Got a video question?

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i'm excited about all the html5 video embedding stuff i've read (especially the online book in progress, "diving into html5"), and i'm excited to move forward in implementing it for the community media center where i work. switching away from blip.tv and youtube as our hosts for embedding video into our web site would lessen the extent to which they pull away traffic and viewers, though we could still use those sites for promotional purposes. it would also help us to get rid of other people's logos on our embedded videos.

i'm less excited, though, about what this means for our bandwidth usage. at the moment we don't stream or host any video ourselves, "offshoring" all of the data charges to the aforementioned companies. (i unfortunately don't know how our web hosting plan works, but i can't imagine it would be free to begin serving lots of GB's of video content.)

SO! my central question is, what's the best, cheapest strategy for shifting to a modern/non-branded video embedding method WITHOUT incurring high fees for hugely increasing my bandwidth usage?

(PLEASE: instead of giving me answers about the lack of wide support for <video> tags yet, please read this Q&A thread and realize that i have also read through it. THANKS!)

and now, some more specific questions:

can a <video> element refer to source(s) hosted elsewhere — like a .mp4 or .flv file from blip.tv? moreover, is this considered "bad web practice", like having <img> tags load images saved on other people's servers?

what about archive.org? do they re-encode video (as does youtube) when you upload it, or is it flexible? (i need to explore this more myself too)

does some other non-branding, format-agnostic, free video hosting site exist that i'm not aware of?

thanks so much to anyone who can help!

flag	asked Oct 20 at 2:26 cwgng 23●3

jorel314 · Accepted Answer · 2009-10-20 05:23:17Z UTC

I think archive.org is your best bet. You can upload .ogv and .mp4 versions of your video along with an html file that uses Video for Everybody code.

Archive.org posts your original video and also converts it to other formats as well, just be sure your code points to the original's url.

You can add Google Analytics code to your html which would give you better stats than youtube could ever give you.

Also, archive.org lets you update the files whilst keeping the url's intact.

pasteeater · Answer 2 · 2009-10-28 02:04:37Z UTC

I currently host my own videos on my own server. I encode with FFmpeg and x264 to H.264/AAC in a MP4 container as this provides excellent quality per bitrate. I use FFmpeg and x264 because they are both free and in my opinion provide better quality than the encoders in my editor (Premiere Pro 3). I then run the video from FFmpeg through qt-faststart (part of FFmpeg). You could also use MP4Box instead of qt-faststart. This allows the video to play before completely downloaded. These are command-line tools, so not everyone may be comfortable using them. If you are interested in this method, make sure to read the FFmpeg x264 encoding guide.

I then upload this video to my server and then play it with JW Player which is a Flash player. It is free for personal and non-commercial use and is fairly customizable. The commercial license price isn't bad and allows you to remove any branding. A good alternative is FlowPlayer. They are both pretty good.

If you are concerned about the bandwidth you can try one of several "cloud" services. These can be used to store and deliver your video content with a simple API. I use Rackspace Cloud Files for offsite file backups and it is fairly cheap per gig (pricing calculator), but I'm not using it to serve videos yet. Amazon S3 is a similar service.

Ryanne · Answer 3 · 2009-10-20 22:23:29Z UTC

also a quick response, as Vu mentioned, blip.tv player is customizable, so you can put your own url and colors there, which is very cool. you can also use <video> tag with a file anywhere. so if your .ogg or .mp4 is on blip or archive or your own server, it doesn't matter. just link to it in the <video> tag.

Vu Bui · Answer 4 · 2009-10-20 04:30:02Z UTC

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I am answering this really quick and can come back to it later, but I'm curious about you saying that blip moves traffic away from you? There is no watermark and the player is completely customizable with your own branding and URL.

answered Oct 20 at 4:30

Vu Bui♦
211●5

i guess you're right — blip.tv doesn't really drive traffic away from my site in the same way that youtube does. in fact, they're unbelievably flexible in terms of allowing me to use them as a video host and give them almost nothing (e.g. branding) in return. but as with any scenario where the videos don't "live" on my own server, i'm concerned that their policies might change in the future. i guess i'll have to more carefully analyze what it would cost to host videos on my own site before deciding whether this is a risk i'm willing to take. – cwgng Oct 22 at 19:44

Yes, that's definitely a risk... as with any company (even Google). Some of the other benefits to using blip (besides their invisible nature) include an awesome player that gives the viewer sharing options AND automatically switches to the iPhone compatible file if someone visits from an iPhone. Hosting videos yourself would work, but you'd have to have a decent player as well, or deal with a lack of features. The last thing is the statistics. Blip actually shows you at what point people stop watching your videos, invaluable to a content creator. – Vu Bui♦ Oct 23 at 16:13

Stan Hirson · Answer 5 · 2009-10-20 14:15:15Z UTC

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There are some very inexpensive hosting services that offer huge amounts of storage and bandwidth. I use DreamHost at about $9 per month. They are currently advertising unlimited storage and bandwidth.

