A Lesson in Video blogging

Video blogging in simple language means a form of blogging where video is used instead of text. It is also known as vlogging. Video blogging though around for sometime became popular in 2005 with the introduction of YouTube. Within 2006 many other popular sites launched their video blogging operations. BBC came up with its fully functional site in 2006. It is becoming more popular as people are finding out the usefulness of posting video instead of text for better expression. A larger disk space is required for video blogging on a website. You will also need a whole new set of programs and a faster server to support it.

To start with video blogging you will need certain tools. The first thing is a good web camera with high resolution. You can start with capturing a short film on the thing happening around you. Make sure that your subject of video filming is well illuminated. The images are much better if you take them in bright light. You can also have some lighting arrangement if you want. Next, what you need is a video editing program. This is required to finalize your video by deleting something unwanted footage, adding sound or inserting some text or stills. There are plenty of video editing software available online which you can download. Some of them are free so you need not spend money.

Video blogging is a powerful tool if you use it for business. You will be able to show your customers about your product or services in a short film which will also have sound and action.

Where everything is static online, short film on your product will make positive impression on the customer. You can equate it with a commercial on TV. We all get impressed by certain products by seeing the commercial and buy it next time when we go for shopping.

The effect of video blogging is similar. You can show and tell your customer about your product online and it is absolutely free. It is easy to make a video and you can make it at home itself if you have a video camera, microphone, and video editing software.

With video blogging you do not have to limit yourself with only commercial type videos. You can have some executive from the company speak to the customers directly telling them about new products that you have launched or about the latest projects or achievement of the company. You can also add related videos from around the world to your company blog site. This will generate a lot o interest among the viewers.

Personal Video Blogging

Video blogging can be used for personal use also. You can make family video and share them online with your family. Mostly we have relatives in different cities and even countries. It is rare for a family to have all their members living nearby. It becomes difficult to meet them even if we want to. We do write mails or have personal blogs but nothing can be as exciting as sharing videos.

Getting to know what the others are doing from time to time and seeing it on video brings you closer to the family. If there is some event like birthday or vacation or any special announcements, there is nothing like video blogging. It will help in relationship building. If the grandparents are living somewhere else, nothing would make them happier than seeing your children growing up. You can encourage more member of your family to join in the video blogging and you can start collaborative blogging. You can share your admin details with your relatives and get everyone to upload their videos. This way you will remain in touch with your relatives in their day-to-day life.

Vlogging for the purpose of Education

Institutions like school can benefit from video blogging too. You simply need a camcorder, editing software and an internet connection to start your video blog. Getting a video recording of school event like stage shows, sports event, rallies etc. make great video for the school video blog. You can record some of your classroom teaching of a difficult concept and post it to your blog. The student can refer to it later if they feel the need. It also records your classroom teaching techniques which could be beneficial to you. Moreover, you can find relevant educational video online and post it to your blog site. It will be easy for the students to go through them. This widens the horizon for knowledge sharing.

Technical requirements

Once your video is made you need to share it with whatever objective you have in mind. To do this you need to upload it from your own computer to an internet server. The best results can be achieved if you have a high speed internet connection. You have to check your bandwidth or the speed of you internet. If you have a bandwidth of 700kbps, it is enough to upload your video to the web. It will be sensible to have a compressed video clip so that it uploads faster and can be watched more easily.

You will need a website to upload your vide to the web. There are great number of video uploading sites on the net. You need to choose one which is offering free service. YouTube is a great site to upload your home videos. You can put your home videos on YouTube to watch and let others comment on it. Uploading a video is rather simple and anyone could do it by following instructions on a particular site like YouTube. Your YouTube video cannot be for more than 10 minutes duration and 1GB in size. You will need to format the video into mpeg4 file with mp3 or aac for audio.

You Tube How to?

• To start with YouTube you need to sign up with them.
• Give a suitable username and password.
• After following the steps of authentication you will be given access to the video upload link.
• Clicking on it will open the video upload page.
• Once the uploading process starts you need to enter information about your video in relevant columns like title, description, tags and category.
• This is done so that your video can be easily found on the net.
• You also have the option to make your video private if you want which can be then viewed by only the group of people you want.
• Click on the ‘save changes’ button and your updates are saved on your video file.
• Wait till the uploading and saving process is complete and you get a completion report.
• Now you can view your video on YouTube by going through your own account.

Apart from YouTube you have MySpace Video, Yahoo Video, Meta Café, DailyMotion for your short films. If you want to upload news items you can do on CNN or ABC. To monetize your video and make money with it, some sites give plans to share their revenue. Google pushes the videos to other sites and links and you get your share of revenues. You can earn revenue from Brightcove by uploading your video for TV.

Since video blogging is becoming so popular people want to upload their videos to different sites at the same time. You can do it manually or you can upload your video in multiple sites through Hey!Spread which is completely free. The registration and filling up the required information is similar to that of YouTube. Only difference is that you have to specify the sites on which you want your video to be uploaded.

Tags: Profit from Video Blogging, VBlogging, Video Blogging