Ancestry Magazine

I enjoy cutting-edge technology, but failed miserably at cozying up to blogs when they first appeared. I’ve been a bit gun-shy ever since, so I met this assignment—finding something to do with family history on YouTube—with some trepidation.

You’ve probably already heard of YouTube. It’s the online video-sharing site, barely two years old, that Time magazine named its Invention of the Year for 2006, and Google acquired for $1.65 billion in October 2006. But have you visited YouTube, tried it out?

Whether you want your 15 seconds of fame, reactions to one of your clever film noir family videos, or just want to share home movies with cousins and grandkids, I learned from experience that you’ve got to try YouTube. It’s easy, intuitive, and fun. I was online, watching other people’s homegrown movies in minutes, and I was uploading my own movies shortly thereafter.

Getting Started

Go to YouTube.com and set up an account—it’s free. This should take a few seconds, but it could take hours, maybe even days, depending on how absorbed you get by what you see on the site. Click on political gaffes, skateboarding dogs, comedy routines, memorials, people being clever, and people making fools of themselves. There are plenty of videos you will never want to watch, trust me, yet so many more that will entertain and amaze you. Search on “family” and you’ll see home movies and lots of babies; search on “family history” or “genealogy” and view oral histories and even a few videotaped pedigree charts (on that last one, I ask “why?”).

I’m HistoryLady, in case you’re wondering.

1, 2, 3 . . . Action

Now, say you want to upload a video. First, it helps to have one ready to go. I use iMovie and have videos on my iPod, so I was prepared without realizing it. To prepare yourself, you’ll want to work with iMovie, Windows Movie Maker, Adobe Premiere Elements, or WinDVD to get your movies—existing digital ones or ones that you create—into the right format.

Incidentally, there are a number of ways to get old movies into your computer for editing, but that’s another article altogether. For now, come up with an MPEG4 video that’s under 10 minutes and 100MB. Full specs are listed on the first screen of YouTube’s instructions.

Next, choose a title and write a short description; add one-word tags and a video category. In step 2, select the video file from your computer and decide whether you want it broadcast publicly or privately. Click “Upload Video” and your creation is on its way. One of my files was just under 5MB and it loaded in less than three minutes using a broadband connection. It takes a little longer for it to be live online—maybe an hour.

Moving Forward

YouTube makes sharing your movie easy—use the site’s sharing tool, or send an e-mail with website links. You can also just wait to see who finds your film.

As for blogs, you can have ’em. Put your message on YouTube instead and you’ll find an appreciative audience somewhere—even if it’s only among your friends and family. Or maybe among family you didn’t know was out there.

Laura G. Prescott can be reached at <www.lauraprescott.com>.