How to use Dropbox, Google Drive and Sound File Sharing Websites to Share

So you may have now read my articles on downloading Videos from ANY Website including Facebook as explained in my blog article entitled “UWI'splanning to increase all Tuition by 5.5% come the new Academic Year 2013-2014 -How to Download ANY Video, including Facebook Videos, Convert and Free VideoHosting Online”. That article should’ve given you a fair idea of alternatives to YouTube when it comes to downloading and then uploading your Video Creation and basic Video Conversion, a topic ripe for expansion into another article.

Then the GOJ and Ministry of Science, Technology, Energy and Mining Animation Festival in the form of KingstOOn came to town as explained in my blog article entitled “Inaugural KingstOOn Animation Competition a boost to local Animation Industry - State Minister Julian Robinson give Graphic Artists the chance to Feel this Moment Pitbull and Christina Aguilera Style”.

A lover of sharing information, I decided to  help out my fellow Jamaican animator friends and aspirants with an article on the basic Animation Rig Specs and the Video Editing Software required both free and Paid as stated in my blog article entitled “Animation after KingstOOn - How to get free Video Editing Tools to breath life into you Animation Project”. How to use the Video Editing software is entirely up to you, as you have to experiment and find out what’s best for you.

Since then I’ve been contacted by a few persons with regards to how to promote their animated work online. Some persons even desired to host their Video on my Website, apparently as my Traffic’s attracting attention.

What!

I thought I explained that via the alternatives to YouTube for free Video Hosting in my blog article entitled “UWI's planning to increase all Tuition by 5.5% come the new Academic Year 2013-2014 - How to Download ANY Video, including Facebook Videos, Convert and Free Video Hosting Online”. For clarity I’ll list them here again:

1.      BlipTV

2.      Break

3.      CollegeHumor

4.      Dailymotion

5.      Facebook

6.      Flickr

7.      HowCast

8.      Metacafe

9.      SmugMug

10.  Veoh

11.  Vevo

12.  VideoJug

13.  Vimeo

14.  VZaar

Then again I wasn’t exactly clear; I only listed the Video Hosting Website, not how to use them to Share and Embed. This article shall fix that oversight.

How to share Videos - Sharing is Caring

Your Animation project or your Audio orVideo Project is finished. Great! From that point on it simply a matter of getting the Embed code or the Hyperlink for the Video, setting the Share options (Private, Link Only or Public Share) and then plastering it all over Social Media.

I then realized that it’s not that simple. Many people may not be adept at using Video Hosting Sites such as YouTube, preferring to mostly watch Videos of dancing cats and Funny moments in time than to pay attention to YouTube’s features that make it easy to share and promote.

One of those Features is Embedding. This involves getting s snippet of HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) Code from YouTube and then embedding it into your Website so as to host a Video! To do this click on Share this Video as shown in the Picture below:

It’ll give you the option to share it on the various Social Media that you have by clicking on their logos be it Facebook, Twitter or otherwise. Once you click, a popup appears and you then type in your message to accompany the shared YouTube Video. Most of the Video Hosting Websites also have similar options as well, albeit possibly not as extensive as YouTube, making the heavily trafficked Website a favourite with Promoters.

You can also manually cut and paste the Shortened URL (Universal Resource Locator) link highlighted in blue for quick easy sharing and conversion to QR Codes for printing on flyers business Cards and just about anything that’s printable.

However, if you wish to embed the Video in someone else Website or on our own Website, then click on Embed and follow what happens next as this applies to Web administrators.

Once you click “Embed” it creates the snippet of HTML Code I’d mentioned before that you can integrate into your Website or blog and thereby share the Video. The example of a shared Video, in this case Pacific Rim - Official Main Trailer [HD] is as shown below:

A little experimentation may be required to adjust the length and width values so that it can fit into your Website, but as the Website administrator, experimentation is the name of the game.

Google Drive and Dropbox – A Personal Cloud 9 on your Computer

But I suppose you may have it in mind to share Videos you copied form off YouTube. YouTube has strict policies against piracy and stealing and uploading Video content that doesn’t belong to you, In fact, you might just find that your YouTube account may be closed forever if you violate their rules on more than one occasion. Ditto too the other free Video Hosting Websites.

