Recommendations for hosting large videos
- by Clinton Blackmore
I recently created and put a 45-minute, 300 MB video file on my website and told a mailing list about it. Checking my site stats, I see that I've used 20% of my "unlimited" bandwidth for the month. As I want to be able to have several videos like this, clearly, I need to consider other options.
The appeal to hosting files as my own site (aside from the supposedly unlimited disk space and bandwidth), is to be able to have control over the format, resolution, and quality of the video(s), as well as to ensure that it is clear that I'm the copyright holder (although the videos will be under a creative commons license). I find that for the screencasts I'm making, having a high resolution (say 3/4 of 1024 * 768) really makes seeing what is going on on the screen easier. It is also always a plus to not have the experience marred by advertisements. One more wrench to throw in is that while the videos are non-commercial, they do promote a club, and it seems that that falls afoul of some terms of services (especially for free services; while free is very nice, I will certainly consider putting up some money.)
What recommendations do you have for (fairly) long, high-resolution videos? Should I look in depth at sites like YouTube and Vimeo, should I be considering a filesharing site [I have no qualms with someone downloading the entire video first -- I wouldn't want to watch 45 minutes in my browser!], hosting files with Bittorent (ugh -- I think that'd reduce my audience), or should I be looking into other web hosts (and if so, who?)
