Online video is the latest and greatest way to showcase your products and services. It’s a powerful method to demonstrate your business and what makes you different from your competitors.

With this type of tool comes many unanswered questions, for starters:  Which platform should I choose to upload my business videos to my website?

On Thursday, May 24, the Viddler Team will host another WebEx series on “How to Choose an Online Platform for Your Videos.”

Our very own Darryl Rentz, Solutions Specialist, will get you a few steps closer to locking in on an answer most suitable to your business objectives.

We will review:

• Priorities and overall strategies
• The three most common videos and how they’re used
• How your video will play on platforms like YouTube, Vimeo and Viddler
• And, best practices in accomplishing your goals

Darryl will wrap up with a Q&A, so please email your questions ahead of time to webex@viddler.com with the subject line “How to Choose an OVP” by Monday, May 21.

WebEx Date: Thursday, May 24, 2012 @ 2 p.m. EST / 11 a.m. PST
Registration Opens: Monday, May 14
Registration Closes: Monday, May 21

A video recording of the WebEx will be provided to those who registered in advance, so register today to secure your spot - space is limited!

Eight Communications is a master of the fine art of branding. By using online video and the Viddler platform, Eight Communications has been able to launch incredible video based marketing campaigns. After viewing Eight Communications work with Woman Who Change America, I was an immediate fan. They have the ability to seamlessly integrate video into there design and branding, to create an incredible experience for the viewers. By using video, you are drawn deeper into their work and find yourself engaged with their clients company and brand. Eight Communications is headed by some incredibly talented professionals, so when I was given the opportunity to go to NYC and visit with them for the day, I was ecstatic to say the least. Watch the video below and see how Eight Communications views Viddler as a partner, and how Viddler can enhance the work of many other digital marketing and branding agencies.

With our last release we updated our encoding system with various goodies and improvements. One of those improvements is that our encoders will create multiple thumbnails for each video.

For users with API access you can take advantage of this feature right now. Below is a short ‘How To’ so that you can find how many thumbnails have been created, your current thumbnail selection and how to view each version.

Anatomy of a thumbnail URL

http://cdn-thumbs.viddler.com/thumbnail_1_5db890a6_v2.jpg

Thumbnail Size

http://cdn-thumbs.viddler.com/thumbnail_1_5db890a6_v2.jpg

Every thumbnail generated has 3 different sizes attached to it. A small, medium and large version. The number in bold in the above URL can be switched to display the different sizes.

• 0 = Small (75×56)
• 1 = Medium (114×86)
• 2 = Large (Typically the size of your actual video)

Video Token

http://cdn-thumbs.viddler.com/thumbnail_1_5db890a6_v2.jpg

Every video on Viddler has a specific token associated to it. The text in bold above is that token. The API will return the token correctly per video, but just note you can actually replace that with another video token to display that video’s thumbnail.

Thumbnail Version

http://cdn-thumbs.viddler.com/thumbnail_1_5db890a6_v2.jpg

Your thumbnail url will change each time you upload or choose a new thumbnail. ‘v2′ will increment each time (IE: v3, v4 and so on). Depending on the number of thumbnails created you can replace ‘v#’ with an actual number to see a new version. To note only videos uploaded after April 26th, 2012 will have multiple thumbnail version.

Using the API to Get and Set thumbnails

Finding Total Thumbnails

For users with API access you can find out how many thumbnails have been created per video by calling ‘viddler.videos.getDetails‘ or ‘viddler.videos.getByUser‘. It will return a key named ‘thumbnails_count’. This is the total number of thumbnails generated for the particular video.

You will also see another key named ‘thumbnail_index’. This is the currently set thumbnail. Thumbnail indexes start at 0. So if you have 11 thumbnails in ‘thumbnails_count’ you can set ‘thumbnail_index’ with any number between 0 and 10.

Setting a New Thumbnail

As mentioned above you can set the ‘thumbnail_index’. To do so you must submit a call to ‘viddler.videos.setDetails‘ with the parameter ‘thumbnail_index’. Again indexes start at 0 so if you have 11 thumbnails in ‘thumbnails_count’ you can set ‘thumbnail_index’ with any number between 0 and 10.

Viewing thumbnails

Again with API access you can get the total thumbnails created. After you have this number a little bit of basic programming you can create a loop to display the versions as you see fit.

Example output for video above

Bitrates

We allow you to change the bitrate settings for each type of file we make. Lower bitrates load faster for the user and use less bandwidth at the cost of video quality, while higher settings look better, but use more bandwidth. Our defaults in most cases provide a good balance.

