Tell me where to stick 'em (my videos)

September 13, 2007 2:09 AM

Any recommendations for free or low-cost video hosting without extra logos and links and stuff?

I am helping a local non-profit set up their first website. They want some embedded video in their pages, probably just a few at first but with the potential to expand to dozens or hundreds of clips over time.

The most obvious solution would be to just post to YouTube and be done with it, but they'd like to avoid the rather unprofessional extra links and suggestions and such that come up at the end of a YouTube video. I'm pretty sure there are other sites out there, like Vimeo, but I don't know how to effectively evaluate them. The main criteria would be:


1. Cost: Free is good, but cheapish is fine. This is a small-time operation, we don't need a dedicated server or anything.

2. Ease of use: I'm helping them set this up, but ideally the staff would be able to add more content as time goes on. A pregenerated embed code like YouTube etc. has would be ideal.

3. Stability: This is a little hard to predict, I know, but it would be great to choose a service that's going to stick around for a bit, instead of just burning through some VC funds and closing shop by Christmas.


So, what do you think? Vimeo seems cool, and I've seen sites using Brightcove, but I can't tell how much it costs...

Thanks in advance!!

posted by allen8219 to technology (6 comments total)

Viddler.com or video.google.com
posted by COD at 5:52 AM on September 13, 2007

seconding video google. we use it for our school news show for sports highlights and on the website works great for us.
posted by DJWeezy at 6:53 AM on September 13, 2007

i just emailed brightcove, because we're looking for a video solution too, but often, if you have to ask it's too much.

What is your server setup? If it's a dedicated or even VPS and your expected traffic is relatively low, you could probably get away with giving them a desktop solution to convert to flv (if they're not going user contributed) and just hosting the videos yourself.
posted by fishfucker at 8:27 AM on September 13, 2007

i just emailed brightcove,

... meaning, if i get a rough estimate I'll try and let you know.

posted by fishfucker at 8:27 AM on September 13, 2007

Why not OurMedia.org? Free (no-ads). Potential for long term stability (via Archive.org). Supports a variety of licenses. In fact, depending on how you want to license your content, you might think about Archive.org. Both support embedding the videos on other websites.
posted by imposster at 8:50 AM on September 13, 2007

There's no server at all yet... They've gotten offers of help from a friendly local ISP, so they could do their hosting there, but they might reconsider that offer if bandwidth starts getting too high.

The videos in question would be locally produced public-access type stuff, so most of it would be very low demand, but I could see monthly bandwidth getting up to at least 10's of gigs. Thus an outisde hoster would be ideal... Google Video is definitely looking good, and I like their player. I guess no one can really know this, but do you think that Google Video is likely to start running ads like YouTube is? It seems so strange to me that Google has two different video services doing the same thing. But they're the billionaires, I guess...
posted by allen8219 at 1:27 PM on September 13, 2007