How to upload photos and videos to the internet
If you have a digital camera or camcorder, you can share your films and photos with a few friends (or with more than a billion people worldwide!) by uploading them to the internet. It’s not hard to do and there are several photo/video-sharing sites out there - but make sure you check out the privacy controls before you venture forth.
People around the world have already uploaded well over 10 billion photos to Facebook alone, while 24 hours’ worth of videos are uploaded to YouTube every minute!
How to do it
Most sites make it as easy as possible for people to upload photos and videos. The details vary, but the process is straightforward.
There is usually a button marked ‘Upload Photos’ and clicking it gives you one or more blank boxes. You then choose a photo for each box by locating it on your PC’s hard drive. Finally, you click ‘Upload’ and the photos are uploaded. Video uploads are handled in the same way.
Some services can upload groups of photos. Some allow you to upload your pictures by sending them to a special email address, which is useful if you want to share photos from a mobile phone.
Some services will upload photos that are already online, if you provide the image’s web address (URL). This is handy if you have an album online and want to use the same pictures on different social networking services. You won’t have to upload them twice.
Some sites are designed for posting photos to bulletin boards, blogs, eBay or Twitter. Most sites are free, but some charge for extra features or additional storage space.
Photo and video-sharing sites
Both Facebook and MySpace are used for sharing photos and videos. Other popular photo sites include Flickr, Photobucket, Picasaweb and ImageShack. The most popular video sites include YouTube, Metacafe, Vimeo and Veoh.
When it comes to sharing videos, YouTube also allows you to record and save a video directly from your webcam. This is a simple way to start video-blogging. Some sites – such as UStream and JustinTV - will let you do the web equivalent of broadcasting live TV.
Privacy controls – or lack of
When choosing a site, you should consider what you are allowed to upload, what the service will store, and the privacy controls provided. For example, you may want to keep your photos private, share them with a few friends or make them public.
Bear in mind that images are very easy to copy and circulate. Ask yourself whether you’d be happy if a risqué picture appeared on the front page of a tabloid newspaper! It happens.
It’s important to realise that photo and video sites will not necessarily keep what you upload. Your digital camera may take high-resolution images suitable for printing, but the photo-sharing site may only store a low-resolution version suitable for viewing online.
Although it’s convenient, there’s not much point in uploading large images to services like this when you can use a graphics program to resize and perhaps crop them. The smaller images will upload quicker.
Video sites often accept videos in many different formats but may well convert them to the ones it uses for people to watch online. YouTube, for example, will create small 3GP videos for mobile phones, Adobe Flash (FLV) versions for online viewing, an MP4 version, and so on.
You must choose a site that keeps your original photos or videos if you will ever want to download them later, rather than view them online. Sharing and storing are not the same.
Jack Schofield
Jack Schofield is a technology journalist and blogger who covered IT for the Guardian from 1983 to 2010. Before specialising in computing, he edited a number of photography magazines and books.
