Blog Posts About: videohosts

Here's a scenario:

• You create a video and upload it to a host like You Tube.
• People like it and want to share it on their blog.
• They grab the embed code and paste it into their blog.
• Sweet - your video is on multiple blogs!

• Then, you realize that the video has an error you need to correct.
• To do this, you need to delete the current video and upload a new one.
• Ack! When you delete a video, the embedded players stop working
• The bloggers now have a broken links and don't know why.
  

So, you're stuck - either you leave up bad content, or break the links to your blogger friends.

I bring this up for two reasons:

1.  Be aware. A video is different than a blog post.  It's not a consistent page that's editable. A corrected video is an entirely new piece of content with a new URL, comments, etc.  Because most hosts don't allow replacement videos, you may find that embedded players lock you in to content you want to change.

2.  This is fixable by the hosts.  As usual, Vimeo is ahead of the curve and allows video replacements.  With Vimeo, you can upload a replacement video that will begin playing in an existing embedded player with the same comments, etc. Blip.tv and You Tube and most others do not allow replacements, as far as I know. [Update:  Mike Hudack sez Blip does allow replacements through the "edit" page.]

It should also be noted that the replacement option is something that could be abused by unethical producers, so this may explain why it has not been adopted so far.

It's easy to assume that YouTube and similar hosts are open to everyone but it's not the case for a lot of professionals.  We hear from people almost every day that need a way to access our videos off the web because their organizatio/school restricts access to websites like YouTube.

We recently became aware of TeacherTube, which is a video sharing site that has become a workaround for educators who can't access YouTube videos on the web. Many schools may block YouTube, but allow access to TeacherTube because it's an educational resource.

The site is a clone of YouTube with more advertising.  For it to work in the educational world, there seems to be two big issues (besides quality content):

1. Convincing schools to unblock TeacherTube 

2. Making sure that TeacherTube remains a safe resource. 

I asked Adam Smith, the co-founder, about how schools work to make sure Teacher Tube is unblocked.

To answer your question, we absolutely will work and continue to work with schools to help unblock TeacherTube, however the TeacherTube Community Members usually beat us to it. If any members campuses are blocking TeacherTube, they can email me direct at adam@teachertube.com and I can provide server information and/or generate a letter to the school’s technology director.  

I also asked about how TeacherTube remains safe for the educational setting.
When we started the design phase of the website, site monitoring was top priority. That is why we keep the quote at the top "Keep it SAFE! Flag all Inappropriate Videos." Once our member number grew over 20,000+ in the first three months, we new we had to add [flag as] inappropriate features and ask the TeacherTube Community for help. On all videos we added inappropriate video and comment flagging capabilities. So we not only have our staff constantly look over inappropriate content, we now have over 45,000+ members watching and flagging inappropriate content.

I've become a fan of TeacherTube because many of our fans depend on it to help educate others.  It's nice to see that they've been able to scale and stay relevant by working with a dedicated community of users.

Find Common Craft videos on TeacherTube here.