I have found that there is much less latency (delay) in bringing up the media files compared with "offshoring".

answered Oct 20 at 14:15

Stan Hirson
101●1●5

Interesting — do you think anyone has looked into this more than just anecdotally? I'm not well-versed in web server efficiency, and I can't actually imagine why this would be the case, but I'm curious to learn more. – cwgng Oct 22 at 19:46

Brian · Answer 6 · 2009-10-21 01:40:39Z UTC

adding src="full url" does connect to an external video hosted on another server. The only way it would not work is if the admin of that video prevents external linking.

archive.org is an excellent resource to host videos from along with vidlife.com or dropshots.com

Heath · Answer 7 · 2009-10-21 19:48:17Z UTC

If you want complete control (sorta, as we all know on the web complete control is a falsehood), but if you don't want to use YT or blip, I would just shop around on hosting sites, most of the major ones have an unlimited plan that is fairly reasonable, but be careful most of them make you pre-pay for at least a year or more to get the best rates. Some do offer month to month those are usually a bit higher but no more than about 15 bucks a month, some for as little as 7 or 8.

You should first try and find out how much bandwidth you are actually using, it may not be as much as you think and you can get a better price with a plan that allows something like 150 gigs or more transfer.

Also to echo a few others points, with Blip you can customize the player very easily and create your own branding, I have done this on my site.

Oh, and if you do self host you can also look at the jw flash player, if it's a non commercial site you can use that player for free with video's you host yourself.

unknown (google) · Answer 8 · 2009-10-22 20:47:10Z UTC

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Try Kaltura KMC - a fairly impenetrable site but good stuff including video wiki and customisable players with playlists...

answered Oct 22 at 20:47

unknown (google)
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Noah Kunin · Answer 9 · 2009-10-28 20:08:22Z UTC

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These are all amazing answers but for me to weigh in, I first need to know what the "end" goal is here.

Who is producing these videos? The community media center staff? Who's the audience? Are the videos for news, advocacy or art?

answered Oct 28 at 20:08

Noah Kunin
91●7

well, the question was this open-ended because i'm not completely sure what the answers to your refining questions are. currently most of our videos on blip are produced by staff and volunteers, but in the future we'll have much more content being produced by community members. the audience will vary widely, as will their purposes... i guess i was just looking for general answers before posing more specific questions. thanks though! – cwgng Oct 29 at 20:49

Karel Bata · Answer 10 · 2010-02-05 13:30:59Z UTC

Ages late coming to this, but maybe if someone else is considering the same question...

You can see all the best hosting alternatives in a side-by-side comparison of embedded windows allowing you to make a direct quality comparison.: Video Embed Tests

I think a good option for you is Vzaar. It's the 4th down (and featured again towards the bottom). There's also a host of tips to help you design a web page with an embedded video window.

The site's about to undergo a major revamp, and an HD sister site is being prepared.

unknown (google) · Answer 11 · 2009-11-03 12:19:37Z UTC

There is absolutely no reason for you to be concerned about bandwidth costs. For the purposes of <20k visitors a day, a $120/year web hosting plan will work. Dreamhost, midphase, and many others offer such a plan.

To get the videos up there, just use a program that converts any video file into the two most popular formats: Shockwave and Quicktime. For Shockwave, use Flash Video Studio, it exports SWF files. For Quicktime, just get Quicktime Pro and export your videos into Quicktimes with H.264 video codec.

You don't need a standalone flash player, bleh what is this 2004? Don't use Jplayer or whatever, just design your own in a program like Flash Video Studio and reuse it.

Then just embed your videos in a page and upload using FTP or whatever. Dreamweaver helps with this workflow.

what’s the best low-/no-budget strategy for embedding videos in my site?

11 Answers