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Here’s 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

It’s one thing to make videos. It’s another to get your readers and customers involved with them. So I was pleased to come across the relatively new Kaltura.com (launched last september), where the “engagement” factor is a big thing. And for WordPress BlogMasters, there’s no plugin necessary to display the result at your blog or CMS website (see example below).

Above, Kaltura offers a couple of video solutions for your websites, blogs, and wikis that include tools to aid collaboration so you can engage your audience.

The company offers modules and extensions for WordPress, Drupal, and Media Wiki. The functionality includes, “advanced interactive rich–media functionalities, including video searching, uploading, importing, editing, annotating, remixing, and sharing.” Like to try it? Go to the “User Zone“, create an account and get an interactive video player for your site. Once you embed our player on your site, you can upload and remix directly from the player on your site. It’s that easy.

Take a look at the free editing tools:

Above, when you click on “Edit this Video” you get an impressive set of tools which are intuitive. You upload files (Kaltura calls them “clips”), then assemble them in a timeline for your movie by dragging and dropping them into the sequence at bottom.

Ok… I tried it (it’s rough, I warn you). Here ya go — my first try at Kaltura where I combine a couple of still images with a movie shot from my cell phone of my dog, “Spirit” (a.k.a. “Pookie”), and some audio I made in Apple’s Garage Band:


Above is a product of using the tools in the screenshot above, then simply pasting the embed code right into the WordPress post editing box (in code view) — you’re embedding a shockwave-flash object when you do this. No plugin was even necessary. Note the collaborative tools.. well — what are you waiting for?

Now it’s your turn. Edit the above, edit and add to other people’s videos, or create your own using online tools (no software expense — watch out Adobe). What could you use the collaborative aspect for? Brainstorm time (leave comments and links below — we feature your comments in our sidebar):

• A contest for the best addition to a collaborative Kaltura
• A collaboration with allied publishers who produce content complimentary to your blog or ezine
• A collaboration of students in a particular class as a homework assignment

There… that should get the brainstorm going. What are your ideas?