Posts Tagged ‘web video player’


By: stu | Posted: Thursday, August 4th, 2011

Fact 4. Video Supports ALL Selling Venues

Web Video on Your Site for Online Sales
Online — If all online video did was make your website look good, that would be plenty. But online video is proven to increase sales as much as 30% over “static” websites.

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By: stu | Posted: Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011

Fact 3. Studies Prove Video’s Sales Effectiveness

 

Consumers retain 50% better with video

In closely controlled studies, video has been proven to be a highly effective means of communication. A study by The Wharton School of Business documented that consumers understood and retained information presented by video 50% better than when presented in person!

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By: stu | Posted: Thursday, July 28th, 2011

Fact 2. Video Makes Otherwise Difficult Sales Presentations SIMPLE

 

Simple Video Sales Presentations on your website

Virtually every product “shows” well in video, but especially those that involve action, movement, or sound. A picture’s worth a thousand words, and a video is worth a thousand pictures, so complicated or difficult to explain products benefit greatly (more…)


By: stu | Posted: Thursday, July 21st, 2011

Of all the many ways of selling products and services, do you know which one is the most effective by far? It’s one-on-one, face-to-face salesmanship.

You simply cannot beat the selling power of personal contact and live conversation. But you can’t possibly make personal sales presentations to millions of cold leads or even thousands of hot leads. That’s where VIDEO comes to the rescue.

VIDEO is the next best (more…)


By: stu | Posted: Wednesday, July 13th, 2011

If you could be looking over your audience’s shoulder as soon as your web video was through playing, you would most likly suggest the next URL for them to view; like a product page, or an ordering form.

Well, what if you could get that next URL to open magically at the end of the video play? Would that be a good thing? You bet!

Watch how to make that happen in this short How-To Video.

The URL you enter can be any valid URL, so the possibilities are endless.

 

Have a video that you want to share now? Click on the “Sign Up Now“, or “Try it Freebuttons.

 

Stuart Marks
Executive Creative Director
Business Video Applications

 

 

For more How To tips on Video On Your Web Site, under real business conditions, check these links;

 


By: stu | Posted: Tuesday, July 5th, 2011
Video on your website
Makes no difference what product or service you offer; sports fishing, video production, cheese making, firearms, auto service, furniture selling, real estate. You are dealing with new advertising media. After your small business has gone through all of the How-To’s you can find to engage in the new social media marketing craze, just to keep up with the competition, when all is said and done, your most powerful tool is still simply telling what you know directly to your market.
Marketers, scriptwriters, social media gurus and ad agents might know how to engage people, but they don’t know your product and service like you do.

Go Directly to Your Market

Cut through all of the media hype by talking directly to your market on your web video player.­­­­­­­­­­ ­­­ You, on video, for 90 seconds can do more to bring business through your front doors than hundreds of hits on a Face Book page or a thousand short tweets on Twitter. And, a compelling and personal video from you to your market has the added frosting on the cake of actually creating Face Book and Twitter hits. Done right, it can happen naturally and automatically.
“Get ‘em through your door…”
Get ‘em through your door by shooting a compelling web video. Place it on your custom web site, email links out, even utilize YouTube as a secondary outlet and of course track all of the responses with built in analytics.
If you are finding it difficult to locate a media management application that does all of the above, contact the Customer Support Pros at EZWebPlayer.com. They’ll take your video and help you turn it into a social media magnet. They’ll even work with your ad agency to do whatever it takes to get your video up and running on The Web.
Have a video that you want to share now on your website video player? Click on the “Sign Up Now“, or “Try it Freebuttons.
Stuart Marks
Executive Creative Director
Business Video Applications

By: stu | Posted: Friday, July 1st, 2011
One of my most prolific customers has uploaded approximately 150 videos to her EZWebPlayer account in just a few months. She operates a media hub for her church ministry whose reach is certainly national if not global.
This How To article is written for her as well as anyone else who needs a simple and elegant way to make the bulk of their video collection available to their viewers, whether exclusive to a membership, or broadcast to the world at large.
Keep in mind that the absolute most efficient archival system for videos will, like any other archival system for information technology, be data base driven. But, until you reach that utopia, there is a fast and simple list creator.
So, this is how it’s accomplished in EZWebPlayer. If it’s not so easy in other players, maybe that’s a reason why so many video managers are switching to this easier format.

