at it applies to my situation is that the first 20% of my work that I do towards creating an affiliate program will result in 80% of my income from it. When I try to make it perfect, all that extra work will only result in the remaining 20% of my income.

I've got a lot of other work that needs to be done with this project and at the moment, I'm not making any income. I've got to get the word out about my film and one of the easiest ways is by telling my friends and giving them an incentive to tell their friends. I want to spend time outside of work as well so it only makes sense to budget my time well, make some income and then move on to the next task. If I feel that I need to improve on a particular part of the process, I can always return to it.

So with that said, I'm giving myself a reasonable deadline and goal.

Until then
Happy promotion
Adam
Blind Lyle Films

See the film I'm promoting now for only $3.99 and support my journey. The more success I have, the more I can share!