Every month I upload photos of my boys to Snapfish and share them with out-of-state family and friends. I have video that I would like to share too but I'm not sure how to do this. Snapfish offers this service but there is a fee. There has to be some service or website that allows you to do this for free. I lam looking for something where family would have to sign in or be invited to view my videos so that whatever I post isn't available to just anyone and there is some measure of security. How do you share your videos online with family and friends safely and without paying a fee?
Thanks so much for all the suggestions. Grandma and Grandpa aren't on facebook so that is out. I will definitely be looking into You Tube privacy settings and Dropbox. My husband suggested both of those options but I just wanted to see what else was out there :)
You could just email them as attachments to whoever you want to send them too. People seem to forget about that these days:)
Facebook. I set my security so that only family and friends can view them. I know people worry about Facebook security. Sometimes my Mom will complain that she sent a link to a friend of hers and her friend can't view it. It makes me happy because I know my settings are working.
I don't do FB nor Myspace. I do it two ways:
1. Get on Skype (free) and "share your screen" and they can see your whole screen. Then you can find your video on your computer and hit play.
2. I send a thumb drive (memory stick) to my in-laws full of the past few months videos and pictures. When they have the family there for Xmas or Thanksgiving or whatever, they hook up their computer to their tv (thanks to electronic-savy BIL) and they all watch the videos of our son and us. (We live in Texas. They live in California).
Both of those are free, but not a sign-in like you want.
Betty O --- often the only videos that are email-able can only be maybe 10 seconds max. The file gets to be WAY too large and either email won't send it, or the email provider on the other end (hotmail, etc) won't allow a file that huge. Gmail is the best about letting large files go thru. But if I have gmail (lets me send the video) and my friend has hotmail, I always get an email back saying that the 'file exceeded storage space' or something like that.
I just usually email my family the video but I also post them to my social networking sites (Facebook, Myspace). You can set the privacy settings to a certain group - like family if youre concerned about others viewing them.
I use Facebook, but that makes it so all your friends can see it. If you just want *certain* people to see it (close family, etc) I would use Dropbox. Basically it's kinda like storage up in the cloud. You post your pics, videos, files, whatever you like (they give you a certain amount for free, I've never had to pay for it), then invite people to access the files. It's a really easy way to share files from your computer with other people without letting *everybody* see *everything*.
Great suggestions so far! I have also recently posted videos to Shutterfly in sharegroups. This was convenient because we also have photos at the share site. I think you'll want to look at each of these services(websites) taking into consideration your audience, the lenghth of videos you have and how easy it looks to you. I know Shutterfly has size limitations so that is another thing you will want to look at.
YouTube and Facebook. Both sites allow you to make videos private or only accessible to your friends. And both are free.
There is a way (it's been a while so I don't remember exactly) for you to make YouTube videos invite only. Maybe look into their security settings. You could also try Shutterfly, I think they have a video part to their share site and those can be invite only.
I use Flickr; I know exactly who is looking at my photos and videos and when. The majority of my family lives in another state, they all add to join and become my friend in order to see my uploads. Flickr also has a setting that disallows the pictures and photos from showing in search engines. If someone is not on my allow list they can't see anything.
I use Picasa. It is free and I can share videos and photos with my family. I highly recommend it! I use Facebook too but not everyone uses that. We have used YouTube where only certain people can watch.
You can also upload to Youtube & set it to private. I believe there is an option to do a password protected viewing also - you can check out the site & get more info. I've done it before but it's been a while so I can't remember exactly how to do it.
You can set up a free private blog at http://blogspot.com
You invite people to read the blog by email, they have to sign in every time they visit with a password to read it.
We use Photobucket. It's free, easy and family/friends have to use a password to view, so it's not out there for the public. YouTube also has option to keep the video posted "private" and then only those with the password can view the upload. I tend to use Photobucket more because I upload photos too and then they can view both easily.
I use Facebook too. :)
