Web Video Hosting Provider

Video Streaming hosting services can be consider as a hi-fi type of media hosting services which is responsible for delivering media files which can be viewed in real-time over the net. Video streaming requires lot of server resources and enough bandwidth, if you want to stream your video files then you are required to have a special server with streaming software installed on it or need to get a hosting package which supports video/media streaming on their servers.

You can consider a Media Streaming Server as a special server which is having a specialized application installed on it which is required for streaming video files and broadcasting it over the internet so that all visitors can view them smoothly without waiting for downloading of video files. Streaming servers are capable of handling large traffic loads and multiple requests for video files. They can detect internet connection speed of user viewing them and thus can provide appropriate files. They are also used for broadcasting LIVE Events such as sports matches, Live events, news, shows etc.. over the internet.

Using streaming server you can setup your radio station or can broadcast live events where all website visitors can viewer can listen your media files in ? real-time? so you can attract more traffic to your website and thus can increase your business/revenue. But setting up and maintaining a streaming server is not a easy job, you should be familiar with all technical aspects of video hosting and server management, thus its always recommended to get a web host who is expert in hosting such media servers. Before paying for getting streaming server make sure you would get enough server resources with good processor, may be dual core or quad core processor along with huge harddrive space and RAM. Processing of video files requires huge server resources so its better to start with highly configured server having good RAM and Processor.  Setting up a online video streaming facility requires onetime huge investment and usually used by big organizations.

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If you are planning to rent dedicated server or Co-Locating a dedicated server you will have to decide if you want to manage it yourself or want to get a managed dedicated server. Most webhosting service provider will offer you managed dedicated servers as their standard feature so that you don?t have to worry for managing them but if you opt for unmanaged dedicated server hosting you may have to pay some less amount as compare to managed servers. If you are confident and have good knowledge of server management then you can opt for unmanaged servers else you should go with managed servers. You must be familiar with the operating system your dedicated server would be running on, you should know all the ins and outs of you?re the OS you would be using on your server.

You should also have good knowledge the hardware of your server and should know all technical stuffs and should know how to fix conflicts. You should be aware of all software patches, operating system upgrades, and security modifications which is must for all dedicated server and should be done on regular basis. It may be time consuming to deal with all such technical stuffs and you may not get enough time for concentrating on your business thus its always better to go with a host who is offering you a fully managed dedicated server at much cheaper rates.
A managed dedicated server is where you have full control over the server you?re your webhost have full control on your server and will take care of your server, that mean you have allowed someone else to take in charge of configuring, fixing, and maintaining your server at its best. You can consider managed dedicated server hosting as a cost effective solution which will ensure you a total satisfaction and peace of mind….

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Putting videos on your websites can be a attractive way for getting traffic and popularity for your website but for such video embedded website you need to have highly configured server with enough bandwidth as processing such video files requires much more server resources as compare to normal webpages. If you want to host a website having many video files with heavy traffic then you would have to consider bigger hosting plans such as VPS or a dedicated server, normal shared hosting plans wont be sufficient for hosting such websites, if your hosting accounts is setup on shared server then your webhost may not allow you host video files on your site as such videos would eat up more bandwidth and would affect overall server performance moreover your shared hosting account may get suspended due to excessive server usage hence its always recommended to go with higher hosting plans if you are planning to host hundreds of video files or trying to create video sharing site like Youtube..

Video files consume much more diskspace as compare to other media formats hence you will also have to consider getting server with enough diskspace may be in terabytes if you are planning to implement Youtube like video sharing sites or trying to offer high resolution video for your website visitors. Another important aspect you should look for is the server hardware, make sure you have latest processor and good hardware with your server which can handle all video processing requests and can deliver requested video files to end user. As popularity of your website increases there would be thousands of online visitors trying to view your media simultaneously thus you will have to get your server hosted on high-speed network, with maximum uptime guarantee.

In conclusion, using video on your website is a good way for promoting and getting popularity for your video website but you will have to pay good hosting fees such video intensive websites. Usually dedicated server would be the best option if you your website have huge video files and have heavy traffic. Dedicated servers have huge server resources at your disposal hence can serve all video processing requests and can run smoothly without any errors.

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In olden days if we want to publish video on website then all your website visitor who are interested for viewing them will have to first download entire video file on their local machine and then they can watch it, it was very time consuming process and no one want to wait for anything to download and view nowadays. Now you have a better option popularly known as STREAMING TECHNOLOGY. In this technology video is playback while it is downloading so no need to wait for long hours to get your favorite video clip download completely on your local machine. If you are using this Video Streaming technology all your webusers should have streaming video player installed on their system so that they can enjoy your video clip.
Currently there are three major players that all webmaster will most likely have: QuickTime, Real Player, and Windows Media. In Streaming technology media/video files are transmitted in a continuous stream of data which is processed by the receiving computer while the entire file is still in transmission process. Video Streaming technology uses data compression technique so as to deliver data faster at other end. Requesting computer should have video player which will accept all streaming data and will decompress it and will send proper signals to display and sound devices. Once downloading of streaming file starts from website on users computer it will start paying audio/video file without any delay, video playback also depends on your modem and internet connection speed you have for your system.
Thus Video Streaming technology is promising video technology for all webmasters who are related with audio and video industry.

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There are many tools available for recording video which are available on internet. Recently i have found one which is much more powerful and helpful. It’s “Camtasia” you can consider it as an “Online video Recorder” or a “video stream recorder” Camtasia is a product developed by the TechSmith Corporation

Camtasia is a video screen capture program using which you can easily capture and edit anything you see on your PC screen. You can grab videos and can save them in most popular video formats like AVI, streaming media formats (WMV, RM, MOV), and
animated GIF. Using its advance feature you can also pinpoint cursor movements with special visual effects, it also have wide range of effects such as highlighting, zooming, and panning, etc.

Basically Camtasia have two inbuilt programs, the Camtasia Recorder which is used to record Windows desktop activity into video format and Camtasia Producer which is a non-linear editor used for editing videos and for creating streaming videos and AVI files. Thus using above tools you can you can capture all screen activities and can save them in video format which can be of good quality and is highly compressed.
There are many advance features such as splitting/trimming/splitting AVI clips, AVI format conversion (e.g. frame rate, color depth, codecs), audio compression, smooth scaling (interpolation), hundreds of transition effects and many more which can be used with your video.

Such Online Video Recorder will save your precious time and thus you can concentrate more on building video website.

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If you are planning to publish video on your website you first need to Encode your video file for Windows Media, Real Player or Apple Quicktime formats so that they can be played