Before your video is going to be a useful part of your content marketing strategy, you need to turn your raw footage into something entertaining, educational or otherwise compelling. So lets first look at the more popular video editing software before checking out hosting options.
Video Editing Software
Final Cut.
Runs on a Mac. Pricier than many other consumer products, Final Cut is considered a tool for 'Prosumers' at $300.00 but the latest version is almost a complete rewrite of previous. With loads of power it's easy to use and has flexible tools. Read the review by PCMag
Adobe Premier (Pro and Elements)
You can get Pro and Elements versions – the Pro is a lot more expensive and compares unfavourably with Final Cut. Premier Elements might suit smaller budgets but can be slow with advanced video techniques and the feature set is more limited.
Camtasia Studio
Affordable and straightforward to use and while it lacks some of the features of Adobe Premier Pro or Final Cut, it is an ideal solution if you need to capture your screen – Read the Review but might not have the features you'd expect for the price tag which is similar to Final Cut and Adobe Premier Pro
Corel Video Studio Pro X6
Affordable option at $110 this application has a large selection of tools including stop-motion and motion tracking effects and simple interface making it powerful but easy to use. It can generate HTML5 video content so will display correctly on an iPad or iPhone. Read Review
Magix Movie Edit Pro
You get full 3D support and it is optimised for 64 bit systems, allows you to export directly to YouTube and in numerous formats and gets good reviews. Read Review
Cloud solutions
Cloud based video editing software is (comparatively) in it's infancy with challenges such as upload bottlenecks and storage issues to solve. YouTube's has it's own editor but it's pretty basic. Try WeVideo which has integrated sharing to social networks, pre-built template themes and different editor views. Although easy to use there are some limitations that the desktop based software doesn't have.
Windows Movie Maker is a free option but if you want to look further afield, If you want more, here is a list of 30 Video Editing Software and Online Tools
ReelSEO provides a list iOS video editing apps.
Video Hosting Options
Once you've made your work of art, you have to put it somewhere were people can see it. While you might assume that the logical place is on your website, this is not generally the best solution.
Website hosting solutions are designed and optimised with websites in mind. If you host video on the same platform this can cause a number of technical issues. Video files are large which means lots of storage space and uses a lot of bandwidth - neither of which your standard website server or hosting can easily accommodate.
You can embed video on a page on your site, but store the video somewhere else with a specialist video hosting provider.
The more popular/recommended options*:
YouTube
The most popular video platform with over 80% of total videos. It's free to upload video's and you can 'monetise' them with ads. The downside is that with YouTube the video doesn't sit on your domain, so you don't get as much SEO value. But the shear number of users is hard to ignore. Check this guide to optimising your YouTube Channel .
Vimeo
Next in the popularity line after You Tube the free version gives you one video a week – but read the rules because businesses can't use Vimeo basic or Plus. If you want to share marketing messages you'll need to go Pro. It's $199 a year for the pro version which compares well with others. This version is ad free and you get statistics along with the usual benefits like video player customisation and additional storage. Vimeo generally aims for a higher quality of content.
Wistia
The free version will only allow three videos. The learning centre has a lot of video's (naturally) about video production, strategy and marketing. Their pricing plans are reasonable and have six to choose from. Offers auto-generated Video XML site maps and integrates with MailChimp.
Vzaar
Like many has a free option with the paid options starting at $29 that gives you 100 GB of bandwidth and 250 videos.
Viddler
The pro account gives you 100GB a month for $42 – interesting they state 'When people click on your video, they will be directed back to your website, not Viddler.' More geared to companies and corporations than home-made video.
Brightcove
Starts at $99 a month so is a pricier option and you only get 50 videos and 40 GB of bandwidth. But plans come with a range of features such as analytics, built-in player templates and supports streaming video to mobile devices. They also offer YouTube syndication and a live streaming feature. Preferred by larger companies because of their selection of API's and extensions. Brightcove create different versions of your video to suit different connections speeds which is useful if your audience is global and you need to take into account patchy connection speeds.
If sharing via Twitter is your thing, yfrog supports video as well as photo.
There are New Zealand companies that offer video hosting, but based on the information on their website they aren't in the same league as the one's listed above and many don't advertise their features or prices in sufficient detail to use as a comparison.
*Prices are as advertised on the providers website and assume it's in USD.
