I'm absolutely delighted to be able to welcome you to the Belly Babes Video Gallery - a gallery dedicated entirely to oriental dance in all its forms as well as Middle Eastern music. One of the reasons I wanted to do this was to try and provide a friendly place for people to post their videos for fans of this beautiful artform to enjoy, away from the sometimes hostile world of the more general video hosting sites. I hope you'll want to add videos, post comments and vote, just as you would at the larger sites.

There are two ways to add a video to the Belly Babes video gallery, one fairly easy and straightforward, the other a little more complicated.

Adding a Video From a Site Such as You Tube and Google Video:

For this example we're going to add a video from You Tube (but this works for any other video hosting site). In your web browser, go to You Tube and copy the url for the video you would like to add. Open another browser window, go to the Belly Babes site, log on with your user name and password and go to the Video Gallery's main page. You will now see an extra tab marked 'Add Video'. Select that option and at the next screen, paste the You Tube url for the video you want to add into the box marked 'Input Link'. Click on the 'Apply button and wait for the next screen to appear. You now have the option to add to or change the details provided by the original You Tube poster in the box marked 'Details'. You can also add your own tags to make it easier for other people to find when using the 'video search'. Select the category name from the drop down list (eg Bellydance - Egyptian Bellydance) and make sure the 'Publish Status' is set to 'yes', otherwise the video won't automatically appear. Click on the 'Save' button and the video should now appear in the video gallery. If you forget to select 'yes' to publish and your video doesn't appear straight away, don't worry. The administrator will publish it for you.

Uploading Your Own Videos Straight to the Site

This method is slightly more complicated, but it's worth having a go if you would rather post your video on a dedicated bellydance website, instead of a general video gallery.

There are two things you need to upload. The first is the video file itself which must be in FLV format and under 20 mb in size (otherwise the site will reject it). The second is the thumbnail photo. There are a number of bits of excellent free software which will allow you to do both.

To convert a video to FLV you'll need an FLV encoder. One of the best I've come across is Riva FLV Encoder which can be found at: http://rivavx.com/index.php?downloads0&L=3 . Once downloaded and installed, open it up and drop the video file you want to convert into the box marked 'Input Video'. In the 'Output Directory box' choose the directory you wish to place the converted file and give it a different name in the box below that if you wish. On the right hand side of the Encoder is the Video menu. Select a Movie size of 400x300 and a bitrate of 360. All other boxes should remain unchanged. Then click on encode and wait for a minute or so. Once the file is encoded you can click on the preview button to view the new file. At the same time, check the file size in the FLV video's location. If you're happy with the quality of the FLV and file size, that's it. You can now create your thumbnail. If you're not happy with the quality or the file is too large you'll need to do some tweaking in the video menu of the encoder. For a small file size and poor quality video, try increasing the bitrate size manually: 400, 450, 500 etc and encode again. If your file size is too large, you'll need to go the other way and try a bitrate size of 300, 250 etc, but note that the quality will deteriorate the lower down the scale you go. To compensate, try a smaller video size of 320x240.

Once you're happy with your video, it's time to create your thumbnail. Riva FLV Encoder comes with an image taker. This is useful if the first frame of your video is good, but if it isn't don't select the 'All Images' option, otherwise you'll end up with thousands of jpeg images! A much better option is to use VLC Media Player, which can be downloaded from http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

VLC can play a number of video formats, including FLVs and can also take snapshots of your video. Download and install the player. If during the installation process you make VLC your default player, all your FLV videos will now display a traffic cone icon. Select the video you wish to take a thumbnail of and start playing it through VLC. Select 'Video' from the dropdown menu at the top of the screen and then click on 'snapshot'. A thumbnail will be placed in your Pictures gallery. Do this a couple of times to take a range of shots and then select the best one as your thumbnail. You're now ready to upload your video.

This process might seem a little complicated at first, but once you get the hang of the software, it's pretty straightforward.

To upload your FLV video, log on to the site and go to the main Video Gallery page. Click on the tab marked 'Upload Video' and browse your computer for the location of your FLV file. Do the same in the box for your thumbnail, then click on 'Upload and go to the next step'. This part could take a few minutes, depending on the file size, so go away and make yourself a cup of tea.

Once the upload process has been completed you'll be taken to the next screen to complete the process. Give the video a name, and add any details you think useful. Add tags if you wish and select a video category from the dropdown box. Make sure 'Publish Status' is set to 'yes' and once happy with the details click on 'Save'. Your video will now appear in the gallery. If you want to edit any of the details at a later date you can do so simply by logging on and going to that particular video's page.

The most recently added five videos will also automatically appear on the home page under 'latest added videos'.

 If you come across any problems adding or uploading videos, please do let me know.

Best wishes

Administrator