Channel You

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Home movies don´t have to be long and boring. Now that even the cheapest digital cameras can capture movies and nearly all computers come with free editing software, today´s homemade flick can be just a few minutes-ideal for filming
Johnny´s first basket or making a hilarious short that´ll turn you into a Web celebrity. Even these brief clips are too big to e-mail, but there are a number of free sites that host and play back your movies for you.

Google Video and YouTube are perfect for the occasional auteur; both let you upload individual movies and e-mail the link to family and friends. There´s no limit to how many videos you can post, and they stay up until you take them down. If you want to share flicks frequently, however-say, of Johnny´s second, third and fourth baskets-you´re better off setting up a video blog, or vlog, which gives you a fixed Web address that people can return to periodically. A vlog also gives visitors a subscribable feed, so grandma can get new movies automatically downloaded to her comput

er.
Playback on these sites isn´t perfect, but that doesn´t seem to matter. Already there are more than 7,000 vlogs, and some attract tens of thousands of visitors daily. So pull out your camera and start shooting. The world is waiting!

Editing the Movie
If you have Windows XP, use Movie Maker, a free video-editing
application in your Programs folder (Macs have iMovie), to edit footage and add titles or special effects. For optimum playback online, keep your final flick under 20 megabytes.

Share One Video

1. Sign up at youtube.com, and enter the
   e-mail addresses of people with whom you want to share videos.
2. Click the â€Upload†tab. Enter a title, a description and search keywords along with the â€channel,†or category, of film (for example, â€familyâ€).
3. Select the movie you want to upload. Choose â€Public†to share with everyone, or just pick people from your contacts.

Make Your Own Vlog

1. Create an account at blip.tv. Your screen name will be your URL (screenname.blip.tv).
2. Click â€Upload Video,†and enter the title and tags. Choose the file to upload. Click the â€My Blog†tab on top, and e-mail the Web address to friends and family.
3. At the bottom of your page, visitors will find buttons that let them add a feed to iTunes, My Yahoo or an RSS reader to get automatic updates when you post videos.

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