QuickTime Web Video Publishing Made Quick & Easy
DV Kitchen has just announced the release of a new version of their widely acclaimed video converter for mac osx.
Version 2.0 includes a completely redesigned publishing room which now has some amazing new features that have never been seen before.
In this article, I walk you through how to publish a video using QuickTime as the platform. Here’s how it works:
When you enter the publishing room interface, you are given the option of selecting a clip that has already been uploaded to a remote server, or one that you have either just encoded or imported from another program.
Having done that, you are offered the choice of three publishing platforms, Quicktime, Jeroen Wijering’s flash player, or ShadowBox.
Again, in this example, we’re only concerned with the QuickTime platform. Drilling down into the Quicktime option, you are presented with 3 sub options:
1. Normal Quicktime embed
2. Default poster frame
3. Custom poster frame
The normal Quicktime embed is a great choice if you just want your movie to appear in a web page quickly. DV Kitchen will generate the required html code automatically and offer the option to upload to your web server then and there.
That’s how easy it is. Note that you can have DV Kitchen generate a whole html page or just a code snippet. The snippet is useful where you are hand coding your html or where you have a blog or other CMS platform. Just copy the snippet and drop it into the page wherever you need it..
You don’t have to type in where your movie is stored, height, width, or any of that stuff. It’s compatible with all browsers and every platform . . . it just works.
Multiple Embeds
Okay, so that’s a great publishing option if you only have one video on the page. But what if you have multiple videos on the same page? It’s not a great idea to have them all start buffering at the same time because it will make the browser very sluggish.
That’s where the poster options become useful. The default poster frame simply places a default image at the start of the clip as a kind of placeholder. It looks great and will suffice for many situations. Once you click the play button, the movie replaces the static image.
If you want to create your own graphic, the manual tells you where the default graphic is stored, so you could have a company logo or similar.
The custom poster frame option is a new feature that allows you to scrub through the video to be embedded and select a frame to use as the poster frame. DV Kitchen will grab a still off the frame, upload it to your server and write it into the html embed code. It’s pretty slick.
There you have it . . . QuickTime video publishing made quick and easy with DV Kitchen, the best video converter for mac on the planet.
Confessions of A Web Designer
March 8, 2010 by Stacy42 · 6 Comments
Introduction
When I decided I needed a website for my business I had no idea of the very many processes involved. Like most people, I thought web design meant deciding on the graphics and the look of the pages and then by some magic it would all happen.
I have a friend who is in the business of web design and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) so I approached him for a quote. As a complete novice who is computer literate up to a point, I was amazed at the depth of initial questioning required to find out exactly what my requirements were.
I had no idea about the various aspects and the structure of the site and I found it mind blowing when I learned about the amount of work involved. So I thought other people would be interested to know more about this complicated process and I have asked my friend to supply the technical information for this article.
Stages in the Process
Target Audience
Before building a website there are important questions to consider. I was asked who would be my potential audience. Who are my customers likely to be? Would they be children, businesses, home owners, sales people, parents or teenagers and so on?
The objective of the website
Then I was asked, what was the purpose of my website? Did I want to sell services on line or use it to market my business and get more leads for possible customers? Maybe I would want to use it as an online brochure to showcase products. Another possibility was to use the website to foster a community so that I was in contact with other like-minded people, with chat rooms, online discussion and being supported by advertising on the site.
I hadn’t quite realised the scope of a website but as I was asked these questions it became clear that a lot of careful thought went into the preparation before building a website.
How to be Found on the Web
One of the first questions I was asked was, ‘Do you want it to be found by Google the main search engine?’ If I did then there was a whole process of establishing Keywords. So finding the best keywords are vital if you want to be found in Google. Generally most users only look at the first page of results so you will also want to promote your website to get on this page for your chosen keywords. By using a keyword research tool you can find the single most popular keyword for your industry.
Your Domain Name
Choosing a domain name is often quite a challenge because every name you initially come up with will almost certainly have been taken. Domain names ending in .com are by far the most popular and internationally recognised; the snag is that it’s very popularity means that the majority of the shorter names have already been registered.
So looking at names with endings such as .net; .co.uk or .info may be able to provide you with the domain name you are after.
We were lucky with the latest Dryzone specific company domain name because we had sought advice about registering it ages ago and got one with the word Dryzone in it, which also happens to be really relevant to our business.When choosing your domain name it is very important to include one or more of your keywords if possible as this can apparently help with search engine rankings. So although the name of your business is the obvious choice for a domain name, it is not necessarily the only option.
