PureBlogging

Everybody’s doing video, and you’ve decided you want to, as well. Video blogging is going to be hot in 2008. How do you get started? What do you need to know? I’m going to tell you what you need to get started.

What You Need to Begin Video Blogging

• A video camera or a webcam
• Software or online service to edit video
• Software or online service to distribute your video

The Camera

You can use a camcorder and put the video on your computer, or, in some cases, you can record the video right to your harddrive, depending on your setup (you will need a FireWire cable and ports or a video card on your computer with an S-video jack). Personally, I use a decent webcam. I don’t go for fancy videos that need separate sound. I just use the webcam’s built-in microphone.

I might get a more decent setup later, but if you’re starting out, stick with the basics or you’ll be overwhelmed. One of the issues with video blogging is that it’s time-consuming. For that reason, webcams are easy: no tape, no transfer. On the downside, unless you’re using a laptop (and even then, depending on the camera) webcams aren’t very portable or maneuverable.

Video Editing

You have two choices: online video editing, or software video editing on your computer. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. Online video editing is still relatively new, but will get better and more powerful. You can use services like Jumpcut to upload the raw video and then edit it online.

For computer software, there is Windows Movie Maker and Apple’s iMovie for free software. I don’t have a Mac and I don’t know a thing about iMovie. I’ve been using Windows Movie Maker and it’s getting a little old. I’m starting to not like it, but it’s easy to learn and is great for an absolute beginner.

Sure, you can just record a video and never edit it at all, but it probably won’t turn out very good if you do it that way. Video editing in software involves cutting, rearranging, and adding titles or effects to your video. You can add music or other sound to your video, such as narration.

There is also special video blogging software you can use, such as Adobe Vlog It. Vlog It is not expensive, at only $29 USD. It has a built in teleprompter (so you can read what you’re saying like a newscaster does) and other great features (I will probably get this for myself in the near future).

Distribute Video

How will you get your video to others so they can watch it? There are basically two ways to do this: use an online distributor, such as YouTube, or put the video on your own web server (if you have one). YouTube is just plain easy. And, it has bandwidth, reach, and longevity (YouTube ain’t going out of business any time soon, but you never know with smaller companies).

There are over a hundred different online video tools and services to choose from. Right now, I just stick with big ol’ YouTube. Again, it’s just ridiculously easy. I like easy. Once your video is uploaded to YouTube, you can embed it in your own blog posts easily. Just copy the embed code and paste into the code view of your blog’s post writing form.

You can upload videos directly to Blogger blogs and WordPress blogs, but WordPress needs a plugin to be able to display the video, such as PodPress. PodPress will also help distribute your videos on iTunes. I use PodPress for audio, but not video. I’d rather have my videos be embeddable by other blogger who want to share my videos, so I use YouTube.

Stay Tuned

Next week, in part 2, I’m going to tell you how to get set up, and how to make your first video blog post.