Howcast, the instructional video site founded by three ex-Googlers, today announced that it has formed distribution agreements with AOL, Metacafe, Bebo, and blip.tv.

Howcast provides professionally produced instructional videos that range from “How to Make Sushi” to “How To Make a Water Gun Alarm Clock“. Many films come from the site’s Directors Program, which pays qualified members a small fee to produce guides that follow a supplied Howcast template. Directors receive increased compensation through a rev-share system for especially popular videos.

Howcast says that the new distribution deals will significantly expand its audience. The site had previously established distribution agreements with Myspace, YouTube, Verizon FiOS TV, Joost, and ROO.

Howcast has a number of competitors in this space, including 5min, Videojug, and to some extent, Instructables.

Very few would argue with the statement that video is hot right now. From the cultural phenomenon of YouTube, through to the rise of live streaming services, money is pouring into startups from content creators through to service providers. Getting into video isn’t as easy as setting up a blog, so here’s some advice of which direction to head in.

The basics

Obviously you’ll need a camera to get started in video; if you’re a Mac user you might have a cam built in, but if not web cam’s are fairly cheap. Alternatively people like Chris Pirillo stream from a professional video camera, but even a second hand older model can also work, for both live and recorded shows to computer. For camera effects, CamTwist for the Mac is free and fully featured with effects such as text, clocks, image overlays, Picture in Picture, and much more. Fix8 (our coverage here) offers cartoon style overlays if animation or funny faces are more your thing.

Recording

You’ll have two ways of recording a video: local or to the web. Local could directly on to a camcorder through to Quicktime or something in-between. Quicktime Pro (between $30-$45) does the recording and it’s a quick and easy solution. To the web means recording your video directly to a website; the advantages are that you don’t have to upload it and it’s available immediately, however depending on your internet connection the recording quality can be significantly poorer than recording a video locally and uploading it. YouTube offers the direct recording option and is an obvious candidate, but the Live streaming services also allow you to record to their services and even distribute your video out to sites like YouTube later. I’ve also found that the quality of the live stream services can often be higher in recording than YouTube.

Streaming Live

Live in the newest sector in online video with venture capital being spread around a range of services. Live offers some advantages over doing recorded video alone (although they are not mutually exclusive); streaming live means you can interact with and network with your audience while creating archive footage than can be distributed later. Companies in this space include Justin.tv, Ustream.tv, Mogulus, BlogTV, Stickam and others. All of the services have strengths and weaknesses and you should explore each one, but if you haven’t got time for that I’d recommend Justin.tv or Ustream.tv. Ustream.tv is attracting the professional, higher quality streaming shows so if you want to be in that space, you’ll be well positioned. Their tool set including full video conversion makes for a solid product. Justin.tv has a slant towards a younger, Gen Y audience, and if you’re pitching more to that audience it’s the better place to be. I also found when testing both that Justin.tv was more reliable for streaming quality from outside of the United States, and at times Ustream.tv was unusable for me, even on a 14mb down, 1mb up ADSL2 connection; you wouldn’t experience this in the US however. Of the others, Mogulus has a stronger emphasis on professional video and doesn’t have the strong community yet, BlogTV has a lot of potential, and Stickam seems to be dominated by soft porn, at least when I visited it.

Distribution

I asked Chris Pirillo for some tips for this post and one of his key points was simply: “you must understand that (a) It’s all about YouTube, and (b) It’s all about YouTube.” Like it or not YouTube dominates online video today more than Google dominates search in the United States. Other video bloggers I’ve spoken to suggest distribution to many sites, but always making sure YouTube is top of the list. TubeMogul is one the oldest of the video distribution sites, and is simple to use and free. You upload your video to their servers, enter you user name and password for a list of sites (first time only) then press the button and off they go. TubeMogul also tracks traffic statistics from each site so you can see which videos are being watched there. An alternative service is Hey!Spread (our review here).

