So here’s what you need to know.

First, videos pausing during playback (where a “buffering” or “wait” message appears).  The majority of videos you view on the Internet are progressive download videos.

That means while the video is being downloaded to your computer, it is also simultaneously playing.  Sometimes, either due to the speed of your Internet connection or intermittent technical issues across the Internet, videos play faster than they can be downloaded to your computer.

This causes the video to pause, so more of the video can be downloaded (buffered) before playback continues.  Beyond getting a faster Internet connection, the only real solution is to start playing a video, pause it and let it download completely.  Once it’s completely downloaded you can play it without any issues.

But wait…your Internet Service Provider told you that you have a super-fast broadband connection, right?  And you can watch videos on YouTube just fine.

Well, here’s what you need to know.  That super-fast broadband connection may not be as fast as you think.  How can you tell?  It’s easy, just go here and do a speed test:

http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/

The number you want to watch for in the above test is your download speed.  It will be reported as “2,700 kbps” or something similar.  Also keep in mind this number can vary minute by minute.

For example, I use Verizon Fios.  My download speed is 20,000 kbps (20mbps)…plenty fast for most files (including video) on the Internet.

But I use a “wired” connection most the time.  If you are using a wireless connection, you will lose speed.  A lot of speed.  And wireless connection speeds can fluctuate moment by moment.

You also have to understand that videos are encoded at certain bitrates (kbps).  Low quality videos (like those on YouTube) are typically encoded at a bitrate of 500 or below.  If you performed the speed test above, and it reported a speed above say 800 kpbs, then yes, you should be able to watch YouTube videos without a problem.

However, high-quality videos are often encoded at a bitrate of 1,000 or above (even a video bitrate of 6,000 is not so uncommon these days).  That means if your download speed is reported at say 2,000…and the video you’re watching was encoded at a bitrate of 2,400…you’re going to get a buffering message.

This is why you can play videos fine on one site but not another; the site you’re having trouble with has likely encoded their videos at a much higher bitrate (meaning their videos will typically have much higher quality as well).

The next problem people run into is a video stopping at some point during playback, and no matter what you do, you can’t get the video to play any farther.

This is caused by the cache settings in your browser.  Your browser is set to store or “cache” a certain amount of data you download from the Internet.  Videos are huge files and can fill up your browser’s cache very quickly.  So you need to clear your browser’s cache or increase it’s size.  Here’s how to do it depending upon the browser you are using:

If you’re using Internet Explorer, do this:

1. In Internet Explorer, from the main menu bar, choose Tools and Options

2. Click the Delete Files button and choose OK

3. Click the Settings button.  Increase the “Amount of Disk Space To Use” under the “Temporary Internet Files Folder” option.

4. Click OK to exit out of the options.

5. Try viewing the videos again.

If you’re using FireFox, do this:

1. In Firefox, from the main menu bar, choose Tools and Clear Private Data

2. Make sure only Cache is checked

3. Click the Clear Private Data Now button

4. Try viewing the videos again.

However, if you use video sharing sites to host your videos, it’s a different story.  Essentially, you upload your video and then give up total control over what the final product is going to look like.  Traditionally, video sharing sites will “dumb down” the quality of your video to save on bandwidth costs (after all, YouTube spends an estimated 1 million dollars a day on bandwidth).  Thankfully, things are changing.

Due to ever-improving software code, video sharing sites are now able to host your videos in high quality formats.  Sites like Vimeo and Blip.TV are leading the way.

Now, the Internet’s largest independent video sharing site, DailyMotion, is joining the mix too.  You see, they’ve just released a new high quality video player.

But the only reason I mention this is because they’ve put up a video that shows, head to head, the difference between the “standard” web video formats and the new “high quality” formats.  In fact, it’s the best video I’ve seen so far that illustrates the difference.

It’s worth a look and goes a long way in explaining (far better than I can do with words) what these new video formats actually look like.

You can watch the video here

Why? Because it turns out that this camera meant to shoot still photos can also record full, high-definition video…that rivals…and even surpasses…insanely expensive cameras used in Hollywood.

Here’s the story.

The camera is called the Canon EOS 5D Mark II. It’s still in production and not available to the public yet. However, Canon has a program where they have professional photographers test the equipment they’re developing for feedback.

One of these photograpers is Vincent LaForet (a Pulitzer Prize winner). Vincent was visiting the Canon offices when a box containing the new 5D Mark II camera arrived. He was intrigued that this camera also shot full, high-definition video. Long story short, he twisted Canon’s arm and got them to agree in giving him the camera for 72 hours. He had decided he was going to shoot a video with it.