So how do you share a Video or Audio Selection you’ve copied? Two options exist that stand out head and shoulders from the Cloud…or crowd: Dropbox and Google Drive.

For Dropbox, once you’ve set it up as per instructions from their Website,is simply a matter of Drag-and-drop uploading of the Video to the Public Section of Dropbox. 

Then right click on the Video after its done uploading and select Copy Public Link. Once you’ve done this, the hyperlink, which is very long, can then be shortened via a URL Shortener service, of which several are in this List of URL Shortners.

My recommended Favourites are bit.ly and Adf.ly; both have analytics to track who when and where your links are shared. But Adf.ly has the added advantage of allowing you to make money, roughly US$1.00 per 1000 clicks with payouts via PayPal. Sweet…what could be nicer?

At this point you can share it on as many Social Networks as you please! Others can download the Video but they can’t view it in Dropbox as shown below:

Dropbox is wonderful free option if you’re sharing Videos under 2GB in Size. The recent partnership with Yahoo means that your files are shareable via your Yahoo Email Account as explained in my blog article entitled “Dropbox partners with Yahoo! Mail for Gigabyte File Sharing as CEO Marissa Mayer Google’s Yahoo”.

For the Website Administrator Embedding a Dropbox File is a matter of using the tools build into your Website or creating a hyperlink to allow other to download the Video. I’ll use the example of the VideoVote for Donoon Park Technical High School.

To make the video playable, simply use the video embedding features supported by your website or Blog platform via the script in the article “How to Use Dropbox to Host and Stream Videos”, published June 26 2013 by Greg Young, LockerGnome. The Script is as shown in Fig. 1 below:

I’ll use the example of the Video Vote for Donoon Park Technical High School, this time embedded and viewable in your browser:

Make sure to adjust the width and height values to an appropriate size to show the Video properly. The video needs to be encoded in an HTML5 Compatible Video Format in Dropbox in order to playback properly.

If you want to be able to View and download and even Share Videos, Google Drive the thing. At 15GB of free storage, it’s worth the hassle of getting a Gmail account as explained in my Geezam blog article entitled “Google Drive, the Dropbox clone, now ups the ante to 15GB of Free Storage during Google I/O”.

To do this is very simple. After you’ve set up Gmail, access Google Drive and upload a file to be shared. Then in your Google Drive Right click on the file and select Share.

Then a new window pops up. At this time a popup will appear on your screen. This give you various sharing options for your Video which are self-explanatory since you’re looking to have everyone view your Video, you select Change.

At this point a popup screen appears and you select the option based on how you want to share your Video. In this example I’ll select Anyone with the Link. This’ll allow anyone who has the link to view your Video without having to have a Google Account. 

As you can see the URL above is very long. You’ll need to shorten that using a URL Shortening Service if you plan to share this online. When posted into a Browser page this is what it looks like as shown below:

To make the Video Embeddable (is there such a word?) just Select File then Embed to create an embeddable Link similar to that from YouTube!

At this point Google Drive generates the Embed code which you can now use to embed the Video or Audio for Downloadin your Website.

And here’s the Video!

How to Share Music – Cloud 9 Music to sooth the Savage Beast

You can share Video and Audio Files, albeit Audio Files in BOTH Dropbox and Google Drive don’t play. To share and promote your Music online, you’ll have to use one of the following options which are basically Free File Streaming Sites as listed in “8 Essential Places to Share Your Mp3 Online”, viewed by Lindsworth Deer on Wednesday 17-07-2013 AmpMusicMarketing,, some of which may be familiar and quite surprising to you:

1.      BandCamp

2.      Blip.FM

3.      Facebook

4.      Last.FM

5.      Myspace

6.      Soundcloud

7.      thesixtyone

8.      YouTube

Conclusion – First Tutorial of  Cloud 9 Sharing is Caring

That’s it for what’s basically my first tutorial on Sharing and Embedding using Google Drive and Dropbox. Remember sharing is caring so share this article as many time as you wish. I just might be tempted to do a follow-up on Video Conversion….