The other consideration in distribution is getting your video onto other devices, like iPods. The key is to provide the correct file type and feed for services such as iTunes. You can do it manually with a WordPress plugin and by making sure the file is available on your server in the correct format, or you can use Blip.tv.

We’ve covered the occasional content deal on Blip.tv but we’ve never seriously looked at their distribution platform, and it’s the reason shows like Rocketboom, Mahalo Daily and Moblogic are using Blip.tv. On top of the obvious video hosting everyone in this space provides, Blip.tv also offers distribution to external blogs (including an automatic option), the Internet Archive, de.licio.us (links), Flickr (pics from the video), Adobe Media Player, MySpace, Twitter (text alerts), Facebook, Yahoo Video, AOL Video, Akimbo, Lycos Mix, MeeVee, MeFeedia, Meebo, Blinkx, Splashcast, Pando and the most important one of all: iTunes. Blip.tv offers an iTunes subscription feed and file conversion service; users do have to manually go to the dashboard within Blip.tv and request the file conversion on a free account, but with a premium account ($8/ mth or $80/ yr) get the conversion done automatically. A premium account also has other benefits, such as priority file transcoding that in my testing made it the quickest service available (that is time from when the video was uploaded until it was ready to view).

There was an argument between Ze Frank and Rocketboom a year or two back where Ze Frank disputed Rocketboom’s viewer numbers as they were reporting 10x the traffic of Ze’s The Show. The key to Rocketboom’s success has always been distribution, and for a long time you couldn’t open a media player without seeing Rocketboom pre-loaded. Distribution is key, and combining services like TubeMogul and Blip.tv make it a lot easier.

Content

Chris Pirillo told me that the key is to make sure every video has something different, and that you should use supportive text with each video posted as Google loves text. Ultimately what you decide to create is up to you: it may be something simple like a web cam chat, or you may want to get more creative. We cant tell you what will work for you, but the easiest way to start is to get on YouTube and just see what different people are doing, you’re sure to find something to inspire you.

Here’s a video match made for the Web. Revision3, the video playground of Digg founders Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson, is teaming up with Blip.tv to syndicate all of its shows. That includes Diggnation (shown above with hosts Alex Albrecht and Rose), the GigaOm Show, Web Drifter, and Tekzilla. Some of these shows are already popular, especially Diggnation. And they are distributed in many ways—through Revision3″s Website, through iTunes, as embedded videos. By signing this deal, Revsion3 expands its reach to Blip.tv’s audience.

Blip.tv has done a good job of finding and highlighting the best original Web video shows, including Wallstrip, Alive in Baghdad, Rocketboom, and (back in the day) The Show with Ze Frank. So Revison3 will be in good company. Blip.tv sells advertising against the videos and splits the revenues with the producers, so it is incremental revenue for Revsion3.

Time for another roundup, and this one coincides with a notable first-year anniversary: that of Google’s $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube, confirmed on October 9th, 2006.

Since then, the name “YouTube” has become virtually synonymous with “online video sharing”. According to Comscore, the website maintains a sizable lead over competitors with 205,593,000 unique visitors per month. Second-place Yahoo Video trails with 48,026,000 visitors. But must YouTube remain the clear winner in the online video space? While they have certainly captured the largest audience - which may in the end be all they had needed to do to secure their position - we shouldn’t underestimate the many other companies vying for mindshare.

Even if YouTube remains the destination of choice for the vast majority of consumers, producers ought to take a serious look at the alternative services. They often support more file types, bigger uploads, and higher resolutions. They also place fewer restrictions and provide an array of features simply overlooked by YouTube. That said, a few of these services are mere YouTube clones and hope to follow in YouTube’s footsteps by providing very basic features.

These are the services we looked at: blip.tv, Brightcove.tv, ClipShack, Crackle, DailyMotion, Sony eyeVio, Google Video, Megavideo, Metacafe, Motionbox, Revver, Spike (ifilm), Stage6, Veoh, Viddler, Vimeo, Yahoo Video, and YouTube.