STEP 1

Video on web site
First, decide which will be the first video in your drop down menu of archival videos you will be making available to your viewers. Make sure that it belongs to a CATEGORY that you name ARCHIVE, or some other appropriate name. Then, on your VIDEOS page, click on that video’s USER CODE icon.

STEP 2

video on web stie
In the PRE-HTML window, check the boxes next to
-Video Name
-Video Selector
-Category Selector
Click on NEXT.

STEP 3

video on web site
Copy and paste that code into the appropriate location within your <body> tag. Save and upload that page, and you’re finished.
You have just created an archives video page that will present drop down lists for every video on your site that belongs to the Archive CATEGORY. The video you chose to work from will be the first video in your archives.
You can add an advertisement video to this at the beginning or end without that ad showing up anywhere else that video plays from your site by simply copying that video before creating the archive; that way you can modify one without affecting the other.
Having a unique issue that you need help with? No problem; the Customer Success Team is ready to answer your calls, emails or live chat, regardless of your question or issue. They’re just there to help.
Have a video that you want to share now? Click on the “Sign Up Now“, or “Try it Freebuttons.
Stuart Marks
Executive Creative Director
Business Video Applications

 


By: stu | Posted: Tuesday, June 28th, 2011

Cookie Cutter or Custom; Which Best Describes Your Video Management Application?

Web Video Service
Getting video to web, and maintaining the ever changing SEO needs of video on your web site can be a full time job for whomever is lucky enough to draw that duty within your organization. As I’ve dealt with many team leaders in customer service contacts, I have noticed an over riding trend within small to medium business and not-for-profit organizations; this video management position has gone from the single person who happens to have a knack for video or at least an interest, to a specific team or department manager who spends more and more time on the ever increasing duties of tweaking web video assets. This may be why there is an increasing demand in a video management application that does way more than simply upload video to the web.
If an organization is to enjoy real results from web videos, it needs as much talent, training and experience behind its Video To Web staffers as any other department. Maybe this is why there is a growing niche of Video Management Applications that provide a Power Vendor answer that fulfills that need. But, what should one look for when shopping for this new market element?
There are some generic products out there that have tried to fill everybody’s needs, and then there some savvy service providers who actually “get it” when dealing with the business community. An interesting element to this is that those who serve specific needs, can quite possibly be the best answer for everyone, because of the grand offering of bells and whistles that come with top shelf providers.
ANALOGY; Specific over Generic
Which business lawyer would you hire; lawyer A, or lawyer B?
A)     “Hello. I have a BS in law and I graduated from Harvard Law School with high marks. Please hire me.”
B)      “Good morning. Before we get started you need to know that;
- I have a meeting with a product design company at noon who needs my help to guide them through the delicate process of competing design patent applications.
- I majored in Business before going to law school so I have an MBA and a law degree from Harvard
- I have helped several businesses get off the ground and they are all successfully growing at break neck speed
- I love to work. When can I start?”
This is a great analogy that applies well to your video management team. A Video Management Team can be your internal staff, or more likely will be a third party company that engages business video for several enterprises to maximize cost effectiveness. Who is your video management team and what are their goals? Can you even talk to them? Are they a cookie cutter video application, or do they understand business needs and the importance of framing your video well for your presentation within your application?
The following are ten key elements to look for in shopping for a video management team.
1)      REACHABLE STAFF Staffed by easy to get ahold of real humans who answer the phone, return emails and operate Live Chat for real.
2)      DEDICATED TO SUCCESS They take your business seriously, knowing that if you don’t succeed, they don’t either.
3)      REAL PEOPLE They have first names, and you know them, and they know you.
4)      EXPERIENCED They are not only helpful Customer Service reps, but are actually career video technicians, producers and editors, as well as computer interface code level programmers savvy in multiple languages, and web designers on top of it all.
5)      EDUCATED FOR THE TASK They have degrees from well-known schools like Devry and The Chicago Art Institute and The Illinois Institute of Art at Schaumburg.
6)      SPECIALTY All they do, all day long, every day is create business and promotional videos and put them on the web, and make them accessible via custom web sites, email, newsletters and mobile devices.
7)      SPECIFIC BUSINESS APPLICATION Instead of a cookie cutter, generic approach, they are focused on the actual application of video to web for specific industries like real estate, law enforcement & local government, education and counseling, weight loss products, yoga, church, radio & TV, video production and many more. There is nothing cookie cutter or generic about their efforts to provide service.
8)      INCLUSIVE Instead of bottlenecking the promotion of your videos by excluding useful tools like You Tube, they incorporate your existing You Tube campaigns into a larger enterprise scope.
9)      COMPREHENSIVE SERVICE They keep track of issues until solved. No fire-and-forget communications.
10)   INNOVATIVE Issue fixes include all possibilities, not just ones that promote a narrow set of available tasks.
Have a video that you want to share now? Click on the “Sign Up Now“, or “Try it Freebuttons.
Stuart Marks
Executive Creative Director
Business Video Applications

