George Carlin used to have a great bit about “stuff”. But if you’re producing online video you need a place to keep your “stuff” – your online programs.
I’ve tried pretty well most of the solutions for this from hosting my own private server to Vimeo, FaceBook, and YouTube to streaming from Amazon’s cloud. All have some benefits but nothing offers a complete package.
Enter Blip.tv
I’ve had an account at blip.tv for a while but was busy using all the other systems already online for me and my clients for publishing video. Then I received an email from a customer upset that the videos embedded in an email he’d received wouldn’t play on his smart phone.
He was on a BlackBerry and was sure we had made the system work for iPhones only. Actually, the videos wouldn’t work for any smart phone. And neither would the videos streaming on the web server.
Something clicked in my brain.
Hmmm. Millions of smart phones being sold. Millions of people using those phones as primary devices for email, Twitter, FaceBook, Google searches, internet connectivity…
With hours of online video content that is accessible through a Flash player that none of those smart phones can use.
I knew it was time for a change in tactics.
Next thing I knew I tripped across a sentence in a blog post somewhere mentioning that Blip.tv automatically sensed the device the blog visitor was using and delivered either browser friendly Flash or smart phone friendly video files.
I logged into my Blip.tv account and discovered that they also have integrated a distribution mechanism that reaches over 80% of all online video publishing systems. One upload, one dashboard, one great set of metrics and tracking data, lots of control over your video, upload through ftp or browser, send it to FaceBook or youtube.com, your blog, 15 other online publishing systems from one place, free accounts plus pro upgrades if you need it…
What’s not to like?
They have no affiliate program so this is just me telling you that you need to go there and check it out. Blip.tv
-a-
PS – I discovered that you can upload multiple versions of your video to blip.tv – besides a solid H.264 version, you can transcode to .flv tweaking for best results and upload that. If you don’t they will transcode to .flv for you. If you want to play on smart phones you transcode to .m4v and upload that. You really need to do all this at one time so it’s worth preparing a segment well for upload. To get iPhone play you’ll need to create an iPhone player using their tools. It can take a bit the first time you post a video but it’s easy after that.
Also, blip.tv is really made for publishing webisodes or videoblogs. It’s not for advertising or promoting your products.
So, Blip.tv isn’t perfect but then what is?
PPS – I just watched a great 90 film by a first time producer. It was well made with an interesting subject, professional all the way through. Except no one on his team considered distribution until after the film was made.
Wow.
If you learn about the business of making video or film projects you’ll learn that distribution is the key to success. Lots of great movies sit on shelves never reaping rewards for their creators just because not enough people had access to see them.
The web changes all of that but it’s still necessary to learn how to use this distribution medium to get your message out.
