There are many different ways to publish films (video clips) on the Internet. The easiest way may be to register with YouTube or similar platforms and upload the video (you can see a list of supported formats on the help page of YouTube). For a better quality some companies (e.g. German TV stations) ask visitors to use Windwos Media Player or iTunes to watch their videos. The private user might prefer formats of lower quality but low size. The extensions *.flv (flash video) and *.swf (shockwave flash) are the ones that require little space. Both need the Flash Player of macromedia to be displayed. The player is available free of charge for all platforms.

For my first experiments I made use of the JW Player developed by Jeroen Wijering "JW". At the time the player was an open source project. Now the company Long Tail distributes the player. You have to register to get the free version and the films have a watermark. The same is true for an alternative called Flowplayer. These players are able to present various film formats including *.mp4, *.ogg and h.264. A similar solution is available for sites using MediaWiki. However extensions such as dhflashplayer are believed to pose a security risk.

The trouble with the better quality of the *.mp4 format (compared to *.flv or *.swf) was that the whole film (larger file) had to download completely before the playback would start. I had to search the web for a long time until I discovered the reason. The metadata is at the end of the *.mp4 files and therefore the film does not start until this information is read. There is a small tool (for windows or better DOS) that moves this information to the beginning and lets the film start before the download is completed. You can find the tool at http://rndware.info/. A discussion on alternatives and Linux based solutions can be found in a a forum of Long Tail Video.

Sample pages

Many sample pages I created are in German and only present low quality films. The newer ones allowing mp4 quality as an alternative are

• Queen in concert (Montreal 1981)
• Bob Dylan (1963-1965)
• Loriot (3 Sketche)

Older ones include

• Birthday clips and the Guildford Four
• Marathon 2008 in Hamburg
• Scenes from Harald & Maude Something was wrong when I used playlists. Instead of looking for the mistake I made a manual list
• Short clips (possible intros to website)