Web Video / Online Video Production Tips

The demand for web video is increasing dramatically. Video editors can find some guidelines to assist with the activities of producing and distributing online video.

Once you've finished editing your video , you'll need to greatly reduce its filesize so that it can be transferred over the Web effectively. You'll need to make some choices on what dimensions you need your video to be, as well as how much to compress it to retain maximum quality while maintain reasonable download speed.

Web video is not TV quality, yet. Bandwidth limitations often make delivering quality digital video over the web a challenge. Tradeoffs will have to be made between file size, image quality, frame rate, and audio quality.

There are 2 major types of video on the web: streaming video and download video.

Streaming video is video content delivered in almost real-time to an end user's computer via the Internet. For large files, video streaming is preferable to downloading because you do not have to wait for the file to download before viewing it.

Video downloads are files that are downloaded to the users computer. The files do not have to be completely downloaded before viewing begins but the final result is that a copy of the movie exists on the viewers computer.

If you plan to put your video online, you should consider certain constraints from start. You can find some tips for shooting web video here. Then edit the video as you normally do - keep the image quality as high as possible.

After the final online video is redered and confirmed, you need to compress it to web format. You'll need to make two major decisions on how to present your video on the web.

Video Format

3 major formats for web video: Real Player, QuickTime, and Windows Media. Each format has its own strengths and weaknesses. Be sure to find out in what format the video is expected before you enter the final phases of production.

Compression Methods

Once you've chosen a format, you'll need to decide how much to compress your audio and video. The more you compress, the smaller the file sizes will be and the faster it can be transferred over the web. However, more compression means means lower image quality.

More Video Types

Music Video
Corporate Video
TV Commercials
Home Video
Wedding Video
TV Drama
Stage Show
Documentary Video
Showreel & Demo Reel