Kevan Posted April 12, 2006 Posted April 12, 2006 Are there any reasonable alternatives to hosting large video files? I put a link to a 133 meg video (.wmv) on my site by member request. Today he asked me to remove the link because 2200 requests have already come in and this will exceed the site's monthly bandwidth "...100 gigs worth of bandwidth a month, and my video used up 87% of that in a week" I've not crunched the numbers yet to know how much bandwidth that is needed per month but I know he has 4 other videos he wants to share... Our original website business model didn't include video so any and all ideas appreciated. Quote
Head Guru Posted April 12, 2006 Posted April 12, 2006 Video hosting = lots of bandwidth. You would need to look at a dedicated server to start with. This would give you 1200GB / 1200GB out of transfer to start. Give me a shout on Instant Messenger, I would be more than happy to talk this over with you. Bill Quote
Kevan Posted April 12, 2006 Author Posted April 12, 2006 Thank You Bill. I will find out how serious the board is about video and also if video from other people is something they want to get involved with. Quote
Deverill Posted April 13, 2006 Posted April 13, 2006 I'd be careful with video from other people because of copyright issues, but that's up to them. As HG said, it's high bandwidth and hard to control how many download it or view it over and over downloading it each time. Quote
Kevan Posted April 13, 2006 Author Posted April 13, 2006 Thanks Jim. I agree. It was a great video and popular too....as long as it was on his (or his brother's) server. The video credits listed his name so I was confident adding the link to our site when he requested that. I've sent him to G_____ video to see what happens there before we do anything else. Quote
kfordham281 Posted May 3, 2006 Posted May 3, 2006 Why not upload it on youtube or another video hosting site? There are a number of them that do similar things and with youtube (perhaps others too) you can put some html code in your site and the video can be played on your website. Quote
Kevan Posted May 3, 2006 Author Posted May 3, 2006 Why not upload it on youtube or another video hosting site? Great idea. I tried a few sites and they all seem to have a limit of 25 meg or less. Even trimmed down a lot the video doesn't have enough resolution to look presentable at 50 meg. The video owner did put it on one site (Google Video) but it was gone two days later. Thanks for the ideas Quote
chatbug Posted May 3, 2006 Posted May 3, 2006 I think BitTorrent is supposed to be an efficient way of distributing files without putting excess load on the file server... but I am not too sure about the technical details of distributing files via BitTorrent. Unfortunately, BT has become quite famous due to distribution of illegal contents, so I'm not sure if it is an approved method of file distribution here. I would leave that for the TCH staff to answer. Quote
kellybellydotnet Posted May 3, 2006 Posted May 3, 2006 I'm a big fan of www.blip.tv for hosting videos without eating up my bandwidth. The advantage of using them over some of the other video hosting sites is that even though they'll encode your video to flash if you have it set up to do so, you can still link to the original file. Also, you can upload video via FTP, so you don't have to worry about the browser timing out during long uploads. I'm not sure if there is a file size limit since the site doesn't state one (I haven't uploaded anything over ~15 megs). From my experience support is excellent -- if you want to try them, you should send them an email and ask about any file size limits before registering. Quote
Samrc Posted May 3, 2006 Posted May 3, 2006 If you do decide to host a video or two on your TCH account, make sure you set for no hotlinking from outside your site. If it is a popular video, it will be "hotlinked" (dragged into) someone else's site via a tiny piece of code. This robs you of a limited bandwidth resource without the benefit of the visitor being on your site or you getting credit for the video. Quote
queenpictoria Posted January 16, 2009 Posted January 16, 2009 Video hosting = lots of bandwidth. You would need to look at a dedicated server to start with. This would give you 1200GB / 1200GB out of transfer to start. Give me a shout on Instant Messenger, I would be more than happy to talk this over with you. Bill Hi Bill, I know you were responding to the forum member, but I was wondering if I could also contact you regarding video hosting. We are looking to use lots of transfer and would be very interested in what you have to offer. Regards, queenpictoria Quote
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