First, let me take some time to introduce myself, my name is Jeff Johns (@phpfunk on twitter) and I started here at Viddler back in May. One of the first projects I received in front of me after fetching everyone’s coffee, sharpening pencils and going on soda runs was a little project called Adworks.
Adworks has evolved day-to-day here at Viddler from a very simple concept for placing advertising orders online to what it is today; a self-service system that serves multiple facets.
The project has taken me a few months, from learning about ad servers, placements, insertion orders, etc.; to actually designing and coding the application. I also had the opportunity to do the marketing and the intro video for this product as well.
It has been quite a challenge, but quite a reward at the same time. I actually already have a to-do list of about 30 items that we will release at various stages as upgrades for this application. Stay tuned for some exciting times in video advertising, if you’re into that sort of thing
Now for my starchy white collar side to take over and explain what Adworks is as of now and what it will become as time moves on.
While we’re working on the blog post that will announce the new features we’ve recently pushed – we thought it’d be a good idea to share one of the new features with you. Uploading a new thumbnail. Here is a quick tutorial on how to use an image as a video thumbnail – rather than just letting Viddler choose a frame for you.
On your video pages you will now notice a new button below the video that reads “Upload thumbnail”. This button makes it easy to upload an image as the frame that appears before the video starts playing, rather than using a frame from within the video. You may upload any JPG, GIF, or PNG (limit 400 KB) image you want. Images larger than the video will be automatically scaled. But here is the way to get the very best quality you can from this feature.
Step 1: Determine your video’s dimensions. It is best to upload an image at the same dimensions (width and height) as your video. These dimensions can be found by clicking on Upload thumbnail underneath the video that you want to update.
Using the exact dimensions as your video will ensure the highest level of “crispness” for your video thumbnail. This helps things like text and high resolution images appear as they should.
Step 2: Find a photo to use as your thumbnail. This can be a photo taken with a digital camera, a screenshot from your computer, – just about any image you want. For this example I looked into my iPhoto Library to find an image from the day we shot this specific episode of Eat Weird.
I chose an image that showed the dish that was prepared for this episode and one that was high quality and crisp.
Step 3: Resize the photo to the proper dimensions. Although you don’t have to do this – you will get the best quality by making the photo the exact dimensions you need. I’ll do this using Photoshop (though any image editor will do).
I started with a new document in Photoshop the exact size that I wanted.
Step 4: This step is optional. I’ve added the Eat Weird logo and some text describing the episode using Photoshop. Using large text, with a slight drop shadow, makes it really easy to read. The high resolution image in the background helps the viewer know what dish he’s about to get into.
I also cropped the image so that the plate of delicious food was as full frame as I wanted it to be, leaving room for the logo and text. Cropping your photo to fill the frame as much as possible will make your initial frame much more interesting.
Step 5: Upload! Simply save the file, browse for it, upload it. And you’re done! Now you can go look on the Eat Weird Web site to see what the final result is.
We’re really happy to be offering this new feature both on our Web site and via our API. If you have any questions, feel free to drop them into the comments.
The fourth annual El Paseo Fashion Week begins today. That means the hottest new styles will be strutting down the runway in Palm Springs. Mmm, Palm Springs, where the hot meets the hotter.
The event will be held in a great big white tent from March 23-29, 2009.
In this video BeHereTV (subscribe) brings you the 2008 El Paseo Fashion Week via their broadband travel website. Be there before you get there. Snazzy!
Are you attending El Paseo Fashion Week this year? I’d like to see the videos you capture from the event! Send me a message with links to your videos.
Today is Friday the 13th, the first day of SXSW Interactive, AND Rob Sandie’s birthday.
Some of you probably know him as sandieman and/or the president and co-founder of Viddler. He’s responsible for running so many aspects of Viddler that he blows my mind with amazingness! You’ll often find him tweeting late a night working on various Viddler projects. Obviously, this means he sings and dances around in his office (as seen below).
You should definitely wish Rob a giddy birthday today. It will mean a lot to him.
Suzanne Marije (subscribe) has some very pretty colors contrasted with greys and blacks on both her Viddler player and her website. I’ve seen a lot of amazing branded players on Viddler (tell me about yours), but Suzanne’s captured my attention because of the rainbow-like colors.
A big thanks to Suzanne for using our player on her site. It looks smashing!
Check out how cute Suzanne’s kittens — Tripje & Pepper — are wrapped in her lovely player.
If you haven’t created your own branded player, why not? It helps you stand out and you can make it your favorite colors and/or match the color scheme of your website.
Just go to your Settings > Player Branding and you’re all set to spiffy up your player!
Do you have a branded player that you think is totally ballin’? Send me a message and tell me just how ballin’ it is.
As you probably know, we’ve built a portal for all things video at SXSW this year. We hope to see everyone sharing their experiences at SXSW through this site, but I thought I’d take a second to explain how to use SXSWVideos.com.
SXSWVideos.com was built using our public API. No hacks! You could build this very same thing if you wanted to for your event. If you ask nicely, in the comments area, I bet I’d even help you with it.
Recording, uploading, or even importing your video through SXSWVideos.com is probably a fairly easy procedure, but since you’re already used to using Viddler.com – you may want to take advantage of things like our bulk uploader and not want to use SXSWVideos.com. That’s fair, here’s how you do that.
SXSWVideos leverages tags to feeds its various pages. The general tag of sxsw will put videos on the front page. However, each category on the site has its own tag like sxswintroduction, sxswmetoday, and sxswpanel. If you uploading a video to Viddler.com you can easily categorize that video on SXSWVideos.com by adding both sxsw, and sxswCATEGORY to the video. Be sure the tag isn’t plural!
Pretty simple, right?
If you have any questions about how to use the site itself, or how you can help us get video there, don’t be afraid to ask. We weren’t afraid to ask Chris Masto to join us at SXSW this year to help us shoot some video, here is his introduction.
One of the most under-utilized features of Viddler, or any social sharing site, is use of meta data. To be more specific, tags. Often tags are not even used! And, when they are used they are not being used well enough to really promote the content properly.
So, lets go through proper tagging techniques and the benefits of taking an extra few moments to make sure your videos are tagged properly.
Three simple questions
In order to make best use of tags, all you need to ask yourself is three simple questions. By answering these questions, by using tags, you can be sure that you and everyone else will be able to find your videos quickly and easily.
In fact, asking these three questions can expose your videos to people who may not even be looking for your video specifically. We’ll look into this more in a minute.
Who?
What?
Where?
Three simple questions that can be used on pretty much every single video that you upload to Viddler. Who is in the video? What is in the video or what does it regard? Where was the video shot? Each of these questions may have multiple answers or can be answered in little or great detail.
Lets look at an example video, and pick apart its tags to see how they are best utilized. The Riddler – by: Bryan is a video I shot back in 2003 of my friend Bryan doing the “riddler walk”. I’ve added the following tags, to answer the above questions.
This makes it very easy for me to find the video again. It also would make it easy for anyone to find the video under the following circumstances: anyone looking for: Bryan Jackson, videos taken in Montdale or just Pennsylvania, videos taken on a golf course, impersonations, or the riddler. So essentially I’m exposing my video to many more people by adding the proper tagging.
Proper timed tags
When should you use timed tags? Obviously you can use timed tags as often as you’d like, but to really add value you should add timed tags anytime the three questions answers change. When a new who, what, or where changes in the video – you should put a tag on the timeline. This makes it much easier for people to find the portions of your video they are looking for.
So the next time you’re wondering how best to tag your video – perhaps you should ask yourself the three simple questions.
Video blogging has really taken off and we want to accommodate any of you out there that wish to have a video blog, but would like to use Viddler’s superior flash player. The following is a video overview and demo followed by links to resources to help you pull this off.
