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Another week, another new feature for our users to enjoy!

This time we’ve been playing around with new ideas on allowing users to increase the syndication of their video content. We already offer enable users to submit their content to Google search results with Search Enhancer and now by adding Video Podcasting, customers will be able to watch and consume your videos through iTunes or mobile devices such as the iPhone or the iPod.

A simple feature to use, vzaar provides all paying customers, with a simple RSS feed that when clicked will fire up iTunes on the customer’s device and automatically download your latest feed of videos in mp4 format. The customer will then be able to play and view those videos either directly through iTunes or by copying that content across to their iPhone, iPod or iTouch. That means video on the go - cool eh?!

Detailed instructions on how to use this feature can be seen here.

Submitting Your Podcast to iTunes

If you want to submit your video feed to the iTunes library then that is also possible. You can follow steps on how to do this here.

Technical Notes

1. The videos will be downloaded in mp4 format.
2. The customer will now have a saved copy of your video on their PC.
3. Different Apple products (ie iPhone, Apple TV etc) have different specifications for viewing video. It is therefore possible that certain versions of your video, for example a HD video, or a video of a certain size, will not play. You can review these specifications, product by product here.

Following on from last week’s post on the launch of our Domain Control feature I wanted to share some further insight into how it works so you can decide if its worth turning on.

So What Exactly Is Domain Control?

If we turn to Wikipedia then they tell us that…

Individual Internet host computers use domain names as host identifiers, or hostnames. Hostnames are the leaf labels in the domain name system usually without further subordinate domain name space. Hostnames appear as a component in Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) for Internet resources such as web sites (e.g., en.wikipedia.org).

What? Well in other words if your website is hosted on a specific domain (e.g. vzaar.com) then it is possible to ensure your videos will only play on the domain (and any variant of this domain). So if you don’t want your videos to appear on other websites, and in doing so have greater control over who can and who can’t see your videos, then you’ll want to consider using this feature. If embedded on any other website, the viewer will see a simple message that looks like this:

I Sell On eBay?

If you have your own website, and sell on eBay, I would recommend that you do not use this option as you will want to ensure that your videos play across all the eBay domains (.com, .co.uk, .de etc)

Ok, So How Do I Turn This On?

Simple. Head over to your vzaar Settings Page and you’ll see a Domain Control box. In there simply enter your business website domain (e.g. www.mywebsite.com). Please note that you do not need to enter the http://

Save this and we’ll instantly ensure your videos can only be played on the web domain selected. It is that easy.

• Read our Help Page on Domain Control
  
• See our Features Page on Domain Control

The team have been busy bringing to life a series of new features designed to improve the management of your videos. Whilst there is still some tweaking to be done with the UI, we wanted to get these out there as overall they improve the user experience and it can never hurt to get some real time feedback. So let me introduce to you…

Video Analytics - beta
Understanding who is watching your video, when they are watching and significantly where is the need of many video marketeers. That’s why we have utilised the power of Google to now enable users to track the activity on their videos via their own Google Anlaytics account.

By adding your unique Analytics Tracking Code ID (e.g. UA-#######-#) vzaar will tie your account to your vzaar videos and you can track the activity of those in real time from within your Google Analytics admin panel. This feature is very much in beta at the moment. There are still further improvements for us to make but for the time being paying customers are free to test the feature.

End Screen Text
This one snuck in under the radar last week and its a neat little feature that gives the video owner a little bit more control over the final frame of their video. Where we currently serve a simple Replay button, the video owner can now add their own supporting text and web link. A simple add, but one that offers the owner a little more control over their viewer’s next step. Do they send them to the shopping cart, to a survey or perhaps a page of supporting information relating to the video just viewed.

More on our End Screen Text feature can be read here

Domain Control
With more and more content being created by businesses its important you control who can and perhaps who can’t watch your videos. Not only so that you can perhaps control the type of audience that is driving your bandwidth consumption (a key component of our business model) but also so that you can protect against the unauthorised distribution of your content. Perfect for company intranets or cases where you want to ensure a select community only can view your video, domain control allows the video owner to dictate which web domain (e.g. http://mywebsite.com) a video can only be played on.

All these new features you will find in the vzaar Settings Page.

Bulk Uploader - alpha
We know that some businesses want to upload video to their account en mass. Time is money. Yep we get it. So here is our very first version of our bulk video uploader. In alpha, it means you can now queue and upload a number of videos in one go. At the moment you can add titles to these videos whilst they load but you can only select one player size for all. That is something that we’ll be looking to address in the next iteration of the uploader.

Click here to test the bulk uploader

New Feature Alert! Enter….End Screen Text a new fearure just released that does what it says. It allows you to customise the text shown at the end of the video which can also be tuned into a link. I can think of few use cases for this.

1. If you are selling an item you could ask the viewer if they would like to buy the item & the link could take the user to the page that allows them to make the purchase.

2. The message could also simply be a nice closing message such as “Thank for watching my video”

3. You could even ask the viewer to take a survey or fill out a form by adding a link from *Woofoo

This feature can be found in your settings page and it looks like this:

Tip! If you want several different messages depending on the video it is important to understand how this works. If you add some text to the “End Screen Text” field in the the settings page and then upload a video. The video embed code will reflect your changes. So if you then embed that video on to your website you are then free to change the text for the next video. The embed code is effected on vzaar by changes made in the settings page. Once the video embed code is embeded on your site it will not be affected by changes made in the vzaar settings page.

*Woofoo A great service for building forms and surveys that you can publish using the embed code or url link provided.

In the last week we’re added a neat new calendar feature that means you can now book one-to-one appointments with the vzaar team.

