Viddler

Web video is a constantly evolving medium. It seems like it changes every couple of months.

I know I’ve been experimenting with it ever since I started embedding Quicktime videos on my Geocities website; pre-flash-web-video days. I won’t link you to that horrid mess!

Flash video can be a very confusing game of trial-and-error. As broadband internet speeds increase videos can download faster and encoding rates can be raised for better quality. Now there’s a lot of high-definition content on the web and everyone wants to make their videos widescreen/HD.

Note: Widescreen (16:9) and HD are not the same thing. HD videos have higher bit rates and are thus better quality than a standard-definition widescreen video.

On Viddler we currently re-encode videos uploaded in all formats except .FLV (Flash Video). As you know, the re-encoded files look amazing, but they might not be up to par with the actual file you uploaded. Alas, if you upload a .FLV file format it will display on Viddler exactly as it did on your computer. Huzzah!

How on Earth do you convert your video to .FLV before uploading though? Viddlerer cliftonixs wrote an amazing and in-depth tutorial on this in The Viddler Forums. Read it here.

It only explains how to do it on Mac OS X software, but who doesn’t have access to a Mac these days, right? I know there are many Windows applications that convert to .FLV, although I’ve never tried any of them. If you have, please leave your recommentations in the comments below and/or on cliftonixs’ forum post.

Below is a video cliftonixs encoded at 1600kbps (video data rate) when exported as .FLV.

Tip: If you use iTunes via Viddler for your videos, then you probably won’t want to upload .FLV files because they don’t work in iTunes or Quicktime. .MP4 and .MOV file formats look great on Viddler and even better when you’re subscribed to a Viddler user in iTunes.