Overview video and demo
The following instructions are found in the video, so if you don’t have time to read all of this information – simple watch the overview video and demo.
Simple instructions
You will need the following in order to utilize Viddler’s player and its features while also having enclosures in your feed.
We’re looking forward to creating similar demo videos for other blogging platforms besides WordPress, such as Movable Type, in the near future. If you are not a WordPress user and have gotten this to work on your site please write us to let us know how you did it. We’d be glad to include your tips in our next demo.
Viddler allows a larger file size than most of its competitors! You should take advantage of this by offering your audience the highest resolution playback possible. You may upload as much video as you’d like with a limit of 500Mb per video uploaded. If you are distributing a 50MB file to your current audience you should still continue to do so for playback on devices like the iPod. However, if you’d like to offer your audience that views your videos on your web site, or on Viddler’s web site, a larger resolution video – you may do so by creating a larger file to upload to Viddler. Again, this is optional – but we see it as a significant advantage at no extra cost.
Upload your video to Viddler
Before you publish your video to your site, you need to upload your video to Viddler. Viddler’s uploader allows for multiple file uploads – each one being as large as 500MB! If you have been a video podcaster for quite awhile, you may have many episodes that you’d like to upload at once. Take advantage of our bulk uploader to make this as simple for you as possible.
One you’ve uploaded your video, we recommend giving it an appropriate title, description, and tags. You can even add tags to the timeline to help segregate your video for your audience. To learn how to do these things, visit our learn more area.
Upload your video to your site
No need to change your current routine. You still upload the copy of your video fit for distribution to your site/server. This will be the video that is enclosed in your site’s feed, and will be distributed to your audience.
Write your entry
Again, your normal routine of writing up your “show notes” would apply, but there is one extra thing you need to do – paste in the proper HTML embed code to embed Viddler’s flash player on your site to stream your video in the browser.
The embed code is easy to retrieve and copy.
Find the video on Viddler you want to share
Click the green + icon in the timeline
Click share
Select whether you’d like to start the video at the beginning, or at the point of the playhead
Select copy code.
The HTML embed code has now been copied to your clipboard, so you may now paste that code into your entry code.
Setup your enclosure
Here is the “tricky” part. Once you have the KG Enclosure Flex plugin installed, a new menu in your WordPress admin will appear on the “Write Page”. This menu allows you to select which URL in your entry should be included in your feed as an enclosure. This is extremely useful in that it will actually setup the correct size and type of the enclosure by actually looking at the file.
NOTE: You must have the file uploaded prior writing your post. You must also use the full url to the file. If your site is viddler.com – you must link to your files as http://www.viddler.com/video.mpg – this is the only way your audience will be able to download the file(s) correctly.
Publish!
You are now ready to publish your content. Once you’ve done that you should be taking full advantage of Viddler’s enhanced features as well as distributing your content the same way you’ve always done. This should save you tons of bandwidth costs, retain your distribution options to your audience, and give your browsing audience a much better experience going forward.
We hope you are as excited to use these methods as we are – and we hope to continue to make your life easier while providing the richest experience possible for Viddler’s users and your audiences.
If you have any questions or comments about this process, please send me a message, or you can respond through our forum thread for this topic, or just leave a comment on this post and I will be sure to help you out in anyway I can.
Selecting users on Viddler to be your “friend” is quick and easy. But did you know that you can group these friends together in groups called “Buddy lists” which will then make it very easy to share videos with that group?
An example of this would be if you have a video that you only want your family to see and not the rest of the world. You could add all of your family member’s usernames to a group called “Family” – which will then make it quick and easy to share that video with them, without having to remember all of their usernames.
I’m sure you could find even more uses than I’ve described here. Perhaps you want to only share a video with those in your company? Or, maybe you have a list of paying subscribers that you could share that video with? The possibilities seem endless.
If you have any questions regarding our friends features, you can contact me or leave a comment here. I hope you enjoyed the demo and start to utilize this powerful feature.
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