Sharing videos with YouTube

This is a talk about local guide compiled by Nicky Getgood using Nick Booth’s Tips for sharing videos with YouTube.

What is YouTube?

YouTube is the biggest and best know video-sharing website in the world. It enables you to upload and share videos of up to 10 minutes length.

How do I get started?

Create a free YouTube account by going to ‘Sign Up‘

How do I record videos?

Videos can be filmed on most digital cameras, a camcorder, webcam or easiest of all using a Flip video camera or similar. Usually you need to download the file to your computer before uploading it to YouTube, but you can upload or email videos directly to YouTube from some phones. Uploading video usually takes longer than downloading (especially if you are using a normal ADSL broadband connection). The video needs to be right format (QuickTime .MOV, Windows .AVI, or .MPG files – any new camera will make these) It will also take a while once you have uploaded video to YouTube for it to be processed, usually only a few minutes though.

How do I upload videos?

Transfer the video to your computer (either onto the desktop or My Videos on a PC) – once you’re logged into YouTube click on the the yellow ‘Upload’ button in the top right hand corner. Select ‘Upload video and find the video file you want to upload. You’ll need to give it a title, description and category and then wait while it uploads.

What is tagging?

Tags are really useful because they help you and anyone else searching for videos to find out more about each one. Good tagging makes your videos more findable which can lead to new users on YouTube, perhaps people working in your area or other people interested in your work.

You can also use tags to gather together lots of people’s videos from an event for example by creating a unique tag (eg rebootbritain) and link to it.

It also means videos can be aggregated outside of YouTube http://addictomatic.com/topic/rebootbritain on other websites

Things you can do with YouTube

Record an event and embed the video in a blog post about it
Capture peoples, ideas, thoughts and opinions (’voxpops’) with short interviews
Find other users doing similar work (by searching for relevant tags or locations) and subscribe to their videos so that when they upload new ones, you are notified

How do I embed a YouTube video onto my website?

You will probably want to put yours and other people’s videos onto your website, often by placing it within a blog post. This is very easy to do.

Embedding video is really easy on most platforms and is a great way of adding movement and life to your site. Youtube videos have two links next to them, a URL and embed code.
Copy the URL code
In the WordPress visual editor, find the little icon above the toolbar alongside Upload/Insert that looks like a film strip. Paste your copied URL from the Youtube video into the box that appears.
If you are not using WordPress, you can insert the video by copying the Embed code from YouTube and pasting it into the HTML editor of your blog.

More Info

For more information on what you can do with YouTube, including how to tailor your YouTube channel and create playlists, read Nick Booth’s Tips for sharing videos with YouTube.