Tacoma Home Inspector

I've seen many posts and comments educating and asking about posting videos to websites, blogs and emails.  You can see my method for emails here.  I'll discuss embedding to your website in this post.  I'm a home inspector, not a video professional but I know how it works and I like to help.  Video is catching on quickly and I strongly believe you should use video wherever you can to set yourself apart from many others before it becomes standard.  While posting your videos to YouTube and using the code provided is quick and simple, I've found that the quality isn't great and buffering times can be long (that annoying amount of time when your video pauses while it catches up).  I've found that hosting the video on your website server allows better quality and faster loading.  Here's how to do it:

•1.        I'm assuming that you have your video already recorded.  You can use many devices to capture video with.  Many new cameras can capture video.  You can use any device you want, the only difference will be the format the video is recorded in and quality.  You can also download videos from many websites.

•2.       So you have a video on your device.  Connect it to your computer via USB or Firewire or if your computer has the capability, take the card out of your camera and put it in your computer.  Now, download the video to your desktop.  Refer to your device's manual if you're having any trouble.  It should happen automatically or at least ask you what you want to do when you plug it in.

•3.       Depending on your device, the video that you've downloaded will be in some kind of format (.wmv, .flv).  A very common format is .wmv or windows media video.  It doesn't matter because you can convert the format to whatever you want.  I use Xilisoft Video Converter but you could use one of many video converter programs if you need to convert the format. 

•4.       I'll assume we're working with a .wmv file at this point.  Now, name your video "video.wmv" and put it on the root directory of your server.  If you're not familiar with how to do this you can ask your webmaster.  You can access your root directory using an ftp program or many hosting services, like Yahoo, give you access through their website in the form of a file manager.  Either way, the "root directory" is the main area where all of the files for your site are.  If you're using an ftp program, the "root directory" will be the first area that you see when you connect to your server.

•5.       Next, you will need this code:

<OBJECT ID="MediaPlayer" WIDTH="192" HEIGHT="190" CLASSID="CLSID:22D6F312-B0F6-11D0-94AB-0080C74C7E95"
STANDBY="Loading Windows Media Player components..." TYPE="application/x-oleobject">
<PARAM NAME="FileName" VALUE="videofilename.wmv">
<PARAM name="autostart" VALUE="false">
<PARAM name="ShowControls" VALUE="true">
<param name="ShowStatusBar" value="false">
<PARAM name="ShowDisplay" VALUE="false">
<EMBED TYPE="application/x-mplayer2" SRC="videofilename.wmv" NAME="MediaPlayer"
WIDTH="192" HEIGHT="190" ShowControls="1" ShowStatusBar="0" ShowDisplay="0" autostart="0"> </EMBED>
</OBJECT>

 This is the code for the video player.

•6.       You'll need to edit two parts of this code.  Change "FileName" VALUE="videofilename.wmv"> to say "FileName" VALUE="video.wmv"> and edit SRC="videofilename.wmv" to say SRC="video.wmv".  After you've edited both of these, copy and paste this code to the page that you want your video to display on.  If you want it to display on your home page, the file to paste it to is usually called index.html.  You can also edit parts of the code to change what the player does.  For example, you can change <PARAM name="autostart" VALUE="False"> to say <PARAM name="autostart" VALUE="True"> if you want the video to autostart when someone opens your homepage.  The other options work the same way.  You can also change the size of the video window by changing the width and height numbers at the top and bottom of the code. 

If you have any questions about this detailed description, ask as a comment and I'll respond for everyone to see.

So now you have your video uploaded to your server and you have the embed code pasted to the page you want the video to display on.  That's it!

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Certified Tacoma Home Inspector