Here’s the breakdown of Video Sites’ ratings for June 2007 from WebOptimizer
Click the picture for a full size view.
If you combine You Tube and Google Video (both owned by Google), that’s almost 70 MILLION viewers. The next closest competitor is AOL with under 16 Million - not even close. In fact, even if you just cross Google Video off the list, it’s still not close. It’s all You Tube, all the time, if you want your video to be seen.
Now look at the amount of time viewers spend on each site watching videos. Again, it’s all You Tube, but Google Video drops down and My Space moves up. Still not close - but the longer a viewer spends on a site, the greater the chance they will find your material.
Click the picture for a ful size image. From WebOptimer
We had a question at the final Monday night webinar about saving finished Photo Story movies to your PC.
The actual “Save” process isn’t very intuitive. In fact, Microsoft seems to have thrown out the familiar steps and user interface for no good reason. But you can save both the project and the finished Photo Story movie.
The next to last screen you’ll see is pictured above (you can click the image for a larger, clearer image if necessary). You’ll get to it after you have added you music.
Click the Browse button (indicated on the picture) to get to the familiar “Save as…” window. Specify a name and location (Photo Story will save movies in the My Videos folder by default) and when you click next, Photo Story will build your movie as a WMV video and save it automatically.
This final webinar will cover using video to market your products and services outside of eBay by taking advantage of venues such as MySpace and Squidoo as well as your own web site and blog. We’ll also cover how to create your own Flash movies and embed them on your web site - which gives you complete control of quality, length, and size.
Please join us tomorrow at 12:00 Noon Pacific Daylight Time
If you make short videos or podcasts - here are two Must Have pieces of software: a volume normalizer/equalizer and a teleprompter.
Both are free - yes, free! The developers hope that you will want to buy the full-featured product or suite after using the free component, but there are no restrictions or obligations. Just download and get to work.
From the web site description: “Have you ever recorded an interview in which you and your guest ended up at different volumes? How about a panel discussion where some people were close to microphones and others were not? These are the problems the post-production engineers of Team ITC here at The Conversations Network solve every day, and it used to take them hours of painstaking work with expensive and complex tools like SoundTrack Pro, Audacity, Sound Forge or Audition to solve them. Now it takes mere seconds. Seriously. The Levelator is unlike any other audio tool you’ve ever seen, heard or used. It’s magic. And it’s free.”
PromptPCLite is the freeware version of Prompt! It is limited to 2500 characters. The developers say, “Simple is the key to Prompt! as it has very little word processing functions (only cut, copy, paste and whatever you decide to type from within the program) and the ability to scroll the type, either mirrored or not. Text can be imported and exported to and from the application in the standard .txt format”
Be sure to download the freeware version, PromptPCLite.
The third webinar in the four part Using Video series will be tomorrow at 6 PM PDT.
Tomorrow’s webinar is going to look at editing your video for maximum impact using free and low cost software.
You might be amazed at how easy it is to create eye catching videos with nothing but a hand full of still photos and a copy of Photo Story. And did you know you can create scrolling credits using Microsoft Movie Maker?
Don’t miss out on the fun register for Part 3 and attend the seminar at 6:00 PM Pacific Time tomorrow. It’s free.
In last week’s Video webcast, there was a question about how to fade music out while fading voice narration in. The trick is to use multiple audio tracks. The exact steps will vary, of course, depending on your audio software. Many video editing packages - like Sony Vegas Movie Studio - have multiple tracks. But others, like Camtasia and Windows Movie Maker are limited in their ability to handle multiple audio tracks.
If you find that you need more flexibility than your software allows, try using Audacity. It’s free and it is very powerful. You can import the audio from your video project into Audacity. Do whatever editing and mixing is necessary. And then re-import the newly edited file back into your video project.
Here’s a very short tutorial on fading multiple tracks using Audacity. (Don’t be fooled by the black poster frame - just click to play)
A final word of caution: when you render your video, the audio will be compressed. Until that final step, especially if you are importing and exporting your audio for editing, try to keep the tracks uncompressed by using the .wav format for audio. You’ll end up with better sound in the final product.
In Part Three we’re going to cover video editing software, including how & where to find free software.
We’ll also cover how to take still photos and create moving videos to make your listing more interesting.
If you are making longer, more complicated videos and are looking for a software package that includes script, storyboard, and scheduling functions - take a look at Celtx. It’s released under a GPL license - which means it’s free!
To see an example, scroll down to the bottom of this listing for the Onboard Flash Diffuser.
Of course, you can’t review your own product. But if you’ve created a short demo or how-to video about your product, there is no reason you can’t give the video to a friend or colleague who wants to use the footage in a review.
There is a 10 minute or 100 MB limit on videos. The usual formats - flv, mov, wmv, avi, and mpeg are all accepted.
To add a video review, click on the Create Your Own Review button that appears on every product’s details page. You’ll see a new tab, labeled Video. Select it, write a short (75 words or so) introduction to your review, upload your video.
Here are two identical versions of the same short video. All that changes is the background music. Click to play (don’t worry - there is no poster frame, but the videos start when you click on them.)
This webinar series is hosted by the Online Success Institute and was launched to promote the new DVD How To Add Video To Your eBay Listings
In Part Two we’re going to cover getting ready to create your video, using storyboards, finding background music, using video as a marketing tool, and finally, we’ll look at some of the video hosting sites available.
When: Monday September 17th Time: 6:00 Pacific Time Cost: FREE
