Video Hosting

12
Jul/094

A web service allows content owners to upload their video to a specialized network and then use this content into their own website. Another term for is (or stream hosting) and it is also referred to as business as opposed to free video hosting.

There are two main types of services:

  1. Services that provide the video content through a Video Player.  In this case the user receives a player(or applet) that is linked to the content and that the user can embed into his website or flash movie.
  2. Web resource caching / Stream replication networks (CDNs). In this case there is a network URI(video URL) that is provided to the user for further use. The protocol behind the actual caching or stream replication can be either HTTP or any streaming protocol like RTMP/RTSP.

In this article I’ll be speaking of Services through a Video Player, as this is the more versatile case and direct CDN access is out of the scope of this blog anyway.

is usually related to paid services and the billing is usually for traffic and storage space. A package represents a certain amount of content to be streamed it may be represented by bandwidth or by duration(in hours) of the total package. Some providers like StreamingVideoProvider use per-stream pricing.

Visit our streaming cost calculator page to get a better idea how to compare prices of packages.

Benefits of using a service

  1. Access to video technology and comprehensive tools (upload, players, transcoding etc.) without additional costs
  2. Access to a content delivery network
  3. No investment in hardware and/or software
  4. Full usage statistics
  5. No additional traffic on the user’s website
  6. No changes in policy
  7. No ads from third parties

Web Hosting vs.

There is a huge difference between website hosting and . Website hosting is about web pages and the requirements for this type of hosting are very different. Sites using website hosting to host video content are actually using video self-hosting, which has it’s limitations primarily in reliability and scaling. providers would usually own or have access to a content delivery network, through which the content would be distributed.

Be advised: There are some web hosting companies, promoting web hosting packages as . If you get one of these you will actually not receive access to a CDN, but to a web hosting server instead. This would be a case of video self-hosting from network point of view.

vs. Video Sharing

There is a difference in purpose first – Video sharing is usually about popularizing video content and is about “professional” publishing. While some video sharing services do provide some of the elements a video host provider would, their goal is to achieve a low cost(for the provider) service with maximum exposure.

The primary difference comes from the business model: A video sharing service must service it’s users and advertisers, while a service works only for it’s users.

Some of the benefits of services over free video sharing ones are:

  1. No changes in policy!
  2. Ability to host higher quality video – while some sharing services do play with HD it is only for short duration videos and relatively small files. With services you get better quality, because you pay for it.
  3. Ability to upload large video files – with StreamingVideoProvider you can upload video files in excess of 15GB. There is no video sharing service that comes even marginally close.
  4. Ability to host long duration videos – Most video sharing services have a limitation of video duration between 10 and 30 minutes. With services there is no such limitation.
  5. Ability to use rebranding/whitelabel services – Video sharing services would usually put brands,logos,links and even ads in the players they provide. This may also happen with a change in policy. This is not acceptable behavior for many professionals and businesses. On th other hand video host services would usually provide whitelabel and rebranding to their players.
  6. More comprehensive tools like:
    • more customizable players
    • different player embedding modes
    • more player skins
    • external website integration options
    • full statistics about your viewers
  7. You own your content. And there are digital rights management(DRM) solutions.
  8. Content monetization options like Pay-per-view solutions.
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