By: stu | Posted: Tuesday, June 14th, 2011
When you are managing a video on EZWebplayer’s Video Player, you have two choices for hosting; you can host your video elsewhere and simply enter its address into the URL field, or you can upload the video to the EZWebPlayer servers.
There are many advantages to hosting your video on EZWebPlayer’s Amazon Cloud Front servers, but one of them is the simplicity with which you can manage the thumbnail image.
After uploading a video, you will see this setup window;
Thumb Settings for video on your web site

 

This is where you have an opportunity to manage the thumb image. Doing nothing will allow the default settings to engage, thereby selecting a frame from the video which shows up everywhere the video is paused and ready to play from the beginning. If you do not like the default image, there are other choices.

Thumb choices for video on your web site

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Player chooses four more images that you can choose from, or you can choose to upload your own custom image, which is a powerful and unique tool for sales and promotion.

 

 

 

 

Have a video that you want to share now? Click on the “Sign Up Now“, or “Try it Freebuttons.

Stuart Marks
Executive Creative Director
Business Video Applications

By: stu | Posted: Tuesday, June 7th, 2011
Video on your web siteIn marketing, the most important tools are not humor, a web site, TV commercials, or nationalizing your brand; though, all of these are effective and certainly there is a reason that 3M, Coca-Cola and Nike all use these. The absolutely most important tool is tracking.
If you don’t know where you’ve been, you cannot plan ahead with any accuracy. Agencies that handle million dollar accounts are strongly encouraged to “Get it right” more often than not by the results of return business from those million dollar clients. And, the biggest and most powerful tool that the big agencies like Leo Burnet and Aegis use is testing and tracking.
So, if you want to play The Game for your own products and services, and market successfully like the big boys, you must know what makes big differences in your efforts: what delivers and what doesn’t. And, video delivers.
To prove it to yourself, make one change and watch the results.
Here’s how:
1)      Establish a base line. Use site hits, or a well established dollar value somewhere before your bottom line.
2)      Add video to your web site, or include a link to your powerful web video in your regular newsletter.
3)      Run this for a predetermined period; 30 days minimum.
4)      Check your stats the day after your predetermined period ends.
Knowing this type of information helps you make decisions with a certain amount of credibility and reliability as to the outcome. Why is this important? So that you choose the right tools at the right time in your marketing cycles. If you only have $1,500 left in your 90-day advertising cycle, and your radio rep comes a’ knockin’, you want to have an answer to those at the head of the big table as to why you are dropping radio for a few months while you run a video that is going to cost you $1,000 to get up and running (your marketing lead is begging for a new HD web cam to record your next group of customer testimonials and they can cost up to $1k for a really good one with good audio pickup).
After you get that powerful testimonial video up and running, you can always return to radio. Now you have radio, AND a powerful web video bringing in new business. All due to your savvy testing and tracking. The next time you are charged with doing something to increase sales, more folks sitting in the big padded chairs will be listening.
Have a video that you want to share now? Click on the “Sign Up Now“, or “Try it Freebuttons.
Stuart Marks
Executive Creative Director
Business Video Applications

