How do I take a home video and download it to a website?

[momstheword]

So I have a dvd cam and I finished recording, now I'd like to download it to a family website, except the DVD file is ful of .VOB .IFO and .BUP files. I tried searching to find out what they were and if I could convert them to an acceptable format like and .AVI or MPeg but no such luck. I've been working on this for like a month now so please any help would be greatly appreciated. Also note I'm using a MAC. Thanks!

[dnix71]

I'm assuming you want to upload something that will play in a browser. Flash video can be made from the original dv with ffmpegX. I don't know how to create a web page with embedded media.

If you want to post a file for download by other family members, then use ffmpegX to convert the original dv as an mp4. MP4's are smaller than the mp2's in a standard dvd, but if coded correctly the quality is high.

If your camera is making actual dvds then use ffmpegX to convert the vob files, since they are just mp2's by another name

[thecoalman]

First I'd suggest either clicking the "report this post" button or PM a mod to have this moved to the Mac forum. You'll get more responses there.

Second, how do you want to make the video accessible? You could zip the entire directory and upload the zip file. The end user can then either watch it with something that supports DVD files or even burn it to a disc to watch on their TV... this will require a lot of server space and a very fast connection for the person downloading it... Which brings up another problem, how much space do you have? If it's just the space your ISP provided you most likely won't have the space necessary for even a highly compressed video.

If you want to make it accessible via web browser to view you need to use a compressed format like WMV, DivX or MOV. My personal choice is WMV cause it's the most compatible of the three (flame on Mac addicts :P ). That is another thing to consider, if you expect Grandma to be able to play it she most likely won't have Divx installed nor is she going too... For the highest compatibility use MPEG1 but thia produces files about 4x the size as the above mentioned formats at the same relative quality.

The basic code for embedding is as follows, replace the xxx's with the video height and width and change the value for the source... There's many variations and options for this, do a seach and you'll find them. This has only been tested with wmv.

 <object width="xxx" height="xxx"><param name="autostart" value="true" /><param name="src" value="path to your file.wmv" /><embed width="xxx" height="xxx" src="path to your file.wmv" autostart="true" ></embed></object>