I spent most of the weekend to figure out how to make and add videos to my web sites. Part of the problem was firstly to create the videos in a sufficient quality without making the files too large and secondly, to embed the videos in my Joomla! web site.

To make the files small enough I wanted to have the eventual video in .flv (flash) format but the Joomla! editor's embedding function don't seem to accept the flv files.

Later on the the article I will explain how I went about creating the following video but first I want you to take a look at my final first attempt.

Intro to Video Making For Joomla! Web Sites

 Click the Read More button for the rest of the article >>>

What do you need?

• A camera - I used a basic digital camera for the video but a webcam will work well too.
• A video editing and conversion program - this is to be able to crop and trim the video as well as to convert it to a smaller file size than your camera saves it in. This video was originally 71 Mb for 1 1/2 minutes in .MOV format. After a bit of cropping and it is now 6 Mb for 1 minute 25 secondsin flv format.
• The AllVideos plugin from JoomlWorks to embed the video easily into your articles. The embedding function of the editor doesn't seem to read flv files and they are the smallest file format for videos.

Shooting the video:

The shooting of the video is really the minor part of this exercise but a tip, shoot the video with more space around you than you want or need so that you can crop it to the right view.

Editing the video:

I downloaded a number of different video editors/converters and tested a few:

• Movavi Trial version - This seems to be the easiest one to use but is a paid product. I will test it a bit more before I decide on it. The trial version puts a watermark in the video so it's not a optionj unless you buy it.
• Any Video Converter -This is a free video converter and allows you to trim your video to the right length, however, itdoesn't have a crop function.
• XviD4PSP - A great freevideo converter with lots of functions - probably more suited for those of you who are more technically inclined. BUT if it has a trim function I can't find it!
• 4Videosoft Video Converter - A paid product with a trial version, that was highly recommended, but it doesn't recognise MOV files, which my camera uses. So I couldn't test it yet.

• Embedding the video:

 Once you have theAllVideos plugin this is the easy par. Create an images/stories/videos folderand upload you video file. Then you use simple and descriptive plugin tags like { youtube}heu37ej3qs{ /youtube}, { flv}batman_darknight{ /flv} or { mp3}pixies_bonemachine{ /mp3} where you want your video to be in the article.

Voila! You have videos on your Joomla! web site!