Movies and How to Share Them on the Internet

There are an increasing number of sites popping up all over the place on the internet that will let you upload your movies to show them to others.

The biggest and most popular of these is You tube with millions of visitors viewing the site every day. The good news is that it is easy to upload your movies to this site and they will accept file sizes of up to around 1 GB and this will easily allow you upload even quite large movies if you wish but the larger the file size, the longer it will take to upload.

Before you attempt to upload anything, you should check the size of your movie file by using "Get Info" (Mac) or by right clicking the file and selecting "Properties" (Windows). Most files that are uploaded are around 10 to 50MB, which is a reasonable size with relatively short upload times so I suggest you try files of this size first before tying to go larger.

Note: to find the "You Tube" site, simply type "You Tube" into your browser search box.

The first thing you have to do is to register with You Tube. This is very straightforward and only takes few minutes to provide the few details they ask for. You will need to provide a user name and password and once you register these; you will receive a confirmation email of your registration almost immediately.

Now log into You Tube with your user name and password and the click on the "upload button at the top right of the screen. You will be asked to provide a title and a short description for the movie like this for example - "Skateboarding" for a title and "The Thrills and Spills of Skateboarding as a description.

Alternatively, you could shoot a custom-made movie about your hobby, to explain a technique or some interesting aspect of it. For example, if you like painting in watercolour, you could shoot a movie showing beginners how to paint great skies. In this case, you could use "Painting Skies" for a title and maybe "Painting Skies in Watercolour for Beginners" as a description. You will be asked to select a category for your video and some tags if you want to. Tags are simply keywords that help people search for topics of interest to them more quickly.

You will also have to state whether the video is for general public viewing for all to see or for personal viewers only. If you choose personal, the movie will only be viewable by people you personally invite. In this case, your selected viewers will have to log in to You Tube to be included in the "authorised viewers list".

Once you have entered and submitted the information a new page appears. Click the "search for file" button"and navigate to the file you want to upload. Then click the "upload" button. The upload time can be anything from a few minutes to an hour or more depending on the size of the file and when the upload is complete, you will see a confirmation message appear.

Do not expect your movie to be available for viewing immediately though. The You Tube servers first have to process and compress the AVI format in to a flash format which can take a while - obviously, the larger the file, the longer the wait - so go and have a coffee and come back later.

One positive spin off of putting your movies on You Tube is that you can use it a sales vehicle to attract visitors to your a web site if you have one.

Whether you want to use a movie for commercial purposes or just for fun, You Tube is a great vehicle for showing off your videos. Incidentally, you can put up a video on almost anything you like (within reason) from using yoyo's to music with mood pictures. The choice is yours so why not give it a go - its fascinating and great fun.

Keywords: