Features

With your movie in the can, it's time to get it into distribution. Or the next best thing.

If you followed the editing steps opposite, you should now have a WMV video file stored at a resolution of 320x240 pixels. These just happen to be the optimum settings for files to be uploaded to YouTube. If you have a different resolution, perhaps because you're using an existing file or you weren't concentrating just now, YouTube will resize your movie to fit its specifications, and any change to resolution will reduce image quality, so it's better to avoid that happening if you can.

The final step is to upload your video file to YouTube (or another video site of your choice). If you don't already have a YouTube account, sign up now - it's free. Below we show you how to upload; bear in mind that it may take a while after this for your video to appear on the site. Consider setting the privacy controls under Broadcast Options to make your video Private for now, even you intend to display it to the public. That way you can check for any problems before everyone else spots them.

	1 To create an account, if you don't already have one, go to www.youtube.com and click the Sign Up link at the top of the page. Fill in the details you're asked for and, once the account is registered, revisit the site and log on using your new username and password.

	2 Click on the Account link and find the Manage My Videos heading. Beneath it you should see a link labelled 'Videos, Favorites, & Playlists'. Click this link and then look for a button on the left side of the screen labelled 'Upload a Video'. As you may have guessed, that's the one to click. We said this was easy.

	3 Enter a title, description and category for your video. These can be flippant if the clip is for family and friends, but if you're hoping for public attention, some thought here could increase your chances. Help things along even more by using the Tags field to add keywords that describe what's in your video.

	4 At last it's time to click the Upload a Video button. Having done so, click Browse... and find the file on your hard disk, then click the Upload Video button beneath. Depending on the size of your file, and how busy YouTube is, your video will appear in the My Videos section some time later.