How to "Stream" a Video?

Content
41

I don’t understand what you mean…

Aside from that reason, the only other is people are overly concerned about controlling the chrome (the look) of the video player.

So you have slightly more control over the “look and feel”?

As far as SEO with non-Youtube… it’s tricky. You basically have to have the meta data on your page for the video in some way that Google can easily recognize. There isn’t a 100% surefire format to do this in. The perk of using YouTube is it’s owned by Google, so of course they’ve made their search engine be able to use it really well.

But good SEO should be mainly dictated by the content of my website and how web pages are marked up, right? (e.g. <title> elements, <h1>, <h2> headings, etc.)

As far as finding just the video, I’m sure YouTube is 100 times better, but all I meant - if I even know what I’m trying to say - is that regardless of who hosts my videos, it should detract from the overall SEO of my site if I do things that someone like DeathShadow would coach me on, right?

BTW, can you post a link on here to your company’s videos or to some other large companies that you feel do things “right” as far as using a 3rd party to host their videos?

Thanks,

Debbie

42

By private, I meant they are behind a pay wall (which also means I can’t provide the link you wanted =p).

Yes, with the chrome I mean you can control the look and feel more.

With SEO, the page SEO is dictated by the page itself, which doesn’t really change. Where video “SEO” opens up is primarily in Google’s Video search, which could potentially be lead generating. If you notice, 9 times out of 10, Youtube videos top that list.

I don’t know of any sites off the top of my head that I feel do things right, but pretty much just having it in the page is good enough. I don’t feel there is anything too special you need to do to have it work well. Simple is better.

43

Personally, I think it’s a lazy option to just bung stuff on youtube, unless you have limited resources, or really need it as part of a wider social/search strategy. As has been pointed out, most corporate video doesn’t appear on youtube, it shouldn’t be used in every scenario any more than a facebook page should be used as a primary web presence for every company - the arguments stack up similarly, free, easy to set up, extra social traffic etc but it’s an incomplete analysis that comes to the conclusion without really weighing up the downsides. Self hosting video really isn’t that hard as an option.

You can host and stream a few videos on world-class hardware and networks for beer money depending on how many views you reckon you’ll get - amazon cloudfront, rackspace cloud, influxis etc. Unless streaming is a primary high volume activity, owning your hardware doesn’t provide ROI in comparison, it’d be a rare enterprise that would need to commit to that initially. A 5 minute high res clip costs about 1c per view on a typical CDN

44

Glad to see a competing view. (I think Ralph started talking me into something that normally I would say is “tacky” at best?!)

Self hosting video really isn’t that hard as an option.

So what would I need?

I have a basic VPS with GoDaddy now.

Could I use my existing Server/VPS, or would I need to off-load the video part?

As far as videos, I would ideally like to have a modest library of 10-20 videos each about 1-3 minutes long, with a max likely under 8 minutes. The quality would be good, but no full-screen, hi-def silliness. The videos would be educational and likely just have a “talking head” whether me or someone else. Obviously I would have preferred streaming videos, but I’d be willing to just serve up video files.

You can host and stream a few videos on world-class hardware and networks for beer money depending on how many views you reckon you’ll get

So take a stab at what you think it would cost me based on what I described.

I have NO TRAFFIC on my site now. (Read less than 5 visitors a day)

If I could get a couple hundred visitors a day I’d be elated. 1,000 visitors a day might be enough to actually amke some money?! :cool:

amazon cloudfront, rackspace cloud, influxis etc.

For a managed VPS, Rackspace charges like $1,000 per month.

So what would they charge me to host and stream/serve out 5-10 videos for starters?! :-/

Thanks for a competing view!!!

Debbie

45

While you can use cloud servers, if you don’t understand how to manage a server (from console) it can get tricky, and the managed solutions generally have a pretty high price point, even for low traffic sites.

If you wanted to go the Cloud Server route, pretty much all of them are based on two factors: what hardware you are using and how much traffic you have. You generally pay for both. I generally wouldn’t try to put this on a VPS that is hosting other things. It makes more sense (and is easier to setup/maintain if it’s own box).

