Part 2 of my Video SEO series (Part 1 is here) deals with what video file format you should use and how to create it for publishing. So while some of this information pertains to search engine optimization for your video, a solid chunk of it is really a how-to for publishing your web videos online.
Flash (.flv) has overwhelmingly become the posting format of choice for web publishers. All major video distribution sites (like YouTube) transcode whatever format you upload into Flash for publishing. There are three main reasons why Flash has become so popular:
1. Compatibility: The majority of internet users have the Adobe Flash player pre-installed in their browsers regardless if they are on a PC or Mac. Quicktime (.mov) files on the other hand may be difficult for some PC users to view, while Windows Media Player files (.wmv) may be difficult for Mac users.
2. Quality & Size: The Flash compression codec is able to ’squish’ the video file into a small file size while still maintaining a quality picture. How small and how good of quality will depend on your compression settings but generally speaking you will be able to find a compression ‘recipe’ that fulfills your needs. I’ll talk more about compressing Flash files for the web in a minute.
3. Player options: Using Flash gives you a lot of options as far as the look and functionality of the player you want to publish your video in. If you are using a video sharing site like YouTube or Vimeo you are stuck with the basic layout of the player but most have some color, and size customization options. If you are hosting the video yourself, there are even more skins and player options available. In addition to changing color and size, you can add a watermark or logo, add social media features and turn the embed code on or off. A couple of popular player options are FlowPlayer and JW FLV Player.