Since they are all about 80% the same, I’m not going to go through each of them one-by-one at length. However, there are some overall trends that ought to be pointed out, as well as some key differentiators. To get into the details as to how all of these websites differ, check out the comparison chart we’ve provided above. You’ll notice that there are some gaps, so please email me if you can help us fill in the holes.

First of all, only YouTube, DailyMotion, and Metacafe appear to place any hard restrictions on video length. With the rest, video lengths are determined indirectly by file size restrictions. While YouTube and several of these sites place the file size cap at 100mb per upload, others place it higher at 250mb, 500mb, or 2000mb. Veoh places no limitations on file size, but they recommend you use their desktop player for files over 100mb. If you’re willing to fork over some cash for a premium membership, Brightcove.tv and Motionbox will also let you upload files of any size.

While YouTube allows users to upload files only formatted as .WMV, .AVI, .MOV, or .MPG, other services accept a much greater range of file types. If you want to make your life easier, however, get into the habit of encoding in .MOV (Quicktime) and you’ll be welcome at almost all of these sites.

When it comes to video quality/resolution, it’s not perfectly clear how these services compare, because most of them don’t state their video bit rates or explain their transcoding processes. However, several of them clearly blow YouTube out of the water. Stage6, a DivX-based service, and Sony’s eyeVio, a Japanese-only service, support the most stunning video quality. Videos hosted by Veoh and Crackle also look very sharp.

Out of all these alternative services, blip.tv stands out as the most professional video sharing solution. The website and player are cleanly designed, they accept perhaps the widest range of file formats, they will automatically syndicate your videos to many other websites, and you can choose to place midroll, postroll, adjacent, and overlay advertisements in your uploads. Additionally, you can track your shows’ statistics quite closely and allow users to download your videos. I could go on and on about blip.tv’s useful features. The only major bummer with blip.tv is that you can’t seek ahead to points in a video using their Flash player.

It’s no surprise that shows like Rocketboom have decided to migrate over to blip.tv. We even decided to use them for our TechCrunch40 conference. And PC World agrees with us that blip.tv tops them all.

While we have a strong preference for blip.tv, the others have their own peculiarities that may make them more attractive to you. ClipShack, while mostly a YouTube clone, has an area where you can use a webcam to add movie, book, video game, and TV show reviews directly to the site. Crackle serves as a talent discovery system through which amateur producers can win a chance to pitch ideas to Sony and other media executives.

Dailymotion, Metacafe, and Megavideo support a wide range of languages. Sony eyeVio, which unfortunately doesn’t plan to roll out an English version, enables users to download videos straight to their PSPs, Walkmans, iPods, and mobile phones. Metacafe and Megavideo both have programs with which they pay content creators according to how many people view their videos. Motionbox, the most private of the services, has a video player with a unique filmstrip that can be used to visually locate segments in a video (they also provide a simple online video editor).

Revver provides a WordPress plugin so that video bloggers can upload and manage their content more efficiently. Veoh lets you both upload videos to other sharing sites and watch videos from all over the Web in its download client. Vimeo sports the best-designed website and a strong community feel. And Viddler’s player packs in a bunch of features, including the ability to leave comments in videos at particular points.

Since embeddable video players are the faces of these services, we have placed screenshots of them below (click to enlarge). We are also in the process of uploading a sample video to each of these websites so you can compare their video qualities. Links to these videos can be found in the comparison chart.

The popular daily videoblog Rocketboom is joining online video network blip.tv, which will now host all of Rocketboom’s videos and sell ads for the show. Rocketboom joins a growing crowd of other top videoblogs that can be found on Blip.tv, including Wallstrip, TreeHugger TV, Alive in Baghdad, and Goodnight Burbank. As with most of those shows, the relationship between Rocketboom and blip.tv is not exclusive. For instance, Rocketboom will continue to sell ads on its own site. But the more top-quality shows that blip.tv can sell ads against, the stronger its position becomes in the embryonic world of Web-only video.