Cloud servers generally charge you per hour based on the specs you are doing. Since I know Rackspace Cloud because we use it (a lot), I’ll use them as my example. Rackspace Cloud for example charges about 0.03 centers per hour per 256 MB of RAM you are using. I’d say you probably want at least a gig of RAM to properly stream. If it’s really low traffic you could get away with 512 MB (the beauty of cloud servers is you can generally scale them pretty quickly). Rackspace Cloud also charges you for traffic, 0.05 per GB up and 0.22 per GB down. Say your video is 100 MB (a probably 10 minute video at decent quality). If your videos all together get about 100 views a month, that’s 10,000 MB, or 10GB.

So, your total cost for that would be 0.06 * 24 * 60 = $86.40 + 10 * .22 = $88.60 for each month of traffic, on the lower end, and pretty much goes up from there. That also assumes you pretty much are fully capable of managing your server completely through console to do everything. If you can’t, you’d have to go with a managed solution which hikes the price up. You could go with a VPS as well, but generally those either don’t have the specs you need or those specs come at a considerably higher price.

My personal recommendation is still to use a service like Fliqz and Brightcove, if Youtube leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Those services manage all of the server stuff and generally work out to about the same price point as hosting it yourself (up until a relatively high amount of traffic, where it may become cheaper to host them on your own servers).

46

Another option is to use a free Flash or HTML5 player on your website that is hosted on a regular shared/VPS host, but have the video files sitting on a Rackspace account which just serves the files up when requested. (Their bandwidth is cheaper than your regular host’s, and the content is delivered from their CDN, which is optimized for fast delivery). I’ve tried this in the past and it only cost a few dollars a month … a cent or two every time someone watched a video.

The advantage of this setup is that the videos don’t chew up all your hosting bandwidth.

Of course, this discussion has now moved away from protecting the content.

47

**MODS: Go Advanced is not working…

Isn’t that what samanime was talking about, or am I not understanding each of you?! :-/

Of course, this discussion has now moved away from protecting the content.

Well, I started a thread on “How do I have videos on my website” but no one responded, so I guess we can do a 2-for-1 here! :wink:

Debbie

48

Taking it further, (in fact circularly back to the start) if you’re accepting that streaming protection isn’t worthwhile, you can serve progressive download ‘streaming’ video from any old host. If you’re low traffic, then you might as well use the bandwidth you are already paying for. When traffic ramps up, either upgrade the vps or offload to a cdn. The bandwidth on normal hosting is a lot cheaper than on cdn, though you don’t get geographic distribution or redundancy, and your port is shared with website files (and on a vps other users). Won’t be an issue on a site that’s just getting started.

I’d highly recommend a read of ‘getting real’ by 37 signals, a free online book about online enterprise by a successful company. A lot of it is contentious, but the advice to not over-think, over engineer and to not procrastinate on fine details is almost always spot on for small start ups.

49

Similar to amazon cloudfront, a few dollars a month will cover a handful of video and visitors. They don’t do rtmp streaming last time I checked though, you’d be progressive download ‘streaming’ the files.

50

I’ve backed off that stance for the time being…

you can serve progressive download ‘streaming’ video from any old host. If you’re low traffic, then you might as well use the bandwidth you are already paying for. When traffic ramps up, either upgrade the vps or offload to a cdn. The bandwidth on normal hosting is a lot cheaper than on cdn, though you don’t get geographic distribution or redundancy, and your port is shared with website files (and on a vps other users). Won’t be an issue on a site that’s just getting started.

How would I physically/technically host a video on my website?

Let’s say I go to Suzy Q and she creates a video for me. I assume she will give me some file?! Then what do I do??

What do I need on my website/webpage? (High-level code)

What do I expect Users to do? (e.g. click on a link)

What will Users experience from there?

How will I monitor people watching my video(s)?

How will I know how much bandwidth is being used? (So I don’t get a $1 million bill from GoDaddy, and yes, it has happened to others!!)

Anything else?

I’d highly recommend a read of ‘getting real’ by 37 signals, a free online book about online enterprise by a successful company. A lot of it is contentious, but the advice to not over-think, over engineer and to not procrastinate on fine details is almost always spot on for small start ups.

Ha ha. Are you implying something?! :smiley:

BTW, have you read the entire book?

How much are you worth?