 


By: stu | Posted: Thursday, June 2nd, 2011

As DNA and finger print evidence is to individual human uniqueness, a personal welcome video is to a small business.

The business advertising community has a great equalizer, it is the USP. From large corporations like Denny’s Restaurants and I.H.O.P., to small local businesses like my favorite breakfast restaurant, Frank’s Diner in Kenosha Wisconsin, they all have an over-riding need to broadcast their Unique Selling Points to the breakfast buying public.

Competitors may be able to harp on the same selling points as you, which turns the race into one of craftiness and production dollars spent, but there is always one part of your unique selling point that nobody, no matter how hard they try, can copy; and that’s You. They simply can’t be you.

Video on your web site

Personal Video on Your Web Site

If you feature You as one of the elements of your unique selling points, you have already won the race for more market share before the starting gun even fired. What I mean by this is that if you attach some selling points to your personality, you cannot be beaten.

Example; you guarantee “Complete satisfaction or your money back, I personally guarantee it.” Saying this on a video while looking the camera (and your hundreds or thousands of viewers) directly in the eye, is one of the most powerful selling tools in any market.

Any competitor can say this, but they can’t be you saying it. Only you can be you. And, if you create a unique selling point, and deliver that selling point via web video, your competition can be left in the dust.

Works Great for Cars and Couches; Why not You?

Don’t doubt me on this. I have spent too many long days creating furniture and car commercials for local businesses to not know the truth of what video does to the buying public. Dealerships that could spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on billboards, radio and signage, opt for local TV and get real results. It’s a true cause and effect relationship; run a TV ad, folks come in. The ad is paid for ten times over in only a matter of days and the dealership picks up new long term customers to boot. Just the addition of only one new long term customer pays for that single TV ad many times over.

The Internet Replaced Much of TV’s Local Advertising Business

You don’t have to buy local TV time any more. There’s the Internet; something that wasn’t available to my advertising customers in the late 1970’s.

I challenge you to try it in your retail, service, or B to B business. Simply record yourself delivering a sincere message in a short video. Place the video in a conspicuous place on your web page. Don’t have a web page? No problem, simply send out an email or blast a direct marketing newsletter with the link to the video’s URL address. Then, sit back and notice the difference.

When someone says the term “grand slam”, I still think of Denny’s Grand Slam Breakfast for $1.99 from years back. Denny’s sells lots of different food products that are available once one gets seated in one of their ubiquitous restaurants, but none of Denny’s competitors can compete with that famous and powerful Unique Selling Point of the Grand Slam Breakfast.

What is your grand slam?

To get started, simply click on the Sign Up Now button on this page. EZWebPlayer makes posting and managing videos easy; with or without your own web site.

Stuart Marks
Executive Art Director
Business Video Applications

 

For How To tips on Video On Your Web Site, under real business conditions, check these links;

Fingerprint image from
http://www.sync-blog.com/sync/2010/10/do-fingerprint-scanners-really-work.html

 


By: stu | Posted: Tuesday, May 31st, 2011

The Challenge; One size does not fit all.
The Fix; Custom sized video player.

 

Back before video was the ubiquitous animal that it is today; showing up everywhere from billboards to pocket sized movie players and everywhere in between, there was TV. TV was one shape; 5:8 ratio. Sure, it came in all sizes, from the little black and white TV/AM/FM/Cassette Player to the giant 27 inch, in cabinet color model that sat right there on your shag carpet (please don’t ask what shag carpeting is, I’ve got socks older than you).

