Many college students today are being asked to do their homework assignments on blogs. And often times, they are asked to upload video assignments to You Tube and then post that video on their blog. If you're not very computer savvy, the task can be daunting. But the good news, is that it's easier than it looks. This post will explain how to embed a video posted on You Tube into your blog.
If you're not familiar with computer terminology, "embedding" a video simply means that you are allowing others to watch the video from your own blog (as opposed to sending them to You Tube to watch the video. Below is an example of an embedded You Tube video. Notice that even though this video is hosted on You Tube, you can watch it here, without ever leaving this blog.
The first step is to shoot your video and upload it to your You Tube account. You Tube does have a size restriction on videos, so you'll want to make sure your video is no larger than 2 GB or longer than 10 minutes.
Once the video is uploaded to You Tube, you'll need to copy the embed code. After the video has uploaded, scroll down the page to "Sharing Options".
There are two options for sharing your video (URL and Embed). You'll want to copy all of the code in the "Embed" box. Single left clicking in this box should highlight all the code in blue for you. Then just RIGHT CLICK (while the text is still highlighted) and select COPY. If you managed to un-highlight the text while copying it, you'll have to repeat the process until it's copied.
Now open your blog and create a new post (or edit an existing one). This process works best if you use multiple tabs in your internet browser so you can easily go back and forth between You Tube and your blog.
Once you're in the post you want to embed the video in, select the "EDIT HTML" tab (these instructions are for blogger, but the process will be similar in other blog formats).
Now put your cursor where you want the video to appear in your blog post. Then RIGHT CLICK and select PASTE. If done correctly, the Embed code that you copied from You Tube, will now be pasted into your blog. Now select the COMPOSE tab to go back to your post and finish editing it. You can center the video if you like and leave the rest of the text left-justified (this usually looks best).
Publish the post when ready.
There are other ways to grab the embed code off You Tube. You can also get to it from the page that you're watching the video on (as opposed to the page you've uploaded it to). Sometimes, you may see different size boxes along with color options (as shown below).
The purpose of these features is to give you more control over how your video will look on your blog. When embedding video on Blogger, the smallest size box typically works best. You can change the color scheme to match that of your blog. The important thing to remember is that every time you change one of these features, your embed code will change also. So be sure you're copying the embed code that matches your desired size and color scheme. You can also manually edit these features if needed.
