A film which catches the public eye can be seen by an immense audience around the globe. How else would your work be enjoyed in Japan, Honolulu, Australia, Canada, Timbuktu, Ukraine and Iceland?

For dedicated film enthusiasts the biggest benefit is that your films can be showcased easily on websites like this one, without demanding new skills from the webmaster or costing a fortune in "bandwidth" surcharges.

Our picture (right) shows a page on this website with an embedded video. It is in the latest part of Arthur Bullock's series A Video Maker's Journey which includes many video clips. Take a look ...

The 2Gb file size limit for YouTube and DailyMotion means you probably do not need to convert your films into another format - for up to 8 minutes 59 seconds of SD video just upload the AVI file.
(Many sites also accept VOB files from a DVD ... even if they do not say so.) The upload time may be several hours so an overnight session is recommended. You might like to stop your anti-virus program updating itself while you are uploading in case that interrupts the load.

Video

1. Codecs (in descending order of preference):
   
   H.264, DivX, WMV9, progressive MPEG-2
   
2. Aspect: 640x480 (4:3) or 720x480 (16:9)
   
3. Bitrate: 1.2 to 3 Mbps (depends on the codec and the resolution)
   
4. Framerate: 25 fps (preferred)
   
5. 2-pass encoding, progressive (not interlaced, this is very important)
   
6. Square pixels

Audio

1. Codecs (in descending order of preference):
   
   AAC, MP3, WMA9, MPEG Layer 2
   
2. Bitrate: 256 Kbps AAC or 320 Kbps stereo MP3 (ideal)
   
   128 Kbps stereo AAC or 192 Kbps stereo MP3 (minimum); 44100Hz

Container (file format)

1. MP4, AVI, MOV

A codec is a computer program which compresses a file before sending it across the web. It is important that the same codec is applied at the other end of the connection to decompress it.

Bitrate describes how many "bits" of computer data are allocated to carry the information about each second of video or audio. The higher the number the better the quality ... but also the larger the file.

2-pass encoding means the converter reads the video file once to note which parts have a lot of image changes (e.g. car chase) and which are relatively unchanging (e.g. talking head). It then reads the video a second time and allots a higher bitrate to the action-filled scenes and a lower one to the "static" scenes. This makes most efficient use of the file size and gives better quality results.

interlaced refers to pictures like those on a traditional television set where first all the odd-numbered lines (1, 3, 5 ...) are shown in a 50th of a second, then all the even-numbered lines (2, 4, 6 ...) in the next 50th of a second. In the early days of television broadcasting this system created less visible flickering than showing a complete picture every 25th of a second. Dailymotion prefers whole pictures each time.

square pixel - a pixel (picture cell) is the basic building block of an image on a computer or tv screen. They may be square or oblong. Generally computer systems prefer square ones for easier handling.

Container refers to the file format in which the data is carried.