If you host web videos on your own server, you may encounter problems, such as video format, video embedding, video dimensions, video loading speed, video compatibility, etc. In an earlier post, we have discussed the best video formats for mobile websites. Today, we will discuss the video dimension issue and provide suggestions as to how to choose the right video width and height, how to scale down videos for your online video demo and displays.
Many video users may want to know what would be the ideal file size or size range for website videos. It is actually not easy to say which file size is the best for all online video streaming. A general rule is to keep your video files as small as possible for faster loading and smooth playback. It is because you will have visitors with different internet connection speeds and video loading is very important for good user experience.
We know that it is a dilemma between good video quality and small video file size. However to get a small video file size with good quality is not easy to do. Normally best video quality comes with largest video file size, better video quality comes with medium file size, if you want to get slim videos, you have to lose some video quality.
How to know if my web video is in normal file size or not. If your internet connection speed is 2M/s, which is quite normal for broadband connection nowadays, and your video length is 5 minutes, video file size is 50M, then your website video should load smoothly. Note that it doesn’t always matter what size of the video file, because your video length, file size and internet connection decide whether you can play the online video smoothly or not. Bear in mind the video buffers while it is playing.
How to get smaller video size for playback on websites?
A large video file is more likely to encounter buffering issues and drive the viewer crazy. The smaller your web video file size, the easier it will stream.
One of the most important settings of every web video is its width and height, also known as video dimensions. You can crop or resize the video to a smaller dimension. For example, if it was 1920p*1080p, you may consider to scale down to 640p*360P to get much small file size. This can cause instant and apparent affect in video file size reducing.
Except reducing video width and height, another thing is equally or even more important for video size control is the video bit rate. The bitrate is simply a measure of how much data or information goes into your video file. Higher bitrate rings bigger video files and better video quality. To reduce video size for online streaming is a effective way to speed up the video loading. There are many easy video editors can help you get smaller video file size, adjust video resolution, modify video bit rate too, such as Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro, iMovie, etc.
Once you have get your videos ready, you can follow this tutorial to use HTML5 to add videos to websites so your online videos will be compatible with almost all major devices, various mobile phones and tablets are included as well.
