This is the last in my series on adding video to your website. Here are the previous posts:
With all the video used these days, you would think there would be easy solutions to insert video into your website. I’ve done a LOT of research on this topic and tested several potential solutions. In the end, I found only 2 good solutions.
The problem of getting video into your website
Problem #1: Getting a player. When you view a video on a website, there’s more going on than just the video. You need controls to play and pause the video. These controls are contained in a player. A player holds the video and provides the controls.
A player can have a number of styles. For example, the Play button can be larger or smaller. The look can be traditional or modern. These looks are sometimes called skins.
So when you put a video on your website, you need to find a player and that player needs to be somewhere on your website or in some other accessible location.
You would think that finding and using a player would be easy, but in practice, it isn’t easy at all.
Problem #2: Finding the right format. Videos come in many file formats and not everyone can view all formats. Not too long ago, Apple decided that it wouldn’t support the Adobe Flash video format. A new means of playing video, part of a standard called HTML5, is now available and most newer browsers can interpret it to play video. But older browsers don’t support it.
The ideal situation would be to support both Flash for older browsers and HTML5 for newer browsers and Apple products such as the iPhone and iPad. Indeed, both my solutions now support both systems so that video using one of them should be playable on a wide range of devices, from desktops to smart phones.
Solution 1: YouTube Read More
When it comes to creating products, you need to use tools for recording and editing video or audio files. Personally, I write so much about PowerPoint and graphics, that I stick with video so I can show readers what I’m talking about. For that reason, I rarely use audio files, except to insert them into video.
Ellen Finkelstein