Video Hosting
By Reuben King on 12 February 2012
You’ve made your video and it looks great... but how and where online can people watch it? Here are some of the many possibilities for ways to share your video on the Internet…
Host The Video With Your Website
This a good option in some cases, especially if you’re using the video in a very specific way and don’t want it to play in a standard video player window. However, video files (even very compressed ones) take up a lot of disk space and require a sizable amount of monthly bandwidth. If you have a hosting package provided by your web hosting company where there is plenty space available and your site isn’t getting thousands of visitors a day then hosting one or two short videos on your own site should be fine.
Something else to consider with this option is that the person adding the video to your website in this way is going to need to know what they are doing in terms of coding the website for the required video player and adjusting the video compression settings to get a good balance between quality vs playback speed. If you’re hiring a professional to work on your website then no problem. If you’re updating your own website though and not all that tech savvy, it might best to check out the other options below…
YouTube
The behemoth of video hosting/sharing sites. Setting up an account and uploading videos to YouTube is cheep (well free actually) and easy.
As well as providing a platform for sharing YouTube also provides a piece of code for any video (as long as your account settings are enabled to do so) that lets you “embed” that video on any website. The advantage of doing it this way is that you can have your videos play on your website without the cost or space restrictions of hosting them yourself.
Even if you’re hosting videos on your own site using another method you will most likely still want to upload your videos to YouTube as well, why you ask?… Well YouTube has as of August 2008 surpassed the Internet search traffic of Yahoo, making it the second largest search engine after Google. This is significant because it means YouTube is delivering huge numbers of video views (now over 3,000,000,000 views per day) targeted to people searching on any given topic. Google is also returning YouTube videos in it’s own search results adding to the potential views for your videos and subsequent referral traffic to your own site.
After uploading a video to YouTube, make sure you fill in the appropriate Meta Data that your account allows. Give your videos a good Title, Description and relevant keyword Tags. This Meta Data will enable your video to be searched for and found by people who are interested in the subject.
Unfortunately YouTube offers very little control over the thumbnail image that appears before a video plays or the style of the video player window. The other main downside to embedding YouTube video on your own website is that if a visitor double clicks on a video they will be immediately taken out of your site to the video on the YouTube site instead. Depending on the type of website you have, these may not be big issues, but if you are concerned about visitors leaving your site to watch on YouTube or that the player window doesn’t fit with the look of your own site then the options below might suit you better…
Tip: In your videos description make sure to add an link to your own website so viewers can find you easily after watching the video.
Vimeo
Vimeo refers to itself as a “respectful community of creative people who are passionate about sharing the videos they make”. Vimeo offers a very high quality player and varying degrees of customisation depending on the type of account you choose.
Vimeo is free to join for the basic account or USD$59.95/year for “Vimeo Plus” with added features and customisation. However, you may not upload videos with a commercial purpose unless you go with the recently added USD$199/year “Vimeo Pro” account which enables businesses and corporations to use Vimeo to host and embed videos that do have a commercial purpose.
In my opinion “Vimeo Pro” is a great option if you need to maintain a very professional look and host videos that do have a commercial purpose.
iPlayerHD
iPlayerHD is another US based service that offers a very clean high quality player and video hosting service for USD$30/month. There are several other sites offering similar video hosting services with new ones popping up all the time so do a search and check out a few before you make a decision.
Social Media Sites
Facebook, Google +, LinkedIn, Twitter and many other social media sites offer the ability to share videos with the people your business or organisation is in contact with so take advantage of these connections and share your videos on as many social network sites as you like. With Facebook you now have the choice of embedding the link from somewhere else (like YouTube) or to upload your video directly to the Facebook site.
Niche Video Sharing Sites
If your video fits into a niche category of any kind, do a search to see if there are any related video sharing sites where you can share your video. Here are just a few examples…
ThatsHow, VideoJug and 5 mins are all sites that host and provide a searchable database of How to Videos.
DNATube is a scientific video site that lets you upload and share science related videos.
Green.TV and EcoLive are sites that enable sharing of videos on topics concerning the environment.
Final Thoughts
The choice of which hosting and sharing options you decide to use will ultimately come down to your individual circumstances. If the goal is simply to get as many views as possible then there is no reason not to share your videos in many of the ways listed above. On the other hand if a video contains information that you only want shared with a select few then you will want to make sure you go with an option that allows you to adjust the privacy settings accordingly.
Uploading an internet video on all the major video sharing sites is now fast and easy, but if you’re sharing a video for the first time and need a little help just let Video Kraft know and we'll help you to get you video online.
