It is funny to think that only a few short years ago, video on websites was virtually non-existent.  Nowadays, not a day goes bye when I see at least a handful of websites that have some sort of video on them.  Adding video to your website has never been easier, either. 

Enter YouTube.

YouTube ( www.youtube.com ) is the world’s largest video sharing website.  It is free and easy to join.  In order to get started, simply create an account by clicking the “Sign Up” button in the upper right hand  corner of their website.  Once you have completed your registration and signed in, you will see a yellow “upload” button in the upper right hand corner.  Just click it and follow the instructions to upload your own video. 

After you upload your video in virtually any format, the YouTube system automatically converts it to FLV format, which allows for the video to be easily streamed and to work with their video player. 

When you are done placing your video on YouTube, the next step would would be to place the video on your website.  To do this, simply copy the code snippet they provide you in the box entitled “Embed” and paste it into the code of your own website.  Want to show someone else’s video on your website?  No problem!  YouTube has provided the “Embed” code for every video placed on their website.  You can find this generally to the right of the video you are viewing. 

A question I am asked often is this:

“I see the YouTube logo on my video, and when the video is finished, it shows other videos that are not my own.  How do I get rid of this?” 

The short answer is - you can’t.  Not if you expect to use YouTube, anyway.  We have built a number of video systems for our clients that are not branded at all - if you are interested, feel free to contact us!

I hope this helps you in your quest of putting a YouTube video on your own website.  If all goes well as it should, the whole process could be done in about 5 minutes.  Best of luck!

Tags: flash video, flv, tanner creative, tanner jones, tannercreative, tannercreative.com, website video, www.tannercreative.com, youtube