With its launch this morning on blip.tv, Rocketboom gains a new sponsor in Comedy Central’s The Sarah Silverman Program. And blip.tv is concurrently launching a new ad unit, an Flash-like overlay that can be seen on Quicktime downloads (the kind you get off iTunes). According to blip.tv CEO Mike Hudack, these ads will be viewable on iTunes even though Apple generally prefers the paid-download model to ads. Blip.tv has offered pre-roll and post-roll ads on video downloads for about a year, but this is the first time a mid-clip overlay is available. Overlays, which usually look like a banner that pop up during the video, are preferable because, Hudack tells TechCrunch “pre-rolls have the potential to turn off viewers and post-rolls don’t get watched.” Eventually, blip.tv will have the capability to track how many times each ad is viewed or clicked on as well. Up till now, such metrics have been more common for streaming videos than for downloads.

Three online video startups announced a partnership this morning that will allow users to edit their videos on Eyespot and publish with a single click to Blip.tv and Veoh. This sounds like a smart move for all involved as editing and remixing ups the ante on features for video sharing. Partnering with another startup already providing the service may make more sense that building it into an existing feature set. Hopefully the partnership will mean a deep integration between Eyespot and the other companies; more than a distribution partnership, a technology partnership would be really interesting.

New York City’s Blip.tv was selected to provide the underlying technology for CNN’s user generated video section, CNN Exchange, launched last month.

San Diego based Veoh provides 10 minute flash previews of long videos that can be downloaded in their full length through the company’s peer to peer desktop client. The company announced an undisclosed amount of funding from Shelter Capital Partners last week and has also received funds from Spark Catial, the Torante Company and Time Warner.

San Diego’s Eyespot allows drag and drop video editing online and positions its site as a community for remixing videos uploaded for that purpose. Competitor JumpCut offers similar functionality and has a small promotional partnership with Fox Atomic, an arm of Twentieth Century Fox. The company has received angel funding from Michael Robertson, the man behind MP3.com, Gizmo Project, Ajax Launch and countless other projects.

Eyespot currently limits file upload to 50 MB and it will be interesting to see if when these partnerships take form that limit is lifted for Blip and Veoh users. The prospect of contributors to CNN’s Exchange being able to quickly edit their submissions before submitting them is interesting, though CNN may be more interested in unedited footage.

This is a smart move that will help each of these companies offer a fundamentally compelling feature that the big sites simply hosting video do not.

FireAnt released some impressive and beautiful software earlier today.

The company first launched in January 2005 with a downloadable Mac client that allowed users to aggregate video blog content and watch and/or download it to a device. A Windows client was relased in May 2005, which includes the ability to transcode video from the original source into the specific formats needed for different devices.

Until now, the FireAnt site was basically where you went to download the client.

Today FireAnt released new versions of the clients. But they also released a website service that is totally awesome.

The FireAnt site is now a full videoblogging directory that allows users to tag and rate videoblogs, subscribe to feeds and queue them up for watching or downloading. You can also watch any videoblog directly on the website in its original file format (this last point is important).

The website and clients fully syncronize, so any videoblogs added or removed from your que on the site will automatically sync up with the client (users may use the website at work, and have the client installed at home along with their PSP, video iPod or other device).

The result is an extremely versatile, file-type-agnostic videoblogging ecosystem. A tool like this was needed to allow videoblogging to expand to more users.

FireAnt works closely with other videoblogging services like Mefeedia (a directory and aggregator) and Blip.tv (a service which, among other things, provides a great platform for videobloggers to host their content) to ensure that they are all launching compatible platform and application services. This coopetition is good for the industry. Let’s see how long it can last.

FireAnt has relocated from New York to San Francisco. Joshua Kinberg and Jay Dedman are the founders (there are seven or so employees now).

Jay also worked with Mefeedia founder Peter Van Dijk to form the first video blogging email list before either company was founded. They are now tracking nearly 5,000 legitimate video blogs…up from only a handful a year ago.