Hosting Flash Vids: Free Hosting or Own Site?

Soniclight wrote on 3/29/2008, 8:49 PM
Current Situation

I retired my 5 year old domain and basic website for various reasons though I will most likely re-create a new one. I'm not a video production company, just an serious semi-pro/amateur who occasionally creates video and music.

Due to no longer having my site, a page at a site in the Middle East which includes a short article by me embedded with one of my videos that used to sit at my site is obviously no longer streaming.

They are keeping the page up hoping I will find a new solution (I'd simply send them whatever embed code to replace and re-activate the for-now offline video). Due to bandwidth issues on their side, they do not host multimedia themselves.

Be it my former website or the new one, traffic has been and will be pretty low since I don't advertise much at all. Low key.

But I want to help out re-activating my video for them. So...

Two Ways To Go

One intermediate (or perhaps better long term solution?) would to use higher quality free hosting sites that can handle flv/swf (i.e. Vimeo, etc). Going that route, there are other good formats such as DivX and hence Studio 6 , but I do wish to stick to Flash since it's the most commonly used plugin.

The other is to wait a bit until I choose a new domain and set up even if but a very basic media folder there and stream the video from there as I had at my former site.

--- Q-1: Which would be better from the viewer's p.o.v.?

--- Q-2:

Directly below I found a page with one alphabetical list alternatives to YouTube.

Top 31 free alternatives to YouTube (video hosting sites)

_____________________

Last but not least, whichever option would be best, I also have to consider...

Moving From SWF to FLV

I use On2 Flix Standard 8 to convert from uncompressed .avi finals.

My stuff is usually shorter than 3 minutes, but keeping a semblance of crispness in both video and audio is important; this due to subtle light effects done with Particleillusion and a more "film" look and using my own musical compositions.

Up to now I've used SWF with high quality audio and Flix 8 did a good job. Resolution-wise, I usually never go below 400x300, butt SWF can have hiccups in playback compared to FLV (i.e. loops only twice and no-play stuff irregardless of flashvars).

So I am considering the switch to FLV even though I will lose some output quality (i.e. font of pan-cropped text can look a bit jagged, etc.)

--- Q-3:

Thanks for your input.

~ Philip

Comments

NickHope wrote on 3/29/2008, 11:35 PM
>> --- Q-1: Which would be better from the viewer's p.o.v.? <<

I don't think it matters as long as you set up your own site properly. It can be a lot of work to set up a player as nice as some of those hosting sites give you to embed. I think the choice is more based on other issues like bandwidth cost, whether you want the hosting site's ready-made audience, whether you can live with ads that they might deliver with your video, whether they reencode your video etc..

>> --- Q-2: If using a free hosting--and I'm not looking for "social networking" - just a decent place to host videos--what would be the best one to use? <<

I've been very happy with Brightcove.com. Videos are 480px wide. If you're shooting 30fps then their 2-pass free Publishpod does a superb job. Or you can upload your own flv and they won't reencode. Check however the terms and conditions and the situation with them delivering ads with your videos and make sure you're happy with both (Craftech didn't like the T&C). You can see a sample of a single player on my home page (embedded in my own box with title and buffering advice) and a multi-player on my Bali page. I've never seen them deliver an ad with them yet.

If you want to go larger than 480px then blip.tv and vimeo.com seem to be the 2 best choices. I have seen praise and criticism for each in equal amounts recently so why not test each and see which you like better.

>> --- Q-3: What would be the best way to encode FLV with Flix 8 (and/or other free to affordable encoder) so as to preserve quality? <<

If it's not the Pro version then it's only 1-pass so there aren't that many choices. What resolution do you want to deliver at?

Or instead of FLV you can encode H.264/AVC with AAC video and recent Flash Players can play this (according to Adobe the penetration of compatible players is already very high). I don't particularly like the quality of the Sony and MainConcept AVC encoders in Vegas and I'm testing the free x264 codec at the moment with better results (frameserve from Vegas, deinterlace and resize in AviSynth, encode to x264 in MeGUI at CE-Quicktime profile with Nero AAC audio). The process is a bit heavy but the results are great. I'm hoping to publish a guide on how to do it some time soonish.
MUTTLEY wrote on 3/29/2008, 11:56 PM
Just a quick recommendation, I'm a huge fan of Vimeo and am probably going to change the link to vids on my site to my page over there. Link to my stuff on Vimeo in my sig. And I think Studio 6 is gone aint it?

