Videos

This is a test page for showing video clips of dances. Firstly, many thanks to Michael Verdi of FreeVlog for his patience and help. Also take a look at Blip.tv. Both are VERY heplful for infant videobloggers! However, I want to be able to put videos onto the Ring web pages, rather than via a Blog site such as Google's Blogger. I also want to run them embedded in the web page rather than as a pop-up window.

This version should play in a popup window when clicked.

This embedded version should play immediately.

You may not see either of these movies, especially if you are running Microsoft's Internet Explorer - a grey box with the request "Click to run an ActiveX control on this web page" may appear - and may not work! The easiest solution is to ditch IE and get Firefox! Anyway, try clicking on the left image to get a pop-up window, so producing a un-glorious and cacaphonic stereo with BMM dancing.
To run or not to run depends on your browser and computer. For explanations and solutions to the problem (which I'm trying to get my head around) see the Wikipedia comments about Eolas. For my trials see the bottom of this page.

Storing Video Clips

Storing sound clips uses a lot of web storage space, however this pales into insignificance compared to the space needed for even a short section of video. MySpace, YouTube etc., have prompted a number of examples of morris dance videos, and since storage is free this has made it very popular. However there is an alternative, and I think, preferable method/place for storing and presenting videos, and which is also free.

Enter the Wayback Machine or Internet Archive (IA). In fact this has been around since 1996, busily logging web sites for posterity, or at least much longer than many ISPs or web servers will last. Do you want to leave a web site to your grandchildren? Well, just maybe, the Archive will be around for them! You can now take out a 'library card' for the IA, and also deposit your own videos and other material in the archive. You do need to keep the videos relatively short (<20Mbytes), and sheer politeness to the user means that you should compress and edit them carefully. However, once a video (or any other material) is stored in the archive, you can call it up from your own website (as is done with the BMM video at the page top). I expect that there would not be a problem in also putting links to MySpace or YouTube for those who want too, myself, I think I prefer not to have all the clutter of ads, cookies and the like which accompany these systems. It is possible to embed YouTube video's in a Blog such as Blogger, and the same contraints must apply for display in a web page. However, to see the video, the user has to be logged in to YouTube.

"The Internet Archive Wayback Machine contains about 1 petabyte of data and is growing at a rate of 20 terabytes per month, a figure that eclipses the amount of text contained in the world’s largest libraries, including the Library of Congress. Currently the Archive is pulling 20 terabytes a month off the Internet." OurMedia

SpinExpress 2.0

See http://www.spinxpress.com/

"An incredible tool that helps boosts effective collaboration on video projects and gives access to libraries of video, art and audio files in a personal, invitation-only file-sharing and publishing network you control. Also offers publishing options to Yahoo, Blip and Internet Archives." http://www.freeware-market.com/

Well! I'm using this software on my Mac to transfer files to the Ourmedia site (it was offline when I wrote this). However you can easily find whatever you transfer to the Archive, as a test I transfered this panorama of Rannoch Moor, taken by my brother-in-law Tim. See http://www.archive.org/details/TimAustinRannochMoorPanoramaontheWestHighlandWay Be very careful with this kind of software - make sure your machine is well guarded with a Firewall and AV software. I only use the system to transfer files up to the IA via Ourmedia.

Blogs & Vlogs

An alternative name for video blogs has appeared - Vlogs - however these are just Blogs with embedded video clips. The first thing to point out is that you don't need an expensive video camera to set up a credible video. Many digital cameras now support excellent video images (at least for the web), and mobile 'phones are catching up fast; I have a Canon Powershot A540 (used for the above video) and a Motorola RAZR V3i which also does video but in the wrong format for Apple's iMovie. I used iMovie 6.0.3, which comes with iLife'06 to edit and compress the videos. Checkout the tutorials on FreeVlog for a description of how to compress the video for the web (and an iPod). The tutorials also describe the use of Windows Movie maker for compression. You can see my Vlog at http://johnpmaher.blogspot.com, this describes my own learning curve (slowly) in setting up a Vlog, and then looking at putting the videos onto my own web sites.

Methods for Embedding Videos

Wikipedia describes the Eolas problem, and lists the various methods that have been used to get around the problem. Since the "Eolas" embed problem only appeared in 2006, and arguments are ongoing, things are bound to change.

Jesse Skinner's simple method
Jesse Skinner's method with addDOMLoadEvent

To be continued

Links

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