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This is another article in a series on preparing videos for use on the web. Mobile and regular web browsers are increasingly expecting to find video on your blogs and websites. Video marketing, done professionally, can really help you market your business online. Is all of this free? What skills do you need? What new companies offer helpful services? We’ll examine these and other questions as we take a look at the fast emerging world of online videos.

by Scott Frangos

Video is coming. Already, people with mobile devices are seeking it out routinely. I’ve discussed some ways to get your site ready for mobile browsing, and some affordable ways to create professional videos, but what about services that help you work with all types of videos? Mobile phone videos. Video blogging videos. And, how about easy, efficient ways to distribute those videos and extend your reach? And, web 2.0 services are springing up with solutions for your needs — good news if you’re a social media marketer since, video is becoming an essential tool. Be sure to leave your own favorites in the comments below (we’ll feature a link to your site on our sidebar when you do).

We’ll take a look here at four new services, which can help you work on first “fixing” (improving quality) your videos, the “collaging” (combining them with still photos and other files) them, and finally sharing them with your social media fans and crowds. Maybe you don’t see a reason to do all that work? Fine… then just broadcast yourself “Live” — I’ll tell you how.

Fix My Movie (improve your cell phone videos)

The premise is simple — use the service to “clean-up” your cell phone videos. Great idea. TIP: there’s even an option to capture a still frame from you video which you can print.

Is there a way to fix your cell phone movies? Yes… to a certain extent — sometimes its pretty dramatic. There’s no substitute for a decent video camera, but now there’s a handy online service to do what it can with your cell phone videos — FixMyMovie.com. You email it to the site, and voila — the video gets brighter and noticeably less grainy. It takes 2-30 minutes (depending on size of files sent), and is done automatically. Then, the service helps you post it to online video sites, and/or your own blog (do both for wider reach). So far the service is free… but you have to be wondering when (not if) they plan to monetize it. FixMyMovie.com hosts your video, so you can send people a link, embed it, or… if you wish, email a link to yourself or others. You can also download your movies in one of four formats.

Create a Qollage…

Above is the demo editing area, which you’ll notice I’ve changed a bit (try it now at qollage.com) by simply dragging things around and using the pop-down menus which you access on actual screen elements by right-clicking (control-click on a Mac). Don’t be fooled by how minimal the screen looks when you first log in — there’s a lot you can do including combining Video, Audio, Google Maps and more.

What do Alfred Hitchcock, Barrack Obama, and George Bush have in common? No — they’re not cousins. They’ve all been Qollaged. And you can do it too — with a combination of movies (you’ve fixed at FixMyMovie.com), stills, audio and other files. Think about combining a number of videos you’ve shot with your cell phone, and editing them with stills and audio voice-overs. The possibilities are quite intriguing, and the discerning BlogMaster will master the “post-production” editing process to create better videos for their reader/viewers. Blogs are becoming TV stations. Get it?

Get Inside Videos at InnerToob and out to Your Audience with CrowdAbout

Above, a video of “Tango” the Cockatoo performing at home is shown wrapped with some crowd tools like “conversation feeds” and html code to insert the video at your site.

You gotta love that name — InnerToob. Well, it turns out that CBS also loved that name, and when you visit InnerToob.com, it’s “suggested” you hop on over to CrowdAbout.us, and learn about how you can “Add text, audio, and video comments in the conversational player.” Now you have a video you want to use online, how about getting inside of it? Huh? I can do that? Yup… but guess what? Using this technology, so can your fans and blog readers. It’s a natural for podcasters and video bloggers, and a boon to those just starting to add video to their sites.

So far this service starts out free, and allows you to add social components from the online “crowd” after uploading your video. It also allows your viewers to add comments to your “time posts” — comments you’ve already added at a certain point in the track of your video. Done well, that should definitely engage your social media market. You can also add a hyperlink in a post, or in a comment. How long before the comments sections of Blogs include commentable videos, instead of just static avatars?

What if you just want to go “live,” and stream video from your cell cam, laptop cam, or handheld direct to the web? Well you can do that too, of course…

Live! - Yahoo’s “experimental” way to Broadcast your way to fame…

Yahoo has entered the online video game with a new sort of “broadcast” service called “Live.” The idea is that you just stream up anything and everything, direct to the web. Clever BlogMasters will work out a way to “manage” the process similar to “live” broadcasts on the nightly news.

We all know about YouTube, and its success… but there are dozens of other venues to get your video content out there, including “Live!”, an “experimental release” by Yahoo.com. The major difference here is that you would bypass all of the steps discussed above, and just go live. Hmmmm. Do you really want to watch a guy in an auto-repair shop (upper right) working on cars? Probably not. But the social window into people’s lives is fascinating in a “reality TV” sort of way.

You plug a webcam into your USB port, or use a built-in cam if you have one. Use your phone too. Then, after signing up, you create a “Channel”, which Yahoo says may be shared “with your friends, blog it, Myspace it, or Yahoo! Mash it (have to look that one up next).” If you can figure out how to record, or send recorded video, then you’ll have still more options.

This new technology calls not only for new thinking, but also old thinking about some tried and true methods of creating, producing and packaging video content. If you’re a clever BlogMaster, maybe you could do a “live” news broadcast on your blog’s niche subjects, and record it in the process.

What do you think? Have you tried online videos yet? If you have a video you want us to look at… leave a link in the comments below.