Stream your own videos YouTube-style [BT broadband office]

Stream your own videos YouTube-style

Posted 6 September 2007 at 8:35AM by Simon Dickson in Website development

Want to do online video on your website, but don't want to put it in YouTube's hands? It's actually remarkably easy to do, once you've done the difficult bit of actually making the video in the first place.

Step one is to convert your file to Flash's FLV video format. If you have a copy of Macromedia's full-on Flash development software, you'll already have a video converter - but let's face it, if you've got that, you wouldn't be reading this. Instead, try the free Riva FLV Encoder, which can convert from AVI, MPEG, WMV and Quicktime formats to FLV: although it gives you lots of settings to play with, you'll probably only have to choose your input file, and press the big 'encode' button.

Then, download a copy of JW FLV Player. This is the embeddable Flash program (unhelpfully known as a 'movie') which you'll want to drop into your web page, and point at your freshly-converted FLV file. Inevitably it'll mean getting your hands dirty with some HTML code, but there is an online 'wizard' to help you tweak the code to suit your exact requirement. There's a remarkable number of options: I personally enjoyed the ability to superimpose a logo on top of the video - it's like having your own TV channel. (Tip: use PNG versions of white logos, with reduced opacity for that see-through effect.)

My personal inclination would still be to use a hosted service - and given the sheer scale of its user base, and the simplicity of its technology, I'd be looking for reasons not to use YouTube. But if you want total control, these two freebies are all you'll need to get started. Just be careful if you're paying for your website's bandwidth: although Flash is remarkably good at compressing video, you're still looking at a few megabytes per minute of video viewed - and that will soon mount up.

Tags: flash, jw flv player, riva, streaming, video, youtube

New feature: Rate this post!

Currently 4.4/5
1
2
3
4
5

Average rating: 4.4/5

Comments

1. At September 6, 2007 5:33 PM, Paul Creegan wrote:

Inciteful...

I think though that anyone who wants to mess around with Flash Videos on websites should use Dreamweaver CS3 - oh my word - it just does everything for you - no messing about!

I can encode videos (ok, they can be a little large - 20meg for an 8 minute clip at 300x240 in size) but the quality is flawless and when you have huge server space to upload unto - you're laughing!

If you think that there may be buffering/streaming problems - well - when EVERYONE has a fairly fast BB connection these days, you dont have to worry at all about waiting for the clip to download - the longest i've waited for any of my clips is 10secs before it starts playing smoothly!

2. At September 8, 2007 11:41 AM, Niamh wrote:

As an alternative to YouTube there is also Video Egg.

I wish someone could explain this bandwidth as in "you're still looking at a few megabytes per minute of video viewed - and that will soon mount up." Does it mean it is gone forever or just my allotment for that month?

3. At September 13, 2007 2:05 PM, Bob Roberts wrote:

Niamh: The bandwidth used when visitors view video clips from your website is taken from your monthly allotment. Your allotment is usually reset at the beginning of each month.

To give an example, say you had a 10mb flash video clip on your website, and that was viewed in its entirety by 1000 users, that would use up approx. 9.7gb of your monthly bandwidth limit. With today's hosting packages though, you're usually allowed into the 100's of gb's transfer per month (BT's Advanced Hosting pack gives you 160gb), which is plenty for the small business website these days. Even if 10,000 users viewed your video clip within the month, that would still only use up approx. 97.5gb... leaving you 62.5gb to play with

BT broadband office