Should I ditch my business plans and just marry you?! :wink:

Thanks,

Debbie

51

So for an extra $50-$100/month (US) how many viewers would that would feed in a month?

1 person?

10?

100?

1,000?

Debbie

52

It depends on the size of the videos (length, resolution, and format) as well as how many videos each person watches.

If you are going with a cloud solution, they are all usually in the ballpark of $0.20/GB transfer and $0.20/GB storage a month, so if you have 10 GB of storage ($2/month), you could have about 200GB of transfer a month. How many people that translates to is highly variable.

53

More importantly, for an extra $50-$100 per month, how many conversions would you get and would those conversions surpass the investment?

54

Won’t know until I try…

Debbie

55

In trying to determine why I’ve never made money online, I’ve been looking at businesses that have done well … and you often find that they did a lot of market research and other testing and feasibility studies before launching their site/product. I’m starting to feel that just taking a stab in the dark is pretty much a waste of time. Obviously it takes time and resources (i.e. money) to do this prior research. But I guess if it makes the difference between failure and success, it’s worth it.

56

Not trying to sound sarcastic, but so what then, Ralph, would you envision the “research” would entail?

How would you go about it?

Would you go around and ask people, “Would you be interested in?”

Having worked at a Marketing Research company in the past, I can tell you that Marketing Research would cost tens of thousands of dollars to really be of any use. And even then, it is a crap shoot, just like advertising itself.

I personally think that having a “Business Plan” and doing research that way (i.e. Define the Problem, Define the Solution, Define your Target Audience, Define Your Competition) does have value, and is much easier and more affordable than true market research, but I don’t know what you have in mind.

Also, am I understanding you correctly in that you are in a similar situation of trying to get a business going and struggling?

Debbie

57

I was a few years ago. In my innocence, I thought that when I put up my first site with its new, must-have products that people would lap it up, but of course they didn’t, even though I got some decent traffic. I realized in the end that, despite my desire for the products, few others had much interest in it. I really should have checked that before spending money on it. How to check it no doubt depends on the product … perhaps by showing prototypes to potential customers and asking them if they’ve buy it. (I guess you have more experience with that than I do.)

58

@DoubleDee

In the early 2000’s we did market research on a health club product. We contacted health clubs, spas, nutritionists, and equipment manufacturers and found out from them ‘What are the biggest under-serviced needs in your sectors’ . We heard the same story from hundreds of these types of interview - many by phone.

Although that doesn’t qualify as a Market Research Companies type of research, we were able to ask these sectors “If this product existed how much would you be able to pay each month to use it - where would it make business sense to use it?”. We asked other targeted questions and felt we had a good handle on what those markets needed.

We then asked 15 different clubs if they would participate in our starting product if they could secure a great deal for the lifetime of the service. We were able to get all 15 clubs.

We then built a web application that serviced the needs in these sectors. In the end we had 1000000 plus users in the system with about 100 000 per day. It made good money.

We sold this business in 2009 and made quite a bit. Since then we have been researching the next thing we are going to get into but have turned down 5 different promising ideas based on researching them with people that represented the target market. Just recently we found another idea that is resonating with people, so we are starting to build a modern web application that services the needs of this sector.

I can’t recommend this type of research enough before you try to launch your business. The ‘build it and they will come’ is great in Movies but not great at all in real life. Research it, give them what the need and want and they will come. I can’t stress enough how important the ‘give them what they want’ is!

A little over a year ago we were asked to advise and consult on a big budget web application; they had over 1 million to spend. They came up with an idea that business really need, but they didn’t find out if there was an appetite for it. For our part, we flagged this as a risk and did some of our type of research and found that although businesses thought it was a good idea they were not willing to spend money on it. We advised the company to not do the project because of this. They disregarded our advise and gave us the reason that we have over $500, 000 in marketing set, we will create the appetite as the need is there.

One year later the company is out of business and the people are now working out of their basements still trying to make the web idea work, where for 15 years they owned their own building and had many employees. Sad yes, but the reality is they did not pay attention to what the market wanted.

Hope this helps,
Steve

59

Great post, Steve. Very clear and practical. :slight_smile:

60

Trying to not be too fluffy, but not succeeding… thanks @ralph_m;