Video Monkey Basics
Alex Reyes
Dijital Maestro
Copyright ŠCopyright 2014 by Alex Reyes Cover design by Alex Reyes This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of
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Every effort has been
made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is provided without warranty, either expressed or implied. Neither the author, nor any distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.The author has endeavored to provide trademark information about all the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, the author cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
Š 2014 i
L ESSON 1
Video Monkey Video Monkey is a free video converter for Mac. Video Monkey requires OS X Snow Leopard 10.6 or above. This free video converter will convert video files to Quicktime, Windows Media Video and Flash.
On the download page you will find the latest version. At the time I am creating this lesson, the version is .16. This version requires Lion or later. If you are looking for the version that requires Snow Leopard or later, go down to the Previous Releases section.
Point your browser to this web site. 
 http://www.videomonkey.org/downloads
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Click on the file to download Video Monkey.
The file will download into your download folder. Some browsers will automatically unzip the file. If the file does not automatically unzip, it will look like this. Double click the file to extract the Video Monkey application.
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The Video Monkey application looks like this. Drag and drop Video Monkey into your Applications folder.
Double click on Video Monkey to begin. The easiest way to begin converting videos is to drag and drop videos into Video Monkey.
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Drag and drop a video onto the Video Monkey list section. Video Monkey can convert multiple videos.
The video is automatically set to convert the video into the Windows Media Video format. Click on the pull down menu.
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The video format you choose depends on how you will distribute or watch the video. The formats most commonly used for video streaming on the Internet are Quicktime and Windows Media Video. Either one of these video formats can be used to play the video on the Internet. Flash is used for You Tube video. The other video formats are not used for streaming but for playing video on a computer locally. These formats tend to create large file sizes and are not suitable for streaming video on the Internet.
Video Monkey can convert to a variety of Quicktime formats. It can also convert to Windows Media Video and Adobe Flash. Above the video formats is the devices option. These device options format the Quicktime video to fit the resolution of these devices.
I recommend either MP4 or WMV if you plan on hosting the video on a web site. As a Mac user, you will want to select the MP4 format.
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When you select the MP4 format, the quality is set to standard and the Quicktime encoding format is set to H.264. Leave these options alone, as they offer the best results.
The finished conversion is set to be automatically saved to the same folder as the original file. I like to leave this option alone, but you can change the destination folder.
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When you’re ready to convert the file, click the start button.
A progress indicator will appear at the bottom.
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When the file or files are done, Video Monkey will display a message to let you know.
Here I have the original Flash file and the converted Quicktime H.264 video.
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If you choose to convert the video to Windows Media Video, the process is almost the same.
The major difference is that it changes the video size to 320 pixels. This video format is too small and used for older MP3 players and slow web streaming.
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Remove this check mark and the video will be encoded into the same size as the original file.
The video file size and frame size are displayed with other video information. The frame size refers to the dimensions of the video. In my example that would be 1024 pixels wide by 768 pixels heigh.
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If you’re encoding the video into the Flash format, the option to encode a Raw .flv format is automatically selected. This format is chosen because it is best for streaming large videos over the Internet. Make sure to leave this option checked.
When converting to Flash, the option to change the video size to 320 pixels could be checked. Make sure you uncheck this option before converting.
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