Hosting video on a site

Zonua

Boardsies, maybe someone here can give some opinions.

To host a video on a site, what is the best format to use, for cross-browser, and device compatibility.

I know that Youtube have had to convert all their videos from Flash for the iPad/iPhone users.

HTML5 would be awesome, but it won't work on the majority of people's browsers right now.

Any thoughts, is there a solution that will cover everything??

Thx in advance.

tadcan

There is a shim for IE browsers so it will get HTML5 tags. But as the second link shows this works with javascript turned on. People who use other browsers tend to have newer versions as seen by the monthly web counter stats. I've never used this, has anybody here tried that.
http://code.google.com/p/html5shim/
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4456886/html5-shim-fallback

amen

you shouldn't be hosting video on your website.

host on youtube and point to it.

Let youtube worry about bandwidth, availability, storage etc

im...LOST

amen wrote: »

you shouldn't be hosting video on your website.

host on youtube and point to it.

Let youtube worry about bandwidth, availability, storage etc

Yup, or vimeo.

I hate it when sites use their own players. They just tend not to work as well.

Razzuh

Embedding from vimeo or whatever can be a good option but depending on the site it might seem a bit unprofessional. A lot of video hosts are pushing advertising on top of the videos as well, which doesn't look good. If you can host it yourself and it won't take too long to download it looks much better to have a clean player.

I'd recommend you take a look at jwplayer:

http://www.longtailvideo.com/players/jw-flv-player/

Zonua

amen wrote: »

you shouldn't be hosting video on your website.

?? I am well aware that I can simply embed a video from Youtube or whatever (personally I think Vimeo looks the slickest for embedding), indeed that is often the best option, for many reasons.
However this thread is about hosting video on the website.

Zonua

Razzuh wrote: »

Embedding from vimeo or whatever can be a good option but depending on the site it might seem a bit unprofessional. A lot of video hosts are pushing advertising on top of the videos as well, which doesn't look good. If you can host it yourself and it won't take too long to download it looks much better to have a clean player.

I'd recommend you take a look at jwplayer:

http://www.longtailvideo.com/players/jw-flv-player/

Thanks so much, this looks like a very interesting option. Have you used this before? *goes off to investigate*

Razzuh

Yes, but just once for a temporary site. It was non-commercial which was handy since that player has a non-com license. It's very easy to set up and works very well.

I haven't had to look for another one in the last year or so, there might be a fully free open source one out there now if that would suit you better. Please post back if you find anything else.

I think H.264/MPEG-4 Part 10 is the most popular format at the moment by the way. http://handbrake.fr/ is a good free encoder if you need one.