YouTube alternative

[StephanusvS]

I want to embed some sermon videos on my site, but they are about 28 minutes in length each, and YouTube's limit is 15 minutes.

What is a good alternative to YouTube?

Or should I just consider loading them up to our VodaHost account, like the mp3 downloads we offer on the site?

I would appreciate any advise anybody out there can give me in this regard.

[Vasili]

Re: YouTube alternative

Best Practices advise that you keep your sound files and videos under 5 minutes in length, for a number of reasons, both technical and for Visitor experience. Video files expecially should be no longer than 7 minutes .... you may wish to instead offer these larger files complete as downloads only (so Viewers can play at their leisure, not depend on connection integrity, and to absolve hosting account transfer limitations) rather than present them for stream. This is only thinking proactively, for in your application, it is presumed Viewers may wish to utilize Pause and Stop/Start in a more "studious" focus, and making your files downloadable and dependent on User systems is actually more the "delivery" that seems productive, yes?

If preferring to play on your site and rather than run the limitations of server resources allowances of your hosting account, the ideal suggestion is for you to convert your videos to Flash, as this will not only allow faster loading and cleaner display, but the conversion also compresses the file sizes to a significant degree.

There are a number of free Flash conversion tools available for download on the internet if you do a Google search for them.

Alternatively, you could instead use the services both similar and disimilar to YouTube available at www.vimeo.com

[StephanusvS]

Re: YouTube alternative

Thank you Vasili.

For this comprehensive answer. Lots of food for thought.

Much appreciated.

[Sadian]

Re: YouTube alternative

you can also use the Microsoft Media Player thats built into the BV.... as long as its mpeg or avi or wmv but vassili is right though flash is fast.... if you convert the file to wmv in microsoft movie maker its just as fast though imo

[Vasili]

Re: YouTube alternative

you can also use the Microsoft Media Player thats built into the BV....

Microsoft's Media Player will not play MP4, nor can it convert VOB/MP4 to AVI or WMV.
You'd be better off downloading RealPlayer to play MP4 or ripping versions into other formats.

[StephanusvS]

Re: YouTube alternative

Hi Vasili,

I want to upload a 7 min video to my site just to test the embedding and then see what route I will follow. I have converted to flash that is flv, but see that the flash player in BV supports only Shockwave Flash (swf), preferred for web pages? When converting the same file to swf on same quality the file size doubles. Can I use flv or should I do swf?

How will people view the video in their browsers?

Thank you for helping me, as this is completely new to me and I am finding the learning curve a bit steep.

I am investigating the option of vimeo, but am finding it very technical and not a simple and straightforward as just uploading and streaming, but will get there.