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Many teachers have asked how they can post videos on the web. Many of their students have produced short videos that show the results of an experiment or the dramatization of a story or a performance of music, that they would like to share with others on the Web. In fact, we have seen a boom in the production of video by students and teachers, due in large measure to three factors:

• The easy availability of digital video (DV) cameras. These now cost less than $300 for a small, sturdy, and easy to use brand-name camera.
• The development of video editing software. Most new computers arrive with video editing software built-in, such as Apple's iMovie or Windows Move Maker, and with a FireWire connector for the DV camera.
• The growth of broadband connections in homes, schools, and offices, that enable more and more people to send and receive video files over the Internet.

You may find some ideas and tips on the process of producing video by consulting Shooting Good Video in this series at http://www.powertolearn.com/articles/
teaching_with_technology/shooting_good_video.shtml

But even with the latest DV compression and broadband connection, it is not easy to get these video projects to work well online. The video files themselves are huge. For instance, we recently produced a one-minute clip of a professor to be used in an online course. The folder of video footage on the computer amounts to 203 megabytes, too much for even the fastest connections to handle.

Compressing and Saving

Before it is usable on the Web, the video needs to be compressed and saved in a format that will work well online. Here is how to do this:

• In iMovie, choose File -- Share from the menubar, then click the QuickTime icon, then choose Web from the popup menu. For more details, consult iMovie Support at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=150073
• In Windows Movie Maker, click Save to My Computer in the TaskPanel. Then choose a place to save the video, then from the list of settings choose Video for Web. For more details, consult Windows Movie Maker 2: How-to for Beginners at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/moviemaker/getstarted/default.asp

If you are using another video editing program, the saving commands will be similar.

Save your movie with a filename that will work on the Web -- that means no spaces, no punctuation, so special characters.

The resulting movie will be small, and a bit grainy, but it will travel well on the Web. The one-minute video of our professor ended up being less than a megabyte in size.

Publishing

You may post the compressed video directly to the Web, by simply copying it to your Web server. The URL of the movie will be the URL of your web site, plus the filename of the movie, such as http://www.lengel.net/mymovie.mov. When viewers connect to this URL, your movie will download and begin to play in their browser.

But this movie will play in a window all by itself, with no explanation, no text around it, no title. If you'd like all of these things to appear around the movie, then you can embed the movie into a Web page, and copy that page to your Web server. For example, to use Dreamweaver to accomplish this, see Building a Web Page with Dreamweaver in this series at http://www.powertolearn.com/articles/teaching_with_technology/
building_a_web_page_with_dreamweaver.shtml Be sure to copy both the HTML page created by Dreamweaver as well as the movie file, to your Web server.

In most cases, the video will need to download itself completely to your viewer's computer before it begins playing. But if you have Macromedia Flash on your computer, you can use it to create a video that begins playing right away. Here's how:

Publish a streaming video with Flash

1. Create and save your movie as described above.
2. Launch Flash, and use Modify -- Document -- Dimensions to set the size of the Flash stage to what you want. If all you want to display is the movie, then make the Flash stage the same size as your movie, such as 240 pixels wide and 180 pixels high. If you want to display a title and explanation along with the movie, set the dimensions of the Flash stage large enough to accommodate this additional information.
3. In Flash, choose File -- Import, and then navigate to the video that you saved.
4. In the Import Options dialog box, choose Embed movie.
5. In the Import Video Settings dialog box, set the Quality to 90%, the Keyframe interval to 24, and the Scale to 100%. Also check the Synchronize video and Import audio boxes, and make sure the frame correspondence is set to 1:1.
6. Click OK to import the movie. This will take some time.
7. When the file has imported, check Yes to expand your Flash movie with enough frames to accommodate the video.
8. You may drag the video wherever you wish on the stage. And you may use the Flash tools to create titles and other information on the stage as well.
9. Save your Flash file with a filename that will work on the Web.
10. When you are done, choose Control -- Test movie from the menubar. It will take some time for Flash to recompress your video, but when it's done you will see it play.
11. Find the .swf file that Flash created when you tested the movie. It is this file that you will copy to your web server. The contents of the video are embedded into this .swf file. (SWF stands for Shock Wave Flash.)
12. Copy the .swf file to your Web server.
13. The URL of the movie will be the URL of your web site, plus the filename of the Flash file, such as http://www.lengel.net/mymovie.swf. When viewers connect to this URL, your movie will begin playing almost immediately in their browser. (They'll need the Flash Player, which most people already have. If they don't the can download it for free from http://www.macromedia.com.

The best way to learn how to put video on the web is to try one of more of these methods.