10 Easy Steps On How To Add Video To Your Website

If you want to add video to your website, and normally use YouTube because it's easy and convenient, ask yourself one very important question...Does a YouTube video look as good as this? Or is it splashed with a YouTube logo and redirect links?

It doesn't, does it? Now imagine easily adding your your own logo and 're-direct' link to the video as well. How professional would that look? And it's a lot easier than you think.

The above video took two minutes to add to this website using SBITUBE, which encodes your video to FLV, hosts the video and provides you with the HTML embed code.

All you have to do is copy and paste it on your site! And at a price half the cost of other hosting services - as little as $10/month or 10 cents per gigabit!

Go to SBITUBE now for a free 30 day trial.

How many successful business websites do you know that uses YouTube to host and display videos on their site?

No, I can't think of any either.

And for good reason. It just doesn't look professional and it sends the wrong impression to your visitor. You also run the risk of weakening your site branding, and when your valued visitor clicks on the YouTube player, they are instantly redirected to the YouTube home page and you've lost them forever.

So if you want to add video to your website that looks professional and keep your visitors glued to YOUR site, follow my 10 easy steps;

[1] Click HERE and download the free Riva FLV Encoder and install it on your computer. This software simply converts your MPEG, AVI, QuickTime or WMV video into a FLV Flash video.

I recommend you use an AVI file if you can, as that video format isn't compressed and will give you the best video quality.

NOTE: Riva Encoder is a PC only software and also doesn't support WMV9 (The latest video format created by MovieMaker). If you have a MAC or use MovieMaker to make your videos, you will need to purchase a FLV Encoder.

I recommend the On2 Flix Standard FLV Encoder for PC & MAC ($39) Click HERE for more details.

[2] Open your Riva Encoder software.

[3] Click on 'Browse' and select your 'Input Video'.

[4] Your 'Output Directory' and 'File Name' will be the same as your input video by default, but you can change this if you want to.

[5] In the right hand side 'Video' and 'Audio' section, select the following settings to add video to your website;

• Movie size: 320X240
• Deinterlace: On (Tick)
• Framerate: 30
• Bitrate: 1000
• Enable audio: On
• Audio bitrate: 128
• Audio sampling rate: Stereo 44100

Try these settings to start with, and then play around with them later on if you want. Essentially, the higher the setting, the bigger the video file, but the better the video and audio quality will be.

But when you add video to your website, you must always be aware of how big your video file size is. Web video is all about achieving a balance between great video quality and an acceptable file size. If it's too big, it will take long time to load and your viewer will experience 'pausing' and 'buffering'.

You will need to try another video format or buy the Flix Standard encoding software (see above). Riva Encoder currently supports some (but NOT all) of the following video formats: MPEG, AVI, QuickTime or WMV (NOT the latest version WMV9).

[7] Click HERE and follow the instructions to download a free FLV Video Player.

[8] Upload or FTP your new FLV video file and the SWF video player to a directory on your hosting account, and make a note of their location, as we will need their FULL URLs e.g. http://www.mywebsite.com/video/myvideofile.flv

You can also upload the FLV video file and SWF video player to a third party hosting service like Amazon S3. Just make sure you know the full URLs of both files.

[9] Carefully copy the video embed code below into Notepad (or something similar), replacing YOUR-SWF-PLAYER-URL-HERE and YOUR-FLV-VIDEO-URL-HERE with the actual URL of SWF video player and FLV video file.

PLEASE NOTE: Please double-check you have copied the video embed code correctly, or it will not work.

<embed
src='YOUR-SWF-PLAYER-URL-HERE'
width='320'
height='240'
bgcolor='undefined'
allowscriptaccess='always'
allowfullscreen='true'
flashvars='file=YOUR-FLV-VIDEO-URL-HERE&bufferlength=5'
/>

You can change the video player sizes (width & height) to match your video.

[10] Using your favorite HTML editor and FTP program, add the new video embed code (with the URLs of your player and video in it) where you want it to go on your website, blog, Facebook or Myspace page.

Congratulations! You now know how to add video to your website :-)

Common reasons for the video not working are the embed code has not been copied correctly and the URLs of the FLV video file and/or the SWF player are not correct.

Just deleting one of the " characters from the video embed code will result in it not working, so if you have problems, check your code with the original above very carefully and then check your video and player files are where you say they are.

Remember, if this sounds like too much hard work, then check out the free 30 day trial at SBITUBE and add video to your website in minutes!

With SBITUBE here's what you get:

• Upload Your Videos & Encode Them To FLV
• Host Your Videos On Our Fast & Secure Servers
• Use Our Unbranded Video Player That Can Be Fully Customized
• Copy Video Embed Codes Provided & Add Them To Your Website
• Upload, Host & Embed MP3 Audio As Well
• Access Free Tutorials, Support & Lots More!

Check out what real users of SBI Tube have to say