Hi All,

I used to distribute my work to friends and family via DVDs - Now I would like to do this over the web instead. I shoot in SD and edit with Premiere Pro CS3. If anyone can point ot links that will get me jumpstarted, I'd appreciate it. I have tried exporting using AME in WMV and FLV formats, with different quality and resolution, uploading them on Google Video and Youtube - in both cases video looks worse then when playing it back on my PC in the same format. I'm mostly looking for:

1.) Best format and settings for 10-15 min. videos. I'm especially curious about how I can achieve quality that you would see while watching a movie trailer on Yahoo, for example - the video streams fast and quality is great, even though the frame is very small.

2.) Best places where I can upload and easily share with others, while maintaining a level of privacy.

Thanks in advance,

Igor.

Hi All,

I used to distribute my work to friends and family via DVDs - Now I would like to do this over the web instead. I shoot in SD and edit with Premiere Pro CS3. If anyone can point ot links that will get me jumpstarted, I'd appreciate it. I have tried exporting using AME in WMV and FLV formats, with different quality and resolution, uploading them on Google Video and Youtube - in both cases video looks worse then when playing it back on my PC in the same format. I'm mostly looking for:

1.) Best format and settings for 10-15 min. videos. I'm especially curious about how I can achieve quality that you would see while watching a movie trailer on Yahoo, for example - the video streams fast and quality is great, even though the frame is very small.

2.) Best places where I can upload and easily share with others, while maintaining a level of privacy.

Thanks in advance,

Igor.

I do Web work all the time.

YouTube re-encodes the video so that it uses a lower bitrate, which saves time and data bills, but looks crappy. What you need to do is upload a 640x480 version of the file; then YouTube will still render a "crappy version" but there will also be a "high quality" version of the file which has better encoding. Just remember - YouTube requires filesizes under 1GB and a running time of less than 10 minutes.

Blip.tv has no limit on running time but requires filesizes under 1GB. If you're just sending to friends and family, I'd go with Blip.tv, as the advantage of YouTube is the social networking capabilities.

I like Vimeo for video hosting. The upside is generally better quality than YouTube plus the viewer can download the video file you uploaded (if you allow it) so quality won't suffer the additional transcode to Flash.

Vimeo also allows private videos. I don't know how this works since I've never used it but it might give you the privacy you want.

Keep in mind that these hosting services generally require that you surrender all rights to your videos. That's a whole 'nother bag of worms.