It made no difference what Hollywood studio was producing the TV show you were watching, they all had one camera configuration for TV shows and that was a 5:8 ratio lens and tube config. There were no chips, there were no CMOS capture plates, there were no wide screen or ultra wide, no HD. 5:8; that was the made for TV shape.

Today, there are many more choices and for good reason. Manufacturers are competing. RCA, Phillips, Panasonic and Sony all want to be unique. And with the new transistorized technology that started popping up thanks to NASA and other large scale funded projects, manufacturing engineers were able to present to their respective marketing designers new and varied product ideas.

Today, we have so many different digital video camera CMOS plates that there is no longer a true standard. By the time computer and web based rendering gets done with a video file, there really is no telling what the precise shape of a video file might actually turn out to be. The obvious answer is a web player that is versatile.

 

Video on your web site, done right This is a screen shot of EZWebPlayer’s setup window for your video file. I have circled the custom fields where one can enter any value. This is a powerful setup tool that every video player SHOULD have.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s a sample of what happens when one’s web video player can’t match the custom shape and size of their video.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s a sample of properly matched video in a player with custom sizing.

 

It just makes so much good sense, one is left wondering why the heck doesn’t Youtube have this. How long will it take for the rest of the web video world to catch up to EZWebPlayer’s forward thinking?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click on the SIGN UP NOW button on this page to get your own free trial account.

Stuart Marks
Executive Art Director
Business Video Applications

For more tips on rendering your video for the web under real business conditions, check these links;


By: rbouchez | Posted: Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011
*We’re all about helping you improve your web videos & we’d like to highlight more great resources like this one – if you have suggestions, please add them to the comments or hit us up on Twitter!

the-armory-screen-grabWhether you’re a home builder or not, I highly recommend Three Proven YouTube Strategies for Homebuilders on The Armory Blog by Brendan Miller. He asks the question “Can YouTube be used as a marketing and lead generation tool instead of just a sales tool for builders?” and you should be asking the same for your business, blog, brand, etc.

On his list of suggestions (see article for details):

1) Create a contest

2) Do Something Outrageous With Your Product

3) Be A Thought Leader

Fortunately his advice doesn’t just apply to Youtube and it doesn’t just apply to home builders either. No matter where you’re posting videos whether you’re a real estate agent, restaurant owner or even if you’ve started a new business using a Bedazzler, you should do more than take notes, take action!

As a side note, it’s worth mentioning that while he searched for “Home Builder” on Youtube to see what surfaced, you should put serious thought into how you’re customers and potential customers would search for your product. The best way to figure that out is to ask them directly, so begin connecting with them on Twitter, Facebook & Linkedin!

Thanks for stopping by!

@richardbouchez

Social Media Specialist for EZWebplayer.com

*Adapted from original post at www.InovediaMarketing.com


By: rbouchez | Posted: Tuesday, January 4th, 2011

Whether your website is marketing the latest gadget to hit the industry or just expressing opinions in a video blog series, adding video to your website is the best way to get your viewers to stay longer on your site.  When adding video to your website you’ll want to ensure the video file is encoded properly.  A couple things to keep in mind when exporting your HD video to a web video player are to keep the video ratio consistent and achieve an acceptable balance between bitrate for both video and audio data streams and the overall size of the video file.  If the frame width and height values are not keep consistent the video might result in a distorted picture, black bars on the top or bottom and could even affect the frames per second of the video causing issues during playback.  The video hosting site will have to stream the compressed video file and then decompress the file during playback, so a large file might be difficult for some users who have slower connections and systems.  I will be using Adobe’s CS5 to demonstrate some example render setting to use when exporting your HD video to a streaming file for the web.

