Videos: Upload to your site or YouTube?

Several clients have approached me about uploading videos to their site. While many sites do this successfully, it is not always practical for everyone. Yet, many clients want to showcase their products, or give video seminars, and that's a great way to capture your viewers attention. So what is the easiest, most effective way to get this done?

My answer every time is YouTube. YouTube has made video uploading so easy, that it would be silly to go any other route. Here are the main reasons why:

• YouTube compresses your video to a size suitable for web viewing
• The videos are shown in a flash player which 90% of browsers come installed with already
• There are no video codecs or standalone applications needed (movie player, windows media, quicktime video player)
• YouTube allows you to upload different video formats

When you hosts videos on your server, you run across the possibility that the viewer may not have the application needed to view your video. This means that they have to go to a different site, download the program, hope their firewall/anti-virus allows them to download it, then come back to your page and download the video form your site in order to see it.

As a web designer and video editor, YouTube is the way to go. Not only do they facilitate the uploading process with their new multi-video uploader tool, you will get exposure that you may never have gotten if you hosted your videos on your site only.

So video away! Publish away! And most importantly, have fun and be creative!

As always, I welcome any comments, questions or concerns...

Sol