Creating a Site Map
As with any project you must have a plan, the better the plan the better the project turns out. A site map for a web site is part of the plan for the site. The importance of creating a site map is to get it clear in your mind of all the pages you will have on your website so you can prepare the content for each page and begin to design the flow through the website, such as when a user adds a product to their basket, then enters their delivery and billing address and makes the credit card payment in the correct order.
The aim is to make the site as simple to use as possible so that there are no barriers to getting into the website. For that reason often user name and passwordz are set for the customer so that they are not put off making a purchase by having to register.
For a non e-commerce site things are simpler with a contact form which allows you to receive enquiries by email without publishing your email address on the website, thus avoiding junk email.Web forms can also validate the information before you receive it, so ensuring that the phone number provided does not contain words, and that the email address is in the correct format, for example. These things may sound very technical to us lay-folk but I assure you everything has to be decided in advance before starting on the construction of the site.
Copy
The next stage is preparing the copy. This is not the design of your website – just the words and visuals you want to have one each of the pages.Having gathered all the previous information you will need to decide what imagery you want to use within the website content. As we all know, a picture speaks a thousand words and remains in people’s memory far longer than just words.For each image you could also have a caption, as the caption of an image is the next ‘most read’ words on the page after the page title. Images and their captions need to be clickable. When you click on a picture it should take you to the next stage of the process such as the sale page or placing an enquiry if your website is for lead generation.
Navigation
Another important aspect when building a website is how you want your navigation to work. You can have links within the content of your website, in the text, so there are not just links from the menu. You will need to decide whether the links will open into a new window, retaining your original page open. Next time you go online, you will realise how much thought has gone into the way in which a website works.
Website Design
Finally we come to the design of your website. I asked my SEO friend about the design stage he says it is one of the most difficult stages of the process because it’s subjective.
What one person might like, another person might not like. If you are setting up a website for yourself alone then you will probably have some idea of what you want to see on the site. But if, as so often happens, the website is for a large corporation there will be inputs from many people or departments and you can be sure that they will never all agree!
There are a number of ways to approach web design but ultimately you need to create a design brief for the designer(s) to work from. Look at other websites and your competitor’s websites to find out what you like or dislike. The design brief should give reference to the logo, any existing brand guidelines or schemes and fonts and colour schemes, and should also detail which pages of the website that the designer is being tasked with creating visuals for.
The very best results will be achieved by using a graphic designer, and beware – not all graphic designers are the same. A graphic designer who designs specifically for print is working in a different discipline than a graphic designer who designs for screen and specifically the web. So choose your designer carefully, look at other work that person has done and determine whether or not you like their style.
If you are working in the big time and budget allows, use multiple graphic designers who have all been given the same design brief and request three concept designs from each designer. If the client themselves also do a graphic design, even if it’s a back of the envelope scribble, you will then have 10 concept designs. The next step is to get them all together and select the preferred elements from each design. Then give the work to the preferred graphic designer to work up as the final artwork.
The artwork should be finalised and agreed on by everybody before construction of the site begins.
Production
Finally the preparation has been done and the site is ready to be built. Now for the more technical stuff! You will need to have decided which programming language to use to build the website. There are two main types for developing a website, one is Unix based, and the other is Windows based. Each one has pros and cons. If you are starting from scratch then it probably won’t matter, so you can go with the preference of your professional doing the work. My website is built on the Unix platform (apparently!) which is the same as many of the more well known websites such as Ebay, Facebook, Google and Amazon. Also your website hosting must be compatible with the development language with which your website is built.
Accessibility and Compliance
The website has to meet the current standards for website coding and doing so insures that disabled users, such as the visually impaired, can still access the entire website if they are using a Braille web browser.
Website Development
The best way to develop a website is on the web Server where the site is going to live. This way, those involved in reviewing the work can see work in progress and provide comments throughout the development.
Unforeseen items
There are always some things that arise in any project which you suddenly realise you have forgotten, so no matter how well the website designer prepares and asks the right questions, there will always be a last minute change or addition. The main aim is to minimise the number of glitches that might arise because they aren’t calculated in and they could cause extra costs and delays on the date of the web site going live.
Publishing Your New Website
The moment of excitement comes when your site finally is published to the internet and you see the results of all the thought that has gone into the whole process. We put in a lot of work collaborating on the website texts for our new website at http://www.spikedrunningshoes.com with the design agency and when the site went live it was a real feeling of achievement.
Reporting and Monitoring
Once your website is up and running, you will want to know how many people visit your website and from that number how many actually buy the products or place an enquiry. From these statistics you can work out the ratio of visits to sales and gradually make changes to improve the ratios. There are some reliable statistics packages such as Google Analytics or Web-Stat.com which allow you to collect and review website visitor data in near real time. All you need to do this is to have a small block of code inserted into each web page on your site.