Problem was, although Vincent is professional photographer, he’d never shot a video in his life. And he only had 72 hours. Plus, he was doing it on his own dime…Canon was not supporting him at all, they just lent him the camera.

The resulting video that Vincent shot has created major waves in the video industry. Why? Because the footage is absolutely stunning. What’s more, he didn’t tweak the footage in any way (no color correction, filters, tricks, etc.). It’s just the straight footage out of the camera.

Even more impressive? The EOS 5D Mark II will have a street price of $2,700. That’s less than half of what a professional, HD, video camera costs. And about 2% of the cost of a Hollywood level camera. Yet the EOS 5D Mark II produces video that rivals them. And remember, since this is a SLR camera, you can change the lenses at will (from wide angle to telephoto to zoom, etc.).

I could go on and on about the spec’s, but really you just have to see the video to understand how breathtaking the footage shot with this camera is.

To get the full story from Vincent himself (strongly recommended)…and see behind-the-scenes footage of how the video was made…click here to go to Vincent LaForet’s blog.

To see the actual video, visit Canon’s site by clicking here.

The answer isn’t so simple.  In fact, I use both.  So what I’m going to do here is highlight what you need to know about these platforms, as they pertain to web video.

First Windows.  PC’s are cheaper than Mac’s.  Video editing software like Sony Vegas and Adobe Premiere runs on Windows.  And Windows is the operating system that the majority of people already own.

In other words, you can create web videos (and even run a web video based business) using nothing but Windows based PC’s.

The biggest advantage with PC’s is speed.  And when I say “speed” I’m talking about one product in particular; Sony Vegas.  Sony Vegas is unique in the video editing world in that it allows you to preview your video edits in real-time.  That means if you edit your clips, add transitions, special effects, etc…you can instantly preview your changes.  With other products (like Final Cut on the Mac), you have to “render” your changes before you can actually see them…and this takes a lot of time.

So if I need to crank out a video…and I need to do it fast…I’ll always turn to my Windows PC.  However, if time is not an issue…and I really want to focus on quality…I’ll turn to my Mac.

Now, Mac’s are more expensive than PC’s…twice as much and often more.  But the number of tools available on a Mac to “tweak” your videos (and their ease of use) far outnumber what’s available on a PC.

For example, let’s say I want to do a green screen video.  I know that no video editing software (for Windows or PC) will do a very good job by itself.  I’ll need plug-ins to make the job easier.  And you’ll find a lot more plug-ins on the Mac side than you will for Windows.

Or let’s say I want to add color correction to my videos so they look cool, like a Hollywood movie.  Once again, I’m going to find a lot more “tools to do this” on the Mac side (and at better quality) than I will for Windows based video editing software.

And to be honest, Mac’s are just a lot more elegant when it comes to video or any type of graphic creation.  After all, Mac’s are geared towards the “artist” market, while PC’s are geared towards the “business” market.

So to answer the question of which platform you should use, it really comes down to how much video you’ll be creating and how important the production quality is to you.  If you’re just going to be creating a few web videos here and there, you’ll do fine with Windows.

However, if you’re doing something like a daily video podcast where you want pristine, “pro quality” production value, Mac would be the way to go.

Or you can be like me and use both platforms.  That allows you to take advantage of the features each platform has to offer.  In the long run (based on my experience), that’s the best way to go.

Then along came H.264…a format that introduced high-definition video to the web…where you could get beautiful video at very small files sizes.  It’s a format Flash began supporting about a year ago.

But On2 has just upped the bar again, with the release of their VP8 codec.  And with it, they claim you can get better video quality than H.264…at half the file size.

For you and me, that means we can put even better looking video on the web, while saving a bundle in bandwidth costs (not to mention that users can watch our videos even faster).

I naturally wanted to test things out and see if this “better quality and half the size” claim was true.  Problem is, the VP8 codec isn’t available (yet) for use in applications like Flix Pro.

Why is this?  It’s because Flash doesn’t support VP8 yet.  Ouch.  That means until Adobe updates their Flash player to support this new format, we’re all out of luck.

In the meantime, you can get a glimpse of the future by watching a head-to-head comparison of H.264 video vs. VP8 video by clicking here.

At the time, my big question with Silverlight was…why would someone want to use it when Flash is the Internet standard when it comes to web video?

Well, Microsoft just announced that the new Silverlight player (due for release in early 2009) will support Flash video files.  That’s right, they’re going to start supporting the very video format they’re trying to compete with.

