OVERVIEW
To embed a video or audiovisual essay you created into a blog post, you will need to upload it to a free video hosting site like YouTube or Vimeo first. Those sites provide you with embed codes that will activate a “player” in your blog post, so that viewers can watch the video without leaving the page. Videos must have “players” to be embedded, unlike images.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Before you can upload a video to a hosting site, you’ll need to export a compiled and compressed version out of your video editing app. See: Exporting a video from iMovie or Exporting from Windows Live MovieMaker
I tend to use Vimeo for my own videos, but both YouTube and Vimeo have their pros and cons. For example, YouTube currently limits videos to only 15 minutes, whereas Vimeo does not, but Vimeo does not offer close captioning, whereas YouTube does. You can look into both sites to see which would suit you best. I have an account on both.
The default is for uploaded videos to be public, but on YouTube you’ll also have the option to make them “unlisted,” which means that only people who have the direct link to the video can view it. That way you can embed the video into an entry on your blog, but no one can find the video just by searching the web.
NOTE: If you don’t want to create your own account for the video, and if the video doesn’t contain any material that could raise questions about copyright issues, then I would be happy to post it on my YouTube account for you, and then you can get the embed code from that. Just let me know if you want me to do that.
CREATE ACCOUNT
To upload a video to YouTube or Vimeo, you will need to create an account on the site first. On YouTube, you can create an account using your Google Account info, which will make the login easy to remember.
UPLOAD VIDEO
After you’ve created an account on either site, the process for uploading a new video should be fairly self-explanatory.
Click the Upload button, locate the movie file on your hard drive, select it, and then wait for the file to upload, which may take a fair amount of time depending on the size of the file and the speed of your internet connection.
Make sure you give your video an appealing title that will reach your target audience (and that does not make the video sound like a school project). Also choose an appropriate category based on the content of your video, NOT “education.” In other words, be rhetorically savvy about this: make choices that will appeal to your target audience.
On YouTube you also have the option to choose “Unlisted” instead of “Public,” and you can control other aspects, such as whether viewers can comment on your video or rate it.
NOTE: If your video contains any material subject to copyright, add a title card at the end of the video that cites the source. For example, if you use a song, then give the title slide the title Music Credits and below that list the name of the artist(s), the title of the song, and the title of the album it comes from. That may be enough to satisfy whoever owns the copyright to the song, but if it doesn’t, then the video hosting site will reject your video. In that case, you’ll need to search for another music clip that’s labeled as reusable. Try the Free Music Archive or the resources on this guide to reusable digital media.
EMBED THE VIDEO
Embed the video into a blog post using the same method you’ve been using for existing videos.
GOOGLE DRIVE
Just FYI: You can also share videos by uploading them to Google Drive and either putting them in a shared collection or using the Share button to share them with specific people. The videos will be playable on the web, but you can’t embed them anywhere, so this is not the method you should use for videos you’ll be embedding on the class blog.