Where Do I See Each Version?

• Flash – Standard Flash (SD) This is the version that plays unless the HD button is pressed
• FlashHD – High Definition Flash (HD) – This is he version that plays when the HD button s pressed. Higher quality video, but also uses more data
• iPhone – Video served to most mobile devices that don’t support flash.
• iPad – an HD Version served to the iPad
• Mobile3GP – A version suitable for “Feature Phone” class devices and older BlackBerry devices (May not work by default on all BlackBerry devices)

Respect Source Dimensions(flash only)

Selecting the “Respect source dimensions (flash only)” options will encode the Flash version at the same dimensions of the source file. For example, if you upload a file at 1280×720 (720p), both Flash and FlashHD will have a dimension of 1280×720. In many cases, this will cause in a drop in video quality for the standard Flash version—as there is more data to compress into a low bitrate.

Our main goal is to make the user experience extremely simple and stress free. We want non-technical users to be able to navigate our site and utilize our platform with ease, no background information necessary. Uploading your video content and embedding videos on your site or blog has never been easier. Check out the video below to see how easy it is to upload and embed video using the Viddler platform.

“Market leaders – strong reputation – unique value – innovative solutions” just to name a few.

Viddler received a two-thumbs-up from WordStream Internet Marketing 150, which featured the top software and SaaS providers in the Internet marketing industry for 2012.

WordStream created the Internet Marketing 150 infographic to help users navigate the often treacherous Internet marketing landscape, and discover the top web marketing software providers that can help build their brands and grow their business.

The Viddler Team would like to thank WordStream for the recognition. It keeps us motivated in continuing to provide our customers with the most beneficial online video platform for their businesses.

And, we can’t forget to mention that congrats are in order for all the other software and SaaS providers that made the cut.

Viddler is happy to announce a few new feature and service upgrades that will continue to improve your online video experience.

What’s new at Viddler this time around?
We’re continuing to develop features that you’ll find beneficial in your everyday use. You can now include closed captioning on your videos. We’ve made big encoding upgrades, most notably changing the default video file type from FLV to MP4, a smaller file for faster encoding. We are now supporting HTTPS on all API calls. Starting May 10th you’ll have the option of using HTML5 with Flash fallback on all embeds.

Closed Captioning 
Closed captioning is fully available and supported by Viddler’s platform. That means you can add this feature to all of your videos or just a few – it’s your choice. And it’s very easy to use; your viewers can turn the feature on and off with the click of a button.

As destination weddings have become the norm, more couples are hiring a videographer to capture those words-can’t-express moments their family and friends back home didn’t get to experience. For the budget-savvy bride, the cost of hiring a videographer is an issue – but that’s where Wedit comes into the picture. It works like this: For a modest price, Wedit ships five HD cameras for you and your wedding guests to capture every moment from multiple angles; something one videographer couldn’t achieve. Afterward, the cameras get shipped back to Wedit and the video clips get reworked into a short story. Wedit then creates a private link to your story, allowing the video to be shared and played on platforms like Facebook over and over again. Back in ‘09 at my Caribbean wedding, the steep cost of a videographer afforded her presence only at our ceremony. Now, seeing what Wedit has to offer, it would’ve been nice to have captured our wedding from the point-of-view of the people who actually took part in it. In this new age of all things untraditional, Wedit creates an online video experience that can be relived any time, any place, anywhere – cutting some slack to thousands of happy couples, and their DVD players.

Hard to believe it’s been 35 years since Foreigner’s smash hit Feels Like the First Time rocketed its way to the top of the charts and helped their self-titled, debut album stay in the top 20 for an entire year.

With a legendary career spanning over three decades, Foreigner is back and in action with a pretty stellar online video contest, “Is That Foreigner?”. Only Viddler’s timed-tagging video player could make this contest possible, and we’re Hot Blooded to help Foreigner!

Andrew Jones of JWT says, “We had a great idea to tag song titles in films, but there was no technology that would allow us to do it. Rather than an expensive media buy, we searched for a partner that we could work with to build it ourselves. We found Viddler, a start-up as hungry as us to bring this new technology to life.”

Enter the contest: Watch a three-minute video featuring Foreigner’s Kelly Hansen and tag the video timeline each time you hear a song title. Let’s see if you can spot these greatest hits that have been winning over hearts for the last 35 years.

I then challenge you not to pull up these feel-good tunes from your playlist. … Let the games begin.