Kind of.

You see, the Silverlight player is going to support Flash files only in the h.264 format.  And…it won’t support streaming Flash files (like from a streaming Flash server)…only progressive downloads (which is how the majority of videos on the web are viewed).

Why is Microsoft doing this? According to Steven Sklepowich, Group Product Manager for Silverlight, it’s because h.264 is becoming “the next generation standard” in web video and “we’re becoming more of an open runtime environment”.

Or it could be that 70% of the videos viewed online last year were in the Flash format and Microsoft realized they’re going to have a tough time getting video content producers to switch sides.  So by allowing video content producers to “stick with what they know”….and giving them the option to use the Silverlight player too…they are opening doors that would have otherwise remained closed.

Not a bad move considering what they’re facing.  But will it work?  Will it eventually convert more people from Flash over to Silverlight?

Maybe a few…but probably not the numbers they are hoping for.  And that’s because professional video content producers know one thing; if a viewer has to download a plugin to watch online video, they usually end up just clicking away to another page (and that’s the last thing we want to have happen).

Flash videos can be watched by 98% of people on the Internet without any plugin downloads.  With Silverlight, the numbers swing dramatically the other way.  And until Microsoft can come up with some really compelling reasons for us to use Silverlight over Flash, I think, the majority of us will remain human, resist change…and just stick with what we know.

And while Final Cut (both Express and Pro) offer a nice suite of built-in special-effects, I usually find myself wanting more.  And that means…I usually end up key framing my own effects or jumping over to other tools like Motion 3 or LiveType.

But sometimes I’m in a hurry when editing video (well, actually a lot of the time) and I’d like to just drag something quickly down to the timeline.  There are a lot of custom effects plugins available for Final Cut that allow you to do this…ranging from the really nice ones (that are expensive) to the inexpensive ones (that are really cheesey).

A good, intermediate effects plugin I’ve found is called SlickFX from GeeThree. In their package, you get around 60 plugins for transitions, titles, text, media generators and filters.  And while some of these effects are decidely on the “cheesey” end, there are actually quite a few that are useful and I find myself routinely using.  What’s more, the price of SlickFX is right…just $99.

I was originally going to put together a demo video showing everything you can do with SlickFX.  But it turns out, GeeThree beat me to the punch by putting together videos demonstrating every effect you get in their package (I wish more companies would do this…you know…instead of just showing static screen grabs of their software).

You can see the types of effects available in SlickFX…and watch their demo videos…by clicking here.

Also, I know I’ll get special effects questions from Sony Vegas users…and for Vegas, NewBlueFX is a good intermediate source.  You can check out their web site here.

Halgoen has it’s benefits…the color of the light is consistent, it’s produces great light and the light housing is generally small.  But as anyone who has worked with halogen lights knows, they also run VERY HOT, the bulbs don’t last long and they suck a lot of power.

Thankfully, over the past few years some new (and better) alternatives to halogen lighting have come about.  The first was fluorescent lighting.  When most people think of fluorescent lights, images of horrible, flickering office lights come to mind.

But this isn’t the case with fluorescent lights made for video.  Their color temperature has been tweaked to suit video and multiple lights are banked into single housings…providing plenty of light.  In fact, most television studios now use fluorescent lights for their newscasts.  Why?  Because they run cool, use little power, provide great light and the bulbs last for thousands of hours (compared to hundreds of hours with halogen bulbs).  Added bonus…fluorescent lights are said to take years off of your face.

But the newest entry into the video lighting world is LED lights.  Yes, those tiny little lights that used to be part of those Radio Shack “science kits” are now used for video lighting.  And they may be the best choice of all.  Anywhere between 500 to 1,000 of these lights are packed into a single housing and provide brilliant, color-temperature correct lighting for video.

But the real magic comes with the power they consume…which is almost none (by the way, they give off zero heat as well).  That means LED lights can run off of batteries, making them completely portable.  Need to shoot a video outside or in a remote location without power?  No problem.  Just charge a battery pack and take your LED lights with you.

The drawback to LED lights (and sometimes with fluorescents) is the cost.  Generally, they are more expensive than their halogen counterparts.  But with the extra cost, you gain thousands of hours in bulb life and can eliminate the energy-draining heat from your video shoots.

Where you can find fluorescent or LED lights suitable for video?  Here are a few resources I recommend:

Flolight

Coollights

Kinoflo

Litepanels

But usually, after they’ve broken through that initial learning curve, they’ll want to know how to get their videos looking as gorgeous, as say, the videos they see on Apple’s site.

