Share Your Video: CD, DVD, or Web?

Many of you are filming this spring and are eager to share your videos/photos with your family and friends.

The most common subject I'm asked about is burning DVDs; how to, which program to use, how to get the movie on the computer....

I want so show you some Pros and Cons concerning these 3 methods of sharing your media: CD, DVD, or Internet.

CDs - benefits

• The great thing about burning to a CD is 95% of computers have CD burners and drives. You can easily burn a CD from almost any computer you are on, and hand it to the person next to you for their enjoyment.


• Burning a CD is easy. You just drag your file into a folder, and hit "Write".

CDs - the downside

• To share your files, you have to manually mail the CD out, or hand deliver. Your audience is limited by your distribution resources. And even when you get it to them, you'll visit a week later and still see the CD on the kitchen table, not used yet.


• Most DVD players won't play CDs. Your CD will only run on your comptuer.

DVDs - benefits

• DVDs are great to watch on TV and gather the family around. Almost every house has a DVD player, and most computers have DVD drives now.


• Amost everybody knows how to watch a DVD.

DVDs - the downside

• Creating DVDs for TV format can be a complicated process. It's more than just dragging and dropping the files to the disc and burning.


• The manual distribution again, like CDs. You have to physically hand them out, risk them getting scratched, etc....


• Not everybody has a DVD reader on their computer.

The Internet - benefits

The Web is by far my favorite way of distributing my media. I have over 300 videos online, and Tens of Thousands of photos stored on various internet accounts.

• Anybody that has internet access can immediately see my media, unless I've locked access, and then it's by invitation only.


• No manual distribution. I can just send an email to hundreds of people with the link location of my video, and they can immediately start watching it without leaving their seat.


• There is no disc to get scratched or lost. The content will never be corrupted when it's stored online.


• My computer can crash, but my files are safe because they are on the web.


• Many media websites have places to comment or reply on videos or pictures, for an easy way to give feedback.

The Internet - the downside

• Not everybody has the internet, nor a computer.


• Depending on how you create your video, online videos won't have the same high resolution as a DVD. This does not mean that DVD will always be high resolution though, it matters how you create your movie.


• Some websites, like www.youtube.com are blocked at many places of employment. So you will have to choose wisely where you upload your videos if you want to share them with your family while at their place of work.


• If you want this media to remain private, make sure this website will allow that setting, so you can let people view via "Invitation Only". This is available on many sites, but if you don't, anybody will have access to it.

In conclusion, most of what I do will be uploaded to the internet and shared that way. When most people crave the High Definition videos on DVD, they'll realize sooner or later that it doesn't matter what resolution the videos are most of the time. Many times you'll film your son running around in the kitchen, or picking his nose.... and you just don't need the super high "blu ray" definition for that.

Web media is a great way to distribute to hundreds of your friends and family at a time, just by sending them a link to where the video is uploaded. All you need to do is create an online account somewhere like Youtube, or even create a personal blog - all for free. You can upload your media to sites like these for free, then send the link out via email or instant message.

Oh, one more thing.... nobody appreciates all of the hard work that you put into editing your video, quite like you. I've learned this lesson. Most people want to watch the video maybe a couple of times at most, and get on with their lives. They'll never fully appreciate the fine detail that you included in the editing, so don't be offended.

Please feel free to respond to this post with your input and experiences in sharing media.