The team here are more than happy to work with you to make video a success for your business so if you have certain questions about:

• The vzaar platform
• Our features
• Billing
• General tips on video best practice

Or indeed any other question then do book a slot and we’ll call you! We are available Monday to Friday and you can book as many slots as often as you’d like.

You can book an appointment from today here

Every so often we stumble across someone using video in a new and interesting way. One such customer is Denham The Jean Maker who have turned to video as a means of projecting their brand online. Whether that be through music, imagery or a simple story we liked what we saw so we spoke with Art Director, Ali Kirby at Denham who shared with us their creative story…

In one sentence what does Denhamthejeanmaker do?
Denham is primarily a jeans label built on experimentation and resourceful innovation. This is Jason Denham’s most fully realized personal vision but demonstrating his modest and sincere resolve to resist compromise

Why did you start to use video for your products? Any early learnings?
We started making videos to present new collections to sales agents at our bi-annual collection launch. These videos helped serve the purpose of visually explaining the processes involved in product design. Combined with relevant music. This interactive presentation got them enthused about the new collection. Video worked!

It was therefore a natural transgression to web for our end consumer to see the same videos. We learned very quickly that customers like to watch and appreciate the level of craft within each product so we set about creating content that matched that demand.

In terms of syndicating this content online we actually stumbled across vzaar whilst searching for a video hosting company that we could link into our site. What we like about vzaar is that the service recognizes the company’s that use vzaar do not necessarily want vzaar to self-advertise. Their integrity lies in respecting the online invisibility of the service they provide. This is unique.

vzaar is an online video company looking to service the needs to businesses. Think YouTube/Vimeo for business.

We’re looking to increase the features and functionality of our FLASH based video player. HTML5 might be all the rage right now with the cool kids, but for most of our market a simple easy to embed video player is rather important.

So I’m looking for someone who has some killer AS3 skills. Someone who can handle complex development and help really make some key improvements to the player. Both performance wise as well as feature & functionality wise.

Flash wise I’m definitely looking for a kickass flash AS3 coder and not a designer. Your coding skills are more important than design, animation or other flash skills. Of course other skills are a bonus.

Over the next three months or more we have quite a bit of flash work on the player, but as the work proceeds and we complete functionality and changes to the player, this will tail off. So I’m looking for someone with more than just AS3 skills.

Any of these others areas of skill will be of interest to us

• Ruby on Rails
• JavaScript
• HTML/CSS
• Sysops / UnixAdmisintration
• Graphic Design

The job is based in London (Clapham Junction)

About vzaar You will be working alongside a small team who are building a really cool video solution that allows online businesses, the world over, to stream video. At vzaar HQ, we are relaxed but professional. We make things happen individually and collectively. We have a diverse culture in the office and often debate what to put on Spotify and LastFM.

To apply

Email us at jobs at vzaar, subject line: AS3 Developer

Please also include - CV - List of 3 of your favourite blogs and why you regularly visit them - Cover letter of why you want to work for vzaar

Please note - we’ll bin all applications that do not adhere to the above instructions

We’ve added a new list of webinars for February. This means you or your colleagues can join us online and learn more about how to best utilise video for your website and how vzaar can support you in achieving that.

Simply pick the time and the type of session that suits you best.

Adding Video To Your Website

Thu, Feb 11, 2010 14:00 PM GMT / 09:00 AM EST / 06:00 AM PST

Thu, Feb 11, 2010 19:00 PM GMT / 14:00 PM EST / 11:00 AM PST

Thu, Feb 25, 2010 14:00 PM GMT / 09:00 AM EST / 06:00 AM PST

Thu, Feb 25, 2010 19:00 PM GMT / 14:00 PM EST / 11:00 AM PST

We’ll be covering: - Logging into your vzaar account
- Video Best Practice Tips
- Review of the vzaar Features & Settings
- Uploading & Encoding your Video
- Adding Video to your website
- Managing your vzaar Account
- General Q&A

We look forward to seeing you soon!

What is TechHub?

TechHub is a new and exciting project to create a physical space for tech startups in London which reaches out and embraces entrepreneurs across the UK, and the USA. It aims to be affordable, accessible, but at the same time create the right atmosphere and bring together the right people - the people who really do want to “change the world”.

When Does It Launch?

Soon they say, and so to give the project our support vzaar joined in with the current “One Minute Why-I-Want-TechHub competition”. Watch our entry below.

Oh by the way!

Given that this is a video competition and…well…we like video, we are happy to extend our service to any business out there that is looking for a easy to use, professional video solution for their website. Drop us a line and we’ll give you a free trial of the service. Happy to chat.

We are kicking the year off in style and as they say starting as we mean to go on.

Flowplayer have some really awesome players with plugins that enable you to do just about anything from creating playlist, to serving in stream ads and analytics tools to monitor your videos performance. These are all available to Flowplayer users and with this integration this is also available to all vzaar users too. To access the Flowplayer plugins you will have to use their player. For a full list of the Flowplayer plugins go here:

Here is an example of the Flowplayer being powered by vzaar.

The partnership with Flowplayer solves two potential problems:

1. If you are a vzaar user and require a feature that we don’t currently offer but Flowplayer does then problem solved.
2. If you are a Flowplayer user and require a video platform to provide the encoding, content delivery then again problem solved.

For help on how to integrate vzaar video with Flowplayer go to the Knowledge Base Flowplayer Integration page here

We would also like to say that it has been an absolute pleasure working with Annsi and Tero at Flowplayer and we are really happy with this partnership. Thanks for making this possible.