And that’s when they stumble upon…and get totally confused by…something called h.264.

H.264 (or MPEG-4) is the high-definition video format on the web. It was originally spearheaded by Apple, in large part, as a way to get high-quality video…at small file sizes…onto devices such as the iPod. In fact, these days, any video you create in the QuickTime format (Apple’s video format), will be done using h.264.

But it wasn’t until Flash (the dominant video format on the web) began supporting h.264 with Flash Player 9, that “high-definition” web video began catching people’s eyes.

In a nutshell, the h.264 format gives you outstanding quality at really small file sizes. Let’s start with a 45 second video in an uncompressed AVI file format (170 MB large) as an example. When we encode that file into a Flash video, using the high-quality VP6 format, we get a great looking video that is 7 MB in size.

However, when we encode that same file into a Flash video using h.264, we get a noticeably better looking video that is 2 MB in size. And again, that’s the allure of h.264…better quality, smaller size.

But it’s not all roses. If you want to use h.264 for your videos, there are some things you need to know first.

Now as I previously mentioned, virtually any tool you use these days to create QuickTime movies, will by default, use the h.264 codec. Problem is, only about half of the people on the web will be able to watch your QuickTime movie without first being prompted to download the QuickTime plugin (and many will be too intimidated to do so, opting to click away instead).

The more popular route to go is Flash. But that presents it’s own problems. First, the viewer must have Flash Player 9 or above installed on their computer to view h.264 videos (and if they don’t have it, they’ll have to download it…just like with the QuickTime plugin).

After that, the player you use for your Flash video files must support h.264 as well. A free player, like the JW Player here, does support h.264. But many do not. And it leads to a lot of frustration with web site owners wondering why they can’t get their shiny-new h.264 videos to play.

Beyond those headaches (which by the way are easily bypassed once understood), the h.264 format does offer a “secret” that’s really cool.

What’s the secret? Well, Flash Player 9 automatically knows if a video is h.264…even if it was created in a format other than Flash. That means you can create a QuickTime movie, rename the file extension from .mov to .flv and the video will play fine as a Flash file. This is especially useful to know since many of the best options for creating h.264 files will only create videos in the QuickTime format (files with a .mov or .mp4 extension).

Want to see just how good h.264 videos can look? Well, check out these breathtaking examples from Apple’s site:

HD Video Gallery

Movie Trailers

P.S. You don’t have to shoot high-definition video to take advantage of the h.264 format on the web. It works just fine with standard definition video too.

These days, when consumers are thinking about buying a high-definition video camera, AVCHD is likely the “type of camera” they’ll come across. But there are a few pitfalls regarding AVCHD cameras you need to know about…and I’m going to cover them here.

First, all AVCHD cameras will record to one of three types of media; hard drives, Flash memory or DVD. And that’s the first issue you need to know about. When recording to these types of media, your video is compressed. Anytime a video is compressed, it loses quality. And by taking this hit in quality, you may be disappointed with what your final video looks like (in fact, many purists insist that AVCHD isn’t even high-definition video because of this).

By comparison, HDV cameras record to tape…where generally…there is no loss in quality. HDV cameras also give you the option of recording to an external hard drive, like a Firestore, where again, there is no loss in quality (and you gain the benefits of fast “direct to edit” recording).

Second, AVCHD video can be a headache to edit with video editing software (actually all high-definition video can be a headache because it requires major computer horsepower). But AVCHD video can cause unique problems within video editing software. While all modern video editing titles can now handle AVCHD (Final Cut, Sony Vegas, Adobe Premiere, etc.), that doesn’t mean they’ll always play well with video shot from a specific camera. In fact, with a few AVCHD cameras, you have to use the proprietary video editing software they supply to edit your footage.

And third, well, it’s a combination of 1 and 2 above. You’re all excited about your new “high-definition” camera and all the breathtaking web video you’re going to create with it. But after you’ve shot all your footage, reality is going to set in. What’s the reality? Well, here’s a CNET review that sums it up.

My recommendation? If you want to go high-definition, particularly for the web, stick with HDV cameras (the ones that use mini-DV tapes). You’ll get the best quality and the fewest amount of headaches. Yes, tapes are considered endangered technology…but they also happen to be the only format pro’s use.

The HDV camera I recommend (and personally use) is the Canon Vixia HV30. You can check it out here on Amazon. Both pro’s and hobbyist’s consistently give it the highest rating in a crowded field.