Another useful service that Web-stat.com provides is to monitor the website and warn you by email or text message if the site is offline. Google Analytics doesn’t yet provide a comparable uptime monitoring service, maybe they just decided it was too much of a headache as it is an intensive service checking a website every 5 minutes to make sure it is still responding and indeed web-stat do promote this difference as one of their unique selling points but it is pretty hard to compete with free. In fact Google Analytics is not quite free, which makes it an even better marketing decision for Google because sometimes it is harder to give things away for free than it is to sell them! Google Analytics is a free service available to Google AdWords advertisers, you don’t actually have to have any AdWords campaigns running but it will cost you a one-time activation fee of £5 (or similar in your local currency) to open your AdWords account, but once you have done that you can go on to use Google Analytics for as many websites as you like.
Marketing
Once the website is live there are lots of things you can do to market your product or service. The first step is to submit it to the search engines and at the same time write articles, and press releases. Getting links to the site from forums, blogs and other social networking spaces are other options. For more on this subject ask your designer about SEO
Conclusion
Wheww. What an amazing amount of work! I hadn’t realised when I started the process of getting a website up and running, how complicated it all is and how many factors you have to consider before even designing the website. The word web design is really a misnomer, as people often think it’s just about the graphic design on the home page, and the branding of the product. Unless you are a computer buff, most people have no idea how much goes into designing and building a website and the systems that support the work you want it to do. I hope that this article will give readers an understanding and insight into the whole process of website development from start to finish.
Building My New Website
July 6, 2009 by Stacy42 · 2 Comments
Introduction
The term ‘Web Design’ creates a lot of confusion and misunderstanding. The word design suggests graphics and layout so many people think that’s what designing a website is all about. Most people think that website design is very simple, all you need to do is install the company logo, add the relevant wording, decide on the arrangement of the pages and that’s it.
Well I am about to shock you by outlining the many complicated processes involved in web design. Think of it this way; when an architect designs a house all we see is the way he lays out the rooms, how the available space is arranged. We normally do not concern ourselves with the amount of technical detail that goes into the design. The architect has to work out the stresses on the walls and the weight of the roof. If there are fireplaces he has to know about draughts and the shape of chimney for it to do the job. He has to plan heating systems, plumbing systems, drainage and sewage, what type of windows to use, door fittings and many other details so that when it’s finally complete the overall effect is pleasing and suitable for the purpose intended. Web design is similar. A customer may have an idea of the layout of the website but will need the services of the Web Designer to make it all happen.
Stages in the Process
There are many items to be decided on before even starting to build a website. Some of the important questions to consider are:
Once the webmaster has the answers to these questions then she can start the process of designing the site to give you what you want.
Target Audience
What sort of people are going to visit the new website? Are your customers likely to be businesses, sales people, home owners, parents, teenagers or children and so on?
Objectives of the Website
Is the website to be used to sell products on line, or to market your business to get leads for new customers? Maybe you wanted it to be an online brochure to showcase your services. Balloons for trade have a website for resellers only so that they can look up the products before placing an order. Because there is no selling on line there are no contact details on the site. You may want to use the website to foster a community to be in contact with other like minded people. You would need a design that incorporates a chat rooms and online discussions.
Being found on the Web
I work in a Nottingham web design company and one of the things my boss always makes me ask the client is how you want your website to be found on the search engines. This involves a whole process of establishing keywords for your products or services. The first step is a search of key words in the industry. Finding the best keywords is vital if you want to be in the top ten listed in Google. By using a keyword research tool you can find the single most popular keyword; the one everyone puts in. For example people looking for a vacuum cleaner might type in Hoover although this is in fact a brand name.
Domain Names
Domain names can be the hardest part of setting up your website, because nearly every name you come up with will most certainly have been registered already. By far the most popular are domain names ending in .com as they are internationally recognised. For that reason alone the majority of shorter names will already have been registered.
Choosing names with endings such as .net; .co.uk .org .info may provide you with the domain name of your preference. When choosing your domain name it is a good idea to include one or more of your keywords. Although the name of your business may be the obvious choice for a Domain Name, it is not necessarily the only option.
So as you can see choosing domain names and keywords right at the beginning of the project will determine how the site is constructed so that it is suitable for the purpose required.
A brand new domain name space has just been created.
Companies can now apply for their name in this brand new .tel name space and it is intended to replace the telephone directory. When the domain name is viewed in your web browser it will provide the companies details and telephone number.
