For reasons discussed throughout the site, the DSA is recommending our students create accounts at Vimeo for sharing video online. To begin sharing videos, first create a free account. Your free account allows you to upload up to 5 GB of video per week (certainly a lot for our purposes). You can also create channels and groups to organize and showcase your videos.

In order to make your videos play as smoothly as possible on-line, please follow the following Vimeo guidelines for compressing your video. (These compression guidelines will work for those of you uploading to YouTube, too.):

In Final Cut Express:

1. File>Export Using Quicktime Conversion
2. Check that the format reads “Quicktime Movie”, then click the “Options” button.
3. In the Movie Settings dialog, click Video Settings and make the following choices:
   • Compression Type: H.264
   • Key Frames Every 30 Frames
   • Data Rate, restrict to 2000 kbits/sec
   • Compression Quality: Best
4. Change the Video Size to 640 x 480, make sure to check the box “Deinterlace Source Video”
5. Under Audio Settings make the following choices:
   • Format: AAC
   • Channels: Stereo
   • Sample Rate: 44.100 kHz
   • Target Bit Rate: 320 kbps
6. Save it. (Note that exporting can take a long time. Sometimes as much as 3 or 4 times as long as the movie you’re exporting.)

The resulting .mov file will be well adapted to streaming on-line.

Upload them. Organize them. Embed them in your blog. Woot.