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This blog was originally posted by Chicago Filmmaker/Actor/Friend of the Teeth Joe Avella on his own blog. 

Most times I shoot in noisy locations or ones I need to leave quickly because I’m there illegally. Time is always of the essence and I don’t like getting bogged down with more equipment. What almost always suffers in my production process is the audio.

Thanks to the library of sound FX in programs like Garageband and free sound sites like Free Sound Project, you can easily recreate any location specific sounds, but not dialogue.

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If you're like me, then you are an intelligent human being with above average hygiene. You are also someone who likes things that make your life easier. In the world of web video there is a tool that can do just that - Tubemogul.

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I get asked all the time how to do certain tasks pertaining to video by people who dabble but haven't dedicated their lives to the dizzying world of video production like I have.

So, in our continuing series of helpful tips on video for the web, today I'll introduce you to a free piece of software that does some pretty heavy lifting in terms of converting, compressing and even simple editing of video files. Ladies and gentlemen, please say hello to MPEG Streamclip.

MPEG Streamclip is put out by an Italian company called Squared 5 (http://www.squared5.com) and thats as much as I know about them. According to their site, "MPEG Streamclip is a powerful free video converter, player, editor for Mac and Windows. It can play many movie files ... encode movies to many formats, [and] can cut, trim and join movies. MPEG Streamclip can also download videos from YouTube and Google by entering the page URL."

Thats a useful little gadget there. Let's look a little deeper.

CONVERT AND COMPRESS

• Sometimes you're given a Windows Media file (.wmv) and need it to be a Quicktime (.mov), just drag and drop it into MPEG Streamclip's simple interface and export away.
• Maybe, you have a video recording with a great song that you want to put on your ipod - you can export just the audio and be in earbud heaven.
• You've got your wedding video on a DVD and want to put it on the web for your Aunt and Uncle to watch online - take that giant file and bring it down to a web-friendly size.
• You need a frame grab of a video to put on a website or send to the press. You can scrub frame by frame and find the one you need, export and you've got your picture.

EDIT, JOIN AND TRIM VIDEO

Sometimes you want to do a little editing and don't have the time or money to hire a professional, such as yours truly - you guessed it MPEG Streamclip is the answer. You can set an in and out point of your video and delete the bit you no longer want.

Or, say you've got two clips that you want to bring together - drag them both in and export out. Voila!

CAN'T BEAT FREE AND USEFUL

This just scratches the surface and I'm sure there are tons of other uses that I don't partake in since I have my fancy editing software, but I just wanted to share this little gem with those in need.

There are many programs that can do similar things but at a much greater price than free. The happy price tag comes with a few drawbacks - an ugly interface with a bunch of extra drop down menus you don't need; a terrible name (nobody uses MPEGs anymore); the accompanying help document is nearly impossible to read.

All in all, MPEG Streamclip is a valuable tool to add to your box. Any questions on the above or to delve further into what it can do, feel free to drop me a line.

Web video is exploding like crazy and I'll do my best to keep you up with what's happening, and how you can use online video for your own needs.

We're a video company, right? So the brain trust got together and realized that our previous sites lacked videos in prominent spots - not a good idea when trying to sell them. Thats why with the recent redesign of bigteeth.tv we made sure that you would be able to see lots of videos - and with ease. Knowing how important the video samples were, we thought long and hard about the best way to host 'em and post 'em based on the following criteria:

1. Do you upload and host the video yourself, or host it on the web and embed it?
2. Will it take up lots of bandwidth and server space?
3. Will the video player integrate with the design of your site?
4. Can you track the number of plays that your video gets?

Using the above as a guide, we decided to host our videos on the video hosting site http://www.viddler.com. Viddler is similar to YouTube mainly in that its a place where you house the videos separate from your own site. This frees up space for other files and pages and takes away a lot of the hassle of worrying if people can view your videos in Quicktime or Windows Media or Flash. Unlike YouTube, Viddler allows much more control over how your videos on the web are seen. How so?

- Customizable Player - You can design your video player to be branded with your colors, and even add a watermark of your logo to the bottom of every video.

Here's an example of extremely popular web show Wine Library TV's viddler player.

- Easily embeddable - This is true not only of Viddler. Most video hosting sites you've heard of (YouTube, Vimeo, etc.) will do this. Viddler lets you choose your video size and type of player and then you just copy and paste the code into your page.

 
-  SEO Friendly - Viddler videos allow you to upload your own thumbnail so you can choose what people see before they click. Also, you can enter tags and descriptions that if chosen wisely will bring the right audiences to your site (This is also true of YouTube and the others).
- Analytics Friendly - Viddler has its own tracking but is also tied in very well with Tubemogul, a video distribution and tracking site (more on this one in a later post). With viddler and Tubemogul you can see how many people are watching your video, and even for how long - you'll know if that 12 minute video is only getting 16 seconds of play it might be time to edit.

There are many other cool things you can do with Viddler that involve tagging and commenting in specific places of the video, but for our purposes we just want to be able to play them for you.

I hope you find this helpful if you're looking to put videos on your own page or blog and if you want to dig further by all means give me a shout and I can dispense more of my homespun good ol' fashioned web video wisdom. Also, if you use Viddler or another hosting site, or host your own videos, we'd love to hear how and why you came to that decision.