Detour from Facebook-Video, YouTube, Vimeo and others

Last week I was in California helping out my Mom and so I didn't write all of the posts I was planning to about Facebook, so we will have to come back to that.

Today's post is about video. I was motivated to write it because a professor I know asked me about posting his lectures on the web. Since I had to look up and try things I thought it would be a good topic to share about. I hope I will be able to do more writing about issues people ask about as time goes on. This is especially for my teacher friends who might want to do something, but have no time to figure it out.


SHARING VIDEO ON THE INTERNET
First of all video files are HUGE. The size depends on what resolution the video was taken at. High resolution videos are the best to watch on your big screen TV or to submit to festivals like Sundance, but if you just want to put your video on the web so that someone can see it there are lots of options. Each of these sites resizes your video automatically to make it perfect for viewing on a computer screen.  They also provide embed code (We will have to talk about that tomorrow) so that you can put your video onto your blog or website.

http://www.youtube.com
The best known and most used video site is YouTube. There are videos up on YouTube on every topic you can imagine (and some that you can't even imagine). If you want to post a video to YouTube first you need to sign up for a free account.

Next set up your own channel. You can use your channel as a place to collect videos that you like as well as a place to get to all of your own videos easily.

When you first get to your channel page you will have lots of choices. You can make it look the way you want it to look.

At the very top of the screen you will see the word UPLOAD. When you have a video that you want to put onto your channel click "UPLOAD" and you will be walked through all of the steps.

Be sure to set the privacy settings that you want. YouTube offers three settings:
Public-Anyone can see your videos and searches can find them.
Private-You can share your video with ONLY 50 or fewer people who already have accounts with YouTube.
Unlisted-Only people who have the link to the video can view it. The number of people is only limited by your sharing. People who you share the link with DO NOT have to have YouTube accounts to watch the video.

There are many other video sharing sites and they all work in about the same way. There are a few differences and I will list the ones I know about and their differences here. It is not meant to be a comprehensive list, so if you have one to add it will be welcome.

Vimeo emphasizes quality and creativity. It was made by film makers and can work with HD video. There are Video classes on the site if you want to learn more.
Privacy: Public, Only Moderators can view (you need to enter their emails), Password Protected-people do not need an account, but need the password to view the video.
http://vimeo.com


YouTube created for schools. This has different settings for students and teachers allowing teachers to do more.
http://www.schooltube.com/

http://www.teachertube.com/
Similar to SchoolTube, but created with teachers in mind. Today when I looked at it the site was extremely slow, so I don't have privacy information.

Surprisingly I could not find a site for professors to upload their lectures. There are LOTS of sites where you can go and watch the top professors in the world lecture and there are online classes, but not an upload site! One other thing I learned is that you can actually watch MOVIES on YouTube. They cost $1.99

I am sure there are other sites out there, but these are the ones that I know about and that are FREE
I hope people will add comments if they know about other places.