video on your website

[Tazuk]

I want to provide video links on my website, i have a collection of interesting helicopter videos on my computer, how can i share them with my website viewers?
Also can anyone tell me the best way to share photos also.

TAZ

[John Robins]

Tony, hi,

Do you mean share as in so that people can download them, or share as in view them live on the web? Your question seems to lead towards the live viewing but I have answered both.

The key here is format. The best web streaming format at the moment for video is Flash 8 (I am just about to update our own website accordingly but hard finding the time!)

If it is for downloading to a PC then probably wmv or possibly quicktime. Best to have these as zipped files on your server for download.

Pretty much the same issue with pictures. A zipped folder of jpegs for download, and just a series of gallery pages with jpegs of png files for online viewing.

If you let me know which of these sounds more in line with what you are looking for I can give you more detailed assistance on making this happen.

All the best, JR

[Tazuk]

I want to allow downloading as they are all freely available from other sites that i have trawled through and i want to put the best movies and pics and some links in a gallery page.

TAZ

[John Robins]

TAZ,

OK, well there are a couple of points here.

Even though the material is freely downloadable, there is most likely to be a copyright issue. At the very least out of courtesy you would need to talk to the material owners and ask if you can put them on your site. They probably will agree if you have a credit in their name next to the link or a ‘sourced from’ notification of some kind.

The easiest way probably in this instance would be to capture a still image from the video for your gallery and then just make your download button link directly to their download button saving you lots of agro downloading and uploading files. The fact that they are already in a downloadable format also means that you don’t have to worry about transcoding issues. In this way, your gallery could be an array of nicely laid out images with a bit of text introducing the video (or still) indicating the source/credit and then a simple download link that will immediately start the download from the source website.

Can you give me a web address of a sample video that you would like to include that I can have a look at?

All the best, JR

[Tazuk]

I think a link over to the sits just might be the best idea. Here is one of the sites here.

http://www.patricksaviation.com/videos.php

TAZ

[DotNetWebs]

Hi Taz

If the link you have given is typical of the type of video you have in mind you would probably be better of just providing links. Otherwise you might start to run into bandwidth (and copyright) issues. John has some good ideas above.

Also the (original) photographs on your gallery page could do with resizing as they are very slow loading. The best way is to make thumbnails of the size you already have on that page and then link to the originals.

Regarding photo sharing have you had a look at Flikr. There is a lot you can do with this site that goes beyond simply sharing photos.

http://www.flickr.com/

or as an example:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/helicopter/clusters/

Regards

[Tazuk]

I will put links to the original sites and thumbnails on the my website. What is the best size for a thumbnail?

Thanks for the feedback and advice

TAZ