.tv Server space

[smashfactory]

for those who just put videos on the tv site, not uploaded viewer videos- is it a ton of used server space if its just some of your own videos?

 

[heroes]

Getting your own video up and running on a site goes something like this:

Lets say you have a 4-minute video which was taken with a 5 megapixel digital camera. The video quality, understandably, is low-res and considered poor for broadcast purposes. Even for web purposes you'd have to say it's rather poor.

Now I put this video on Mysite.tv as an opening video sequence, so that every one of say 1400 monthly visitors (46 a day) to Mysite.tv sees this video.

The logistics of doing this is as follows:

127mb video x 1400 visitors = 178 gigabytes bandwidth transfers. That means it's going to require 178 gigabytes of bandwidth a month for people to see this video and I have to pay for that bandwidth through a hosting service.

Now, GoDaddy's basic hosting plan costs $43.20 a year (approx) and that allows for 250 gigabyte monthly bandwidth charges, so that will cover it ...... BUT ..... this one video is going to eat into 71 per cent of my monthly bandwidth quota.

Now let's say I wanted to put some better quality video on the site. That's going to be 700-800mb for about 4 minutes. So the bandwidth goes out to 1093 gigs a month. That means to show a better-quality video to 1400 visitors I would need to go to GoDaddy's premium hosting plan, which costs $US180 a month. This plans allows for 2000 gigs a month transfer so I would be exhausting about 55 per cent of my bandwidth quota with just one 4-minute video.

Roughly, they are the logistics ......

EDIT: Sorry Smash - dont think I answered your question after all that!

 

[smashfactory]

my goodness- i tried to rep you, if not just for all that typing! but it wont let me
thank you heroes- actually i am gonna print this for future reference in figuring out some development! your a gem!

 

[Steven]

It would also depend on the format of the video.
You can try to reduce the amount of space that the video takes by converting it to a lower resolution of it (maybe avi to flv + lower resolution).

Like what heroes said, the greater the size of the video + number of visitors = greater bandwidth being used up.


.

 

[TheBulldog]

I can agree with his numbers.....

The wife likes to upload videos of the kids doing things......eating speghetti, crawling, first steps, walking, driving my $3500 zero turn radius mower into a tree. You know, kids stuff.

As an alternative, I have her upload them to youtube or her channel me site, and she sends links to those videos to her friends, or embeds them on her personal site.

I guess I see it as why use my bandwidth if there are alternatives. I do have my own server and bandwidth, but I find this easier then monitoring whether or not her friends and family are eating up all my bandwidth watching my daughter smear cake on the dog's head.

 

[Steven]

Some hosts allow you to throttle your bandwidth.
If you have a dedicated server, you can also set one up.
I'm not sure of whether you can do it on a shared hosting or not without anything from server administration's side.

 

[gamehouse]

IMO, the videos better be converted into flash format (.FLV) There are free encoders available. I do not think that will reduce the quality considerably.

GH

 

[TheBulldog]

Some hosts allow you to throttle your bandwidth.
If you have a dedicated server, you can also set one up.
I'm not sure of whether you can do it on a shared hosting or not without anything from server administration's side.

I was going to do that for her site, but since she was already using youtube, it made it easier to show her how to embed rather then to show her how to convert, resize, check, convert again if a problem, yell at computer, upload, get pissed at me for making it difficult, etc etc.

 

[Argos]

IMO, the videos better be converted into flash format (.FLV) There are free encoders available. I do not think that will reduce the quality considerably.
GH

You are right, flv : higher video quality, lower bit rate and file size than any other format. Flv is 95% of the web today as most of the major players are using Flash Media servers to run video and or interactive applications.