Video Frame Size

Video Bitrate

Audio Bitrate

1minute File Size

1280×720

VBR 2 pass -

Target 3.5M, Max 5MB

160kbps

26.1MB

1280×720

VBR 2 pass -Target Target 2.5M, Max 4MB

112kbps

18.6MB

1024×576

CBR -

1MB

96kbps

11.3MB

768×432

VBR 1 pass

Target 3.5M, Max 5MB

80kbps

7.69MB

 

HD Render Settings Example 1



HD Render Settings Example 2



HD Render Settings Example 3


HD Render Settings Example 4


 

By Mike Pudlo: Chicago Area Video producer and Creative Writer


By: rbouchez | Posted: Tuesday, December 21st, 2010

New Features NOW

  • Unlimited Storage included with every account!
  • NO Bandwidth limits
  • Premium Amazon Cloudfront storage/bandwidth comes standard!FREE Blazing fast Transcoding on every Upload!
  • Choose your video Thumbnails
  • Mobile Device Support
    iPhone, iPad & Android!
  • New Improved player performance – lighting fast Buffering & Smoother Playback!
  • Gearing up for our Affiliate Program with Early Sign-up for Newsletter subscribers!
  • Operator/Chat Window
    to easily connect with Customer Support

Video Player Features Coming Soon… 

  • Video Channels
  • Updated/Streamlined Site Design
  • Official Launch of the EZWebPlayer Affiliate Program

EZWebPlayer.com was upgraded on 12-14-2010. Here are the highlights!

Unlimited Storage & Premium Bandwidth delivered via Amazon Cloudfront
You get as much PREMIUM storage and bandwidth as you need, hosted by a world class content delivery network all included in your one low monthly price. Your videos will be delivered blazing fast to your viewers around the world and you don’t have to worry about how much space or bandwidth you use!

New Transcoding & Thumbnail Option
EZWebPlayer now supports 99% of the video formats out there! Our robust transcoding server farm allows for quick render of any type of video into the proper web format. We’ll take file sizes up to 1.5GB and that includes HD files! We’ll store your original file for rendering in the future with newer codecs. We’ll even render formats that support both high speed, and low speed connections – like on a mobile device. The new transcoding process automatically creates 5 thumbnails for you to choose from, or you can always upload your own.

Mobile Device Support
EZWebPlayer has rolled out its Phase One support for mobile devices to include iPhone 4, iPad, and Android 2.2 or later devices.
Player performance update
We’ve improved our scripts for faster player response time and improved overall performance, particularly for lower speed connections. Bottom line, you’ll notice that players and videos load faster

Live Help Operator Button
In an effort to make EZWebPlayer Customer Support as accessible as possible, we’ve added a new operator icon in the top right corner of the site. This allows our customers easy access to our Customer Support with only a few mouse clicks and will enable global customers to communicate with us more easily. You can always contact us via Support@EZWebPlayer.com or toll free at 1-877-647-9007.

Exciting Features in Development

(Expect to see these features over the next 2-3 months)
Video Channels
EZWebPlayer will make it simple to put related videos on a page within your website through our new Channels feature. This new feature allows you export player configurations that play certain videos – such as videos from a specific category(s). Channels will allow your visitors to easily navigate through lots of your related videos, without even refreshing the page. This opens up your video collection for faster viewing, and better viewer retention rates.

Updated Site Design
EZWebPlayer is getting a facelift! Over the coming months we’ll be working to enhance the website UI to make it more streamlined and faster to use.

Affiliate Partner Program
We’re gearing up for our Affiliate Program. This is your opportunity to join an affiliate partner program within the fast growing space of online web video. EZWebPlayer provides online video services for content owners across all verticals. As affiliate partners you will be able to enjoy high commissions, recurring payouts, promotions and premium customer support. The program will be available Feb 2011.
If you’d like to join or for questions regarding the EZWEBPlayer Affiliate Program, please email us at affiliates@ezwebplayer.com.  

Recent posts to the EZWebPlayer Blog:

Thanks for visiting!

Clint Pollock
President | EZWebPlayer.com
The Non-Tech solution to putting videos online
www.EZWebPlayer.com