Streaming Video

You know, the world isn’t as complicated as it seems.

A project that I’m working on relies heavily on online streaming video.  For the longest time, I thought it would involve an overly-complicated, outsourced system to host and stream the media.  I looked into at least six different hosting companies, some of which were free, others weren’t, before deciding to go with Microsoft’s free solution.

It wasn’t a perfect solution, though.  Free, yes, but they limited us to 5GB (recently lifted to 10GB) of media, restricted our transfer bandwidth, forced me to learn a completely foreign API, and, most importantly, they were an outside provider over whom we had zero control.

I wasn’t happy with the idea of hosting our content on a third-party server and hoping they kept up on maintenance when loads got heavy, so I kept researching.  This is when I found a nifty WordPress plugin that creates a Flash video player right on the website and streams video from whatever location you want.  Some quick work with our video producer, and we now host our own streaming video, from our own server, with an open-source video player that’s also stored on our server.  Here’s an example of the video player, using a trailer for the movie, 300:

[flashvideo filename=wp-content/uploads/2008/09/300-lg.flv height=190 width=480 controlbar=over /]

No dependencies on outside providers, no complicated programming to learn, and superior video quality to any of the other “free” solutions available!  (This also means you might be seeing more video from me )

I had bought the brand reputation of companies like YouTube hook, line, and sinker.  YouTube exists to make streaming video easy for the “rest of us.”  Until they breached the scene, only the wealthiest of websites could afford the server space and bandwidth to host videos.  Thanks to YouTube, we can ALL host our own videos now without any worries.  It would be too hard and expensive for us to do it out on our own, anyway … Nope.

Sometimes marketing is a great way to educate consumers about a new product release in a new market.  At other times, though, it’s a tool some businesses abuse to confuse their customers and misrepresent their unique selling proposition.  It’s a dangerous game to play and, unfortunately, a very real reason many people harbor distrust for marketers.