Creating a Site Map
It is very important to have a site map to outline the pages on your website, e-commerce website or forum space. It shows the design and flow through the website so that when selling on line, items work in order such as; adding product to basket, entering delivery and billing address and on to making credit card payment. The site map helps to identify how user friendly the website is so that there are no difficulties in getting onto the site. Often the user name and password are set for the customer so there is no hindrance to achieving the initial sale.
Non e-commerce sites are easier because it is possible to receive enquiries by email, without publishing the email address on the website. By using a contact form you will avoid spam and also validate the information before you receive it. The aim is to create a balance between discouraging junk mail, and making it easy for the enquirer to use the site.
Links
An important consideration when designing a website are links. These can be links to other pages of content within your website, and links within the content of your website in the text, as well as links from the menu. Consideration has to be given to whether the links will open in a new window so you still have your original page open or will the new window replace the previous one.
The Copy
The copy is the words and visuals you want on your website. Having made decisions about the target market and relevant links, along with the keywords and using the site map information, the next stage is to decide what imagery you want displayed. A picture speaks a thousand words and remains in people’s memory far longer than just words. So images are important to reach your audience. Each image needs a caption which is the ‘most read’ words on the page after the title. The caption of an image need to be clickable so that when you click on a picture it takes you to the next stage of the sales process.
Design
The final design of the website is often the most challenging stage of the process because it’s subjective. In a large corporation, many people from various departments will have an input for their division. Everyone has their own ideas of what they think the site should look like and trying to gain a consensus can be a nightmare because not everybody will agree on the same things.
If you are setting up an ecommerce web design project just for yourself then you will probably have a clear idea of what you want to see on the site.
Even then unless your ideas are workable in the medium, you may have difficulty getting something you like. Firstly to achieve a good design it is recommended you review other websites and find out what you like or dislike about them. Look at competitor’s websites to make sure your design will be an improvement on what is already in the market place.
Once you have done that you will need to create a design brief. The design brief should have a reference to the logo and any existing brand guidelines, colour schemes and fonts adding in any other relevant information.
Having done a design brief look for an experienced graphic designer. Choose your designer carefully, finding one who designs specifically for screen and the web to achieve the very best results. Beware of choosing a graphic designer who designs for different discipline such as print as they are very different processes. Look at other works the designer has done and decide whether or not you like their style.
Using several graphic designers is the best option if you are working in the big time and budget allows. Give each designer the same brief and request three concept designs from each one. The client might also do a design, even if it’s a scribble on the back of an envelope, there will then be ten concept designs. Get everyone together and choose the preferred elements from each design. Once the items you want are selected choose one graphic designer to workup the final artwork.
All parties need to agree on the final artwork before building of the site begins. Consideration should be give to the fonts used for the titles and buttons etc. Fonts have to be licensed so if the designer has not supplied something then the developer will need a copy of the fonts to achieve the task. Professional graphic designers will usually provide the artworks in a layered Photoshop file so if titles are not going to be in plain text get the designer to also supply the fonts.
Production
At last all the ground work has been done and the site is ready to go into production. This is where it gets technical! You may not want to go into the detail in which case leave it to your Web Master to choose for you. There have to be decisions about what language to use, either Unix or Windows based, to build the website. Each have advantages and disadvantages with multiple variants but sites such as Ebay, Facebook, Google as well as other well known websites are built on Unix. Your website has to be built with the development language of your web host provider so that they are compatible.
Accessiblity and Compliance
These are current standards for website development to insure that disabled users, such as the visually impaired, can still access all sections of the website.
Development
Development of the website is best done on the web server where the site will reside. Those involved in reviewing the work can then monitor work in progress and provide comments throughout the development.
Unforeseen Items
As the site building progresses the customer suddenly thinks of something they must have. No matter how well the web master prepares and asks the client the right questions, there are always some last minute adjustments to the programme. The main aim is to minimise last minute additions because they aren’t calculated in and will generate extra costs and cause delays to the date of the website going live.
Going live
At last your site is up and running and you see the results of all the planning that has gone into the whole process. There is no substitute for real world testing so as soon as the site is live ask your friends and colleagues to view the website from their own computers and give comments.
Marketing
Once the site is up and running it’s time to turn your attention to marketing your products by submitting the site to the search engines, writing articles, and press releases and generating links from forums, blogs and other social networking spaces.
Reporting and Monitoring
Stats from your newest web design are invaluable to let you determine the success of the project.
