Hosting for video files

Archived
21

Yeah, I deleted my post on hostgator. I talked to them and they said no way haha. I was looking into Amazon but I think we might go with a Virtual Dedicated Server via Go Daddy, 30gb of storage and up to 1,000gb of bw for under $40. Not exactly what we want to do, but we kind of have to due to the channel growth since going public.

If he isn’t going to submit as a public channel, he might be ok paying DB 9.99 a month for 50gb of storage and a 250gb daily cap. But he should try to estimate the daily bandwidth before going that route since DB isn’t meant to be used as a CDN and his channel will break if he hits the cap.

22

“koshermetal” wrote:
I was looking into Amazon but I think we might go with a Virtual Dedicated Server via Go Daddy, 30gb of storage and up to 1,000gb of bw for under $40.

Very interested on how the virtual dedicated server(VPS) works out for you. Please keep us updated on how the server handles the load. Even with Amazon S3 low pricing below, I have a few looking for a cheaper solution.

I’ll look into DB again. I’m curious how DropBox, as they state use AmazonS3 servers for storage, offers 250gb daily bandwidth on a paid account for $9.99/month. Only possible show stopper is: Streaming videos are cropped at five minutes.

Amazon S3 pricing:

Storage: First 1 TB / month $0.140 per GB
Transfer: Up to 10 TB / month $0.120 per GB

Upon sign-up, new AWS customers receive 5 GB of Amazon S3 storage, 20,000 Get Requests, 2,000 Put Requests, and 15GB of data transfer out each month for one year.

23

“sftv” wrote:
I’ll look into DB again. I’m curious how DropBox, as they state use AmazonS3 servers for storage, offers 250gb daily bandwidth on a paid account for $9.99/month. Only possible show stopper is: Streaming videos are cropped at five minutes.

Amazon S3 pricing:

Storage: First 1 TB / month $0.140 per GB
Transfer: Up to 10 TB / month $0.120 per GB

Upon sign-up, new AWS customers receive 5 GB of Amazon S3 storage, 20,000 Get Requests, 2,000 Put Requests, and 15GB of data transfer out each month for one year.

Videos aren’t cropped at 5 mins…we have content well over 5 minutes and they streamed fine via DB.

I did the math and with the package we got, it comes out to .04 per GB for both the storage AND the bandwidth (30GB storage - 1,000GB bw). Unless I’m missing something, seems a bit better than AWS since 1,000GB of bw would cost $120, plus the cost of storage.

24

Hello all I am completely new to this and looking into starting a channel for my church. My question is do you have to host the videos online or can you use an on site server? I appreciate all help Thanks

25

“FBCMike” wrote:
Hello all I am completely new to this and looking into starting a channel for my church. My question is do you have to host the videos online or can you use an on site server? I appreciate all help ThanksYou have to evaluate how many people will be streaming how much content (at once and over time) over your in-house connection. If the traffic is low enough, you may be able to do it, but you’ll have to check your agreement with your ISP to verify the connection will be capable and that it’s permitted.

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I am using 2 domains to split content over. My shows are at least 1 hour in length. If an issue I get a VPS and change my xml paths to point to whatever server I want and the cost is very low per month.

27

we are currently using a dedicated server from 1and1.com. its worked out pretty good for us and the bill is $50/mo with 2TB of bandwidth.

28

Amazon S3 pricing:

Storage: First 1 TB / month $0.140 per GB
Transfer: Up to 10 TB / month $0.120 per GB

http://www.FlashWebtown.com offers 6TB for $500/mo, which is 0.08 per GB.
They can also host video files for the VOD channel.

29

I realize this is a very old thread but I ran across it and figured others might as well.
(Notice: I am not in any way affiliated with any video hosting companies or CDNs)

If you are interested in getting some of the best video hosting on a major CDN (aka Akamai) but can’t afford it…look into some of the smaller companies you can go through that offer hosting on the big boys. We are using OnStream Media’s Streaming Publisher which is actually storing the video on Akamai. It works great, and their developer is working with us to set up the proper web services to give Roku the XML feeds it requires.

(Edit) Sorry, I meant to say that OnStream is charging us approximately $100/month and the content is actually on Akamai. We just go through OnStream’s UI to manage our files.

30

Onstream at $100/month? To steep. There are cheaper solutions. At $100 a month I can get at least 12 Domains from a fast ISP and spread the load.

