How To Share
Your Video With Others

Let's say you've finished shooting, capturing and editing your very own video. How can you now dump it into a format that is easily shared with friends and family?

There are two ways to do this. One is to create a VCD or DVD as most homes now have VCD or DVD players. The other way is to share your video on the Internet. Let's take a look at each of these options and see how they may apply to you. Don't worry - creating VCDs or DVDs is simpler than it looks - all you need is some good video software. Uploading videos to the Internet is also quite a breeze these days.

Creating A VCD Or DVD

Video files cannot be burnt directly into a CD for viewing on the TV just like that. A VCD or DVD is specially encoded and you will need a good VCD or DVD authoring package to create them. A good program will allow you to add VCD menus and DVD chapters for easy navigation to various parts of your video production.

You'll also want to check out my article on selecting a good VCD or DVD authoring program for more information.

Sharing Your Video On The Web

Another option for sharing video would be to stream the video on the web. Sharing your video on the web is simple. There are three things you need to do.

First, you need to convert the video into a form ready for the Internet - which means a smaller size. You can't have a huge 50MB file waiting to be downloaded by others. Its more effective to compress the video by converting it to a lower resolution or screen size. This is easily done by a good video editing program.

Next, you need to get a website that will host your video files. You can approach companies like Snapfish which can accept your video files and display them directly for you. However, they do charge a small fee for their services.

Another thing you can do is to set up your own web site to host the files. If you're looking for a good web hosting company, I'd suggest you try Bluehost. I've used them for years without any problems and their customer support is first-rate. Don't go for those free web hosts - they won't have enough space for you to store your video files.

Lastly, you'll need a way to transfer your video files to the web hosting company. If you have your own web site, the web hosting company would have given you instructions on how to do this. Typically it would be via a FTP program like CuteFTP. This is a good option if you have a broadband connection.

If you're on a slower dialup line, it will take pretty long to upload your video files. In that case, you may wish to consider burning the files into a CD and passing it directly to the web hosting company.


We've seen two ways of sharing video files with friends and family - via VCDs and DVDs and across the Internet. I personally feel creating VCDs and DVDs to store your video productions is a must at the minimum. Sharing your video on the Internet is recommended if you have extra time. Get a good VCD or DVD authoring program and soon, you'll be building up a huge rack of VCDs and DVDs containing your own digital videos!

An Easy-to-Use Video Editing Program


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