A Website Construction Guide for Visual Artists:

Adding video files to your site

Video footage will need to be compressed to a Web-friendly format: QuickTime (.mov), RealVideo (.rm, .rv), Windows Media (.wma), MPEG (.mpeg., .mp4) or Flash (FLV). Even when compressed, video files tend to be the largest files that users will download from your site, and measures should be taken to reduce the image quality (within reason) and to shrink the window size (within reason). The general public is quite accustomed to seeing their beloved YouTube videos on small format, so there's no need to go larger than what they're used to. Also, consider showing excerpts instead of maximum durations.

The easiest and most efficient way to provide video footage to your visitors is to simply create a link to the file, rather than trying to embed the video in a little player on your webpage (which can cause you to run into persistent problems, particularly where Internet Explorer is concerned). Two linking methods are common:

• Text links. Other than providing the name of the video, it is recommended that you also provide the filesize, just to warn visitors with slow connections what they're in for.
  
  Example:     <a href="media/video5.mov">Video #5, 18 MB</a>
  
  
• Image links. You can export an image from your video editor to use as a thumbnail, and nest that <img> tag inside of your <a href=""> </a>. You can also use the lazy method to get this thumbnail -- just take a screenshot while the video is in your media player. Macs have a great screenshot tool: APPLE+SHIFT+4 will give you crosshairs in which you can select a portion of the screen for your screenshot.

The problem with embedding video is extra scripting acrobatics it requires (with both <object> and <embed> tags) in order to be reliable across browser formats. It also takes away the viewer's control over how the footage will be viewed. A simple link should access a player on the viewer's system, and she can control the size of the player's window. Or, the browser will let the viewer know what sort of player she needs (or what update she needs) to continue. Viewers may also simply right-click and download your file, which concerns some people who upload their footage. It shouldn't. Instead, give downloading viewers your blessing -- they've deemed your video to be worth keeping and hopefully they'll want to share it with others. The same goes for audio/MP3's.

It is true that not everyone out there knows exactly what to do with a link to a media file, but chances are that anyone in the practice of scanning the Web for artists' material (such as gallerists) won't be taken by surprise.

Another option is to first place your video on a video service site. Both Google Video and YouTube offer user-friendly methods for uploading/formatting video, and you can simply cut'n'paste the code in which to embed the video on your own site (this is the material between the <object> tags). This transplanted script does create a player for the video on your page, and visitors can trace back to the original YouTube/GoogleVideo page where they can see comments, numbers of times viewed, etc. The downside is that it looks less autonomous.


YouTube page, with script generated for embedding into websites (outlined in red):



Video window embedded on CuteOverload page:

Links

Here's an Oreilly page discussing Web video, including both how to embed video, and recommendations for preparing/compressing your video.

Embedded Media HTML Generator. If your video is Flash, Real Media, Windows Media or Quicktime, just have the filename and pixel dimensions ready and this interface will generate the embedding script for you.

Free Video Encoding is another such generator.

Boutell.com discusses adding Flash (FLV) files to your page.