Use a reliable statistics package such as Google Analytics or Web-Stat.com to collect and review website visitor data. All you will need is a small block of code inserted into each web page on your site to collect visitor information to help you assess the success of your products in near real time. Web-stat.com also monitors the website and alerts you by email and text message if the site goes down.
Conclusion
The title ‘Web Design’ is a bit misleading in that people often assume it means the graphic design on the home page and the branding of the product. Unless you are a computer expert, most people do not realise the amount of work that goes into designing and building of a website. Clients are not aware of the amount of complicated technical work necessary to build the systems that support what they want the website to do. In such a complex process anything that gets tacked on at the end will end up incurring more cost to your budget.
The depth of initial questioning is an indicator of how competent your Web Master will be. Every aspect of the construction has to be decided upon before you even start the design. These things may sound very technical to us non techies but it is essential for the Web Master to find out exactly what is required so that everything can be costed accurately and built into the design from the beginning.
Web Design Notes
February 3, 2009 by Stacy42 · 2 Comments
Web design is a definite process of planning, modeling, and publishing of electronic data and content via the Internet. It should be in the format of suitable interpretation and display by a web browser or other graphical user interfaces (GUIS) or other form of acceptable interpretation.
The purpose of web design is to create a web site . A website is a collection of readable electronic files which are placed on a web server on the internet. Web servers presents content that is accessible with interactive interfaces and programs. Web design is intended for the end uer and is normally in the form of web pages once requested by the end user.
Text, forms, HTML, XHTML, or XML tags and bit-mapped images (GIFs, JPEGs, PNGs) can be placed on the page using and are different elements of a web site that is hosted on a web server on the internet. Web design normally involve more complex elements to display graphics, animations, videos, sound, Flash, and Java run-time environment. Web design also allow embedded elements by the use of HTML tags. Another variant of HTML, called XHTML is also used for this purpose.
Various web browsers that comply to the W3c standards are used to read these websites. Web designers should take this into account when designing a website. Some web browsers do not comply to the standards and then cause web display to present incorrect formats that originally intended. Plug-inns can be used to overcome this problem. Web design should be properly planned to accommodated these functions.
Web sites are formed with a combination of various web [pages which can be static pages or dynamic pages. The content on static pages do not change very often and are normally maintained by a webmaster. Dynamic pages can be changed and updated by the user as often as they wish to do so. Interactive scripts allow users or programs to update the dynamic pages. Dynamic pages are normally used in more complicated applications. Normal one or two page websites consist of static web pages and will seldom include dynamic pages.
Web design of web pages can obtained via different technologies such as CSS which make use of style sheets in the compilation of these pages. This method is rather different that the more basic HTML method of compilation. HTML pages where CSS are not used, will normally result in duplication of certain functions and images and therefore take more space and resources that the CSS method.
It is said that the first website was published in 1991. Markup language are used to write HTML web pages. Early versions of HTML were used to give websites only basic structure like headings and paragraphs. More complex languages followed soon which added to the ability to create better websites with features like different layouts formed with tables. Cascading Style Sheets improved web design to such an extent that some developers regard the use of tables as outdated. However, the use of tables are still used with great effect. Web design techniques and methods continually change as new inventions see the light.
Web design companies all over the world are serving the huge need for businesses, organisations and individuals who dare discovering this great method of communication and marketing. Web design techniques as well as internet marketing techniques are improving by the day and is effectively used in the marketing an presentation of business world wide. websites are a combination of web pages which area collection of data or information about a particular subject. Web design is better described as the creation of web pages and compilation of it to form a web site. A web page lists or gathers information which are then combined to develop a web site. A web site might be described as a file where each web page is a different folder.
Web sites need to be published once it is completed. Web design or development of a web site normally takes place offline on a local computer or server. When the development is completed , the content of the website is not visible on the internet yet. Different methods are used to publish such web site to a server on the internet like a FTP client. The next procedure after publishing will be to make the data and the web site public or visible to the millions of users out there. Various techniques are used to make the website visible. Some methods are the listing of websites on directories and search engines. Web design is therefore not the only element in the development of a web site. A web site is only complete when the end user can view the website and when clients can easily find information on the web site after they have searched the internet and
the found the web site on one or more of these directories or search engines. Once the web site is found by a potential client or end user, the web site should be user friendly to navigate to other pages where more information are stored.
Website design consists of the collaboration of many facets like graphic design, database applications, copy writers and other like multi media experts. Different websites have different needs and each web site should be treated as a work of art on its own. This work of art is seldom complete before it is combined with economic an other functions such as accounting facilities, banking facilities, database applications, sound and many other options. Web design can also form the data and information to be visible on other media such as mobile phones.