31

Ooyala
Kaltura
Endavo media
The Platform
Unicorn Media
Castfire

32

Where you host will depend on lots of things like who creates and owns the content, who consumes it, what budget you have, etc. I have a few of channels I work on, two of them I host on IIS servers. One is in my home and just streams “home movies” to the Roku’s in my home. Another is used in an office environment and is used to stream company meetings (both live and past recordings) to conference rooms all over the campus. So for both of these it was all intranet use. Most of it I would do quite differently if it was for extranet use as well. A third channel I work on uses Windows Azure to store the videos (the videos are about 30 seconds each) and those are streamed to the end users. But the extranet one I would design differently if it wasn’t just 3 people who manage all the content.

The questions below may help you as they can help you determine storage, bandwidth, security, etc.

Who is creating your content?
Who owns your content?
What kind of security is required for reading and writing content?
How much content do you have (MB/GB/TB)?
Where are your media consumers?
How frequently will it be accessed?

33

I’ve been using archive.org to host my channel, and it’s working fine - it’s actually free, too! Just upload all your files, fill in the blanks, and whatever you name it will be archive.org/details/NAME.
Devon
The Recipe Network
recipenetwork - vanity code

34

30a Television uses http://flvhosting.com for live streaming and video playback - they have lower cost than Amazon
hope thats helpful

35

https://www.scaleengine.com/ CDN has a specific Roku channel product (channels), where you can stream VOD and live over HLS. Basically, you upload your VOD, manage, and organize it in their control panel. It streams out RTMP and HLS, with a working embed example.

Disclaimer: I work for ScaleEngine, but that’s also a good thing. Our stuff works.

36

Just tried the ScaleEngine demo, but how to add a different link to test? I tried to do a Purge and took forever if that helps. As in Demo mode I think Input#1 was a hard coded
link setting that I cannot change or see in Demo mode. Is this correct for the Control Panel?

37

FLV Hosting has been reliable for 30a TV channel http://flvhosting.com

38

What is your opinion about BlueHost for sharing videos?

39

“Pamela35” wrote:
What is your opinion about BlueHost for sharing videos?
Bluehost is good, they do host a bunch of spam and Cialis related websites but I always look for hosts that only want to host video, not just crap websites. Video hosting servers are specific and need high horse power, plus a large pipe to the internet, it may cost a little more but its worth it for smooth delivery

40

It’s important to note that traditional (shared) hosting or even a single dedicated server solution are not designed for scalable media hosting and delivery.

In terms of video storage for VOD, these alternatives provide no actual distributed redundancy, which means you could risk loosing your entire video library because of a failure in a single hard disk (or a local RAID, at best). Loosing a 200MB website is one problem, which you can eventually revert by re-uploading a backup in a matter of minutes, but loosing an entire video library of several GBs of content is a whole different issue.

In terms of content delivery (the actual process of sending the data from the storage to end-users through the Internet), these alternatives imply that all end-users connect to one single origin or host. When delivering a website, most individual files have a very small size, usually under 1MB each (images, CSS, JS…), which makes it possible for a single host to simultaneously serve a relatively large number of end-users. But when delivering video files, usually 10MB to several hundred MB each, and considering each end-user will most likely expect a sustained downlink throughput (from the single host to them) of at least 10Mbps, an evident bottleneck appears as soon as your audience grows to more than just a few users. That bottleneck translates into constant buffering or complete playback interruptions, which in turn leads to end-users abandoning your channel.

Furthermore, even the best cloud storage with distributed redundancy coupled with the best CDN (Content Delivery Network) might not be the most efficient way to manage your VOD content for a particular OTT platform such as Roku, because if no built-in method for updating the channel content is provided, you may need to perform this manually for each new video you upload or edit.

Frontlayer http://www.frontlayer.com is a video platform that provides a service package specifically oriented toward Roku channels, including development, publishing, management and CDN integration. Besides counting on highly-scalable, geographically-redundant storage clusters and aggregating several Tier1 CDNs (i.e. Level3, Akamai), VOD content management is integrated with each corresponding Roku channel, allowing broadcasters to upload, edit or remove videos directly from a web-based interface, with no technical knowledge required.

For more information or also if you need assistance in evaluating different technical alternatives for hosting and managing your Roku channel content:
http://www.frontlayer.com/roku-channels

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Disclaimer: While I work for Frontlayer Technologies (not affiliated in any way with Roku), this post is intended to highlight the technical differences between different approaches for hosting videos, beyond Frontlayer’s own commercial solution.