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This month feature YouTube - Step by Step    Everybody is jumping on the YouTube bandwagon, from kids and vacation travellers to pros. It is fun and it's easy. Here are some quick tips to getting started. About ten years ago, I was mailing pictures in envelopes and copying video on VHS and sending them around the world. Then along came the internet to the rescue, with

video file-sharing sites like YouTube. Now you can shoot video, edit it and upload it to a central location, where your friends
and family (and, if you like, total strangers) can watch it. No postage necessary!

YouTube is actually very simple to use, but very often the most difficult part of the journey is the first step. So we're going
to walk you, step-by-step, through publishing video content on the world's most popular video-sharing site.

Putting Your Video Online
There are a few simple steps to getting your video from your computer to YouTube..

Sign Up
Go to www.youtube.com and click the Sign Up button; it is at the very top of the screen. There are several different types
of accounts: Standard, Director, Musician, Comedian and Guru. It does not really matter which one you choose, but the
Directors' entries ostensibly are expected to be professional edited videos. Videos uploaded from Standard accounts are
limited to 10 minutes; the Director videos can be longer.
You will get an email asking you to confirm your registration, and then you are in.

Prepping Your Video
YouTube will accept most popular video formats: AVI, MOV, MPG and WMV. The format that YouTube uses directly
is MPEG-4 at 320x240, 30fps, with 64k MP3 mono audio.  320x240? Are You Serious?
Yes. We are talking about internet bandwidths here and bit rates comfortable for people on dial-ups. If people want
to see your video in HDV, you're looking for another venue. What YouTube and others like it give you is easy access
by a lot of people. Video quality is the trade you make. It is a trade that's been trending that way starting with the
low-cost (and low-quality) VCD format being extremely popular in Asia, and more and more people watching movies
on their laptops, iPods and other portable devices. At the moment, 320x240 is where a significant part of the
viewing population is.

Uploading Your Video
After you have logged into YouTube, look at the top of the screen for My Account. Click on that, and then select
Videos. From there, click on the button that says Upload Videos. Enter a description for your video (Standard
accounts are limited to 10 minutes or 100MB). This description will help people decide whether or not they want to
see your video, so be as descriptive as possible.

       Here you can also select options to make your video public or private and to allow people to comment, make video
responses, rate your video, embed your video on web pages and blogs, syndicate it and make it playable on mobile
phones. Click Next and use the Browse button to find your video. YouTube takes your uploaded video and converts
it automatically to a flash animation - this may take several hours or just a few minutes.

       When your video is on the YouTube servers, you will see URLs you can send to people so they can see your video
directly. You will also find the HTML code necessary to embed your video on a web page or blog.

Sharing and Watching Your Video

Some Other Things to Consider

Aside from rating your videos online and leaving comments about them, your friends and family can subscribe to your videos
and receive a notification every time you update your collection. Since YouTube eagerly accepts video from cellphones and
digital cameras, it is relatively easy for even non-skilled moviemakers to join in the fun.

A downside to this is, YouTube automatically picks a frame from the exact center of your piece to represent it - this can
make or kill a video. You get two options to change it, made at about the one-third and two-thirds mark.
Have fun sharing your videos!