- Ray
Some of my stuff on Vimeo
www.undergroundplanet.com
craftech wrote on 3/30/2008, 6:57 AM
What would be the best way to encode FLV with Flix 8 (and/or other free to affordable encoder) so as to preserve quality?
===============
I like the results from Super (c).

John
Sab wrote on 3/30/2008, 8:07 AM
Hi,

We use Flix Pro and host our videos on virtualonramp.com.

Quality is preserved and they have several players to pick from, including multi-players. It's fast and easy.

You can see some examples at www.flipotv.com.

Mike
Soniclight wrote on 3/30/2008, 1:45 PM
Thanks to all for your responses! Got some studying to do - lol. I just swung by so haven't had time to check out your individual examples but will do so.

As to Standard's one-pass, I was going to include that fact but forgot to do so, but my livelihood doesn't depend on my vids so not having two-pass won't be so bad.
Harold Brown wrote on 3/30/2008, 7:58 PM
I started to host everything myself. Either the quality is too poor at other sites or they vanish out from under you. I don't like to charge clients for rework as a result of a Studio6 type thing.
fldave wrote on 3/31/2008, 6:10 AM
I looked into Muttley's suggestion and signed up for Vimeo. I've liked the quality of his videos there before.

I uploaded a sample, 1280x720 HD. Not all of the footage in this is from my FX1, but most is.

http://www.vimeo.com/844544

Note-be sure to click the "Full" button to the right of the slider bar for full screen viewing. It looks pretty good, as far as comparison to my flawed original footage <g>
craftech wrote on 3/31/2008, 6:50 AM
Does everyone have Flash 9 on their computers these days? You need a newer one to play them properly.

John
NickHope wrote on 3/31/2008, 11:11 PM
Adobe's figures
MUTTLEY wrote on 4/1/2008, 12:04 AM

Looks great Dave, and gladja like it. =)

- Ray
Some of my stuff on Vimeo
www.undergroundplanet.com
deusx wrote on 4/1/2008, 3:13 AM
So all of them ( v.6,7,8,9 ) are above 90% which makes it almost 400% market penetration.

Hopefully their software developers are more intelligent than their statisticians.

I know what they mean, but it's just stupid.

Anyway, you need the latest version of player 9 to play MP4 video, and this was released about 4 months ago. Version 9 released before that will not play mp4 files, so for video purposes we are still clueless, but I'd guess around 40% can view mp4 video.
craftech wrote on 4/1/2008, 5:14 AM
Adobe's figures
========
Thanks Nick. That answers my question. I didn't realize that so many have installed it.

John
Jay Gladwell wrote on 4/1/2008, 7:37 AM

In my personal opinion, it always looks more professional if the video company, regardless of size, hosts their own videos on their own site. It's sort of like having your own company e-mail address, rather than using hotmail or gmail as your e-mail address.

Just my two cents.


DGates wrote on 4/1/2008, 9:38 AM
I agree with you Jay, but some of these sites are a good go-between for the meantime. I think most clients are more interested in compatibility as opposed to who's hosting the video. I'm sticking with Vimeo until OnFlixPro comes down in price. It's a good product, but $250 is excessive.
Soniclight wrote on 4/1/2008, 11:13 PM
"...until OnFlixPro comes down in price. It's a good product, but $250 is excessive."

Absofrigginlutely excessive IMO. And from my experience, their forum-based support is deplorable (nil) -- maybe you only get it with Pro...

All that said, on my budget Flix Standard does a good job. But without the last/recent 8.5 update: I did an uninstall/reinstall of my original 8 to nix the update for I didn't like the new interface's default settings/choices at all.

NickHope wrote on 4/2/2008, 12:34 AM
Yep, too expensive and try getting it authorised on a different machine... Not easy! It's still a little buggy too. Oh well, it served me well for a while.
DGates wrote on 4/2/2008, 4:54 AM
I hear ya.

It's been priced at $249 for over 2 1/2 years. This is what happens when there's no competition.