Integrate video into website

how?

[wheel]

So I shot two videos yesterday, with the intention of loading them on a website. I shot them both in HD, they're about 15-20 minutes in length and they each take up like a gig of space. Looks like they're saved as a .mov file.

- How do I integrate this into a page? Iframe? basically I think I want it to look like those videos where you see the first frame, click the frame and the video starts playing.

- Do I need to decrease the size of the files? If so, how? I'm not overly concerned that many people are actually going to watch the videos (funnily enough perhaps. But the video is just confirming that research was done, so it's existence is what's important), but still, a gig - maybe if the bots get crawling it or something?

Any other newb tips on integrating a video into a website?

[lammert]

Is uploading to a video sharing site like YouTube an option? Most video sharing sites have an option to embed uploaded videos in a website.

[wheel]

I'd prefer not. It's my own video, want to keep control. I'm not a big fan of letting the big boys full control over my content. I do have the bandwith if necessary, so that's not the end of the world.

Actually, maybe I do need to be concerned. Something happened during the video that's completely unrelated to what we were shooting, and it's something that has some small potential to go viral. But still, I'd rather handle the bandwidth on my end than let Youtube have it.

[enigma1]

Use some js so the bots will never see a link to it in case you're concerned with wasting resources. The way it goes is the regular html/css includes a picture (like the first frame). Once the user clicks on it the js takes over (you basically hook the selector/click) and send a request to the server (use some ajax) and start streaming by updating the html with whatever html tags (embed, video etc).

Doesn't need to be in an iframe and there are converters for the various video formats you may want to expose.

[mark_roach]

I have just added video to my site. I have no idea if what I am doing is best practice, but I use FFMPEG to reduce the size and convert the files to MP4 and then use JWplayer to play them on my site.

I use <video> tags with the src attribute which I guess a spider could crawl if they so desired , but there is a javascript option to add the file name on page load.