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Read the guidelines for your chosen service - some of which we will outline in the next section. Follow them as closely as possible, while using the highest resolution and largest file size the site allows, to maintain quality.

This brings us to choosing a video-hosting service - and there are plenty to choose from.

Choosing your video service

YouTube has grabbed all the headlines lately, but there are still many other online video sites available, with different benefits and limitations. Here we are going to take a closer look at some of the most significant ones. Many of these services are free or have free options, so for maximum exposure you may want to put your videos up on more than one site.

Let's start with YouTube, as the name is now almost synonymous with online video. YouTube is free - simply register with the site and you're ready to go. However, it has its limitations. The service accepts video in WMV, AVI, MOV and MPEG file formats, but MPEG4 at 320x240 with MP3 audio is considered optimal. YouTube is now restricted to 100MB per file and a maximum of 10 minutes. It used to be possible to upload longer videos, but this category of account has been discontinued for new users. It's also worth noting that fitting 10 minutes of video into 100MB requires heavy compression, which causes a considerable reduction in quality, so it's best to keep your video under five minutes unless it contains a lot of still images, which don't suffer from high compression settings as much as video.

Before Google bought YouTube it had its

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own service, which is still available. Google Video (http://video.google.com) also has a 100MB file size limit, but only if you use its web-based interface. A separate uploader utility is available for Windows, Mac and Linux, which doesn't have any file size or movie length limitations. It can also upload multiple files in succession. However, you still need to use the web interface to fill in the title, description and other details about each of your videos. You can't enter these in the uploader.

Google accepts videos in a range of formats, including MPEG, AVI, RA, RAM, MOV, WMV, ASF, MOD and MP3. However, your videos won't be available immediately. Google checks submissions to make sure they're not obscene or copyrighted by someone else, which usually takes a couple of days. During this time, you can log into the web interface again, where you will find your uploaded file listed, even if it isn't ready for viewing. Clicking on the Edit link under Video Information will take you to a page where you can add the title, description, genre and other information for your video. The Advanced options section even allows you to charge a fee for your content, either as a complete download or a 24-hour viewing pass. Google is therefore an ideal choice if you want to sell premium content, assuming that you can convince people to buy it.

Publish and be damned

Another site that allows you to charge people to download and watch video is Lulu (www.lulu.com), the self-publishing book service. Once you've set up an account, go to the Digital Media section of Lulu's Publish tools. This lets you upload all manner of files, including video.

Unlike Google, which offers a streaming video interface as well as downloading, Lulu only lets users download video files. This is still a useful way of making your videos available to viewers all over the world, and you can even make them pay to download the content if you like. With downloads, you can also use any file format you want, as long as your viewers have the required player to view it.