Webhosting for Videos or streaming: Some Tips.

[Gottaname]

I'm sure everyone has experinced or is experencing hosting problems for videos. I had my own experience before, I used to have my stuff hosted at tripod when they had 50MB and no bandwidth restrictions, unfortunately, tripod changed their policy during 911 as there was the recession. I was left homeless with now area to place my videos, I was lucky I have to admit, I belonged to a community that supported this video making, a friend who sponsered the community had a real big webspace and kindly gave me about 300MB to tinker about with. Now what happens if you do not have a place to host, you can have three options.

1.Split the file using a filesplitter program, have users download it from various accounts and piece it together. Unfortunately, this will only work for people with many unrestricted accounts (no file upload limit and storage). The cons are that your users may have problems pieceing it together and that you risk your accounts getting deleted, if you are lucky to find free webhosting that gives you what you need.

2.You can always get paid webhosting, it's expensive but if you're serious taking on video building as a hobby, you should get one (try to get a cheap one with at least 20MB). I'm considering to get more space (Yes more, I'm starting up a counter-strike website which needs unrestricted bandwidth) from a local webhosting company, S$128 or half that in US dollars per year for 100MB, unlimited file transfer, ftp and alot of other goodies

3.The P2P method such as using ICQ and KaZaa and other file sharing stuff. This is the most flawed method cause people may not want to ask (Shy) or can't wait. Even if you did get requests, servicing them would be a headache if you have alot of people wanting that thing. The pro of this method is that you do not need webhosting whatsoever and the con is that the distribution of your amv will be low.

The all round compulsory thing is to compress your videos, using DIVX is not a good compression agent, the file is still too big. I'm using Window Movie Maker on high quality, the audio sounds a bit ringy but it's still clear. Forget about using realplayer format, it sucks. MPEG is still popular though, It's quite a verstile format but like DIVXed AVI, but it still is too big. The best codec would be one that is widely distibuted, does not effect quality and is so small that downloading will take a few minutes, the only format that exists so far is the Windows Media Audio format, but Quciktime could be a competitor, it's high-quality and audio is resonably clear.

I hope this helps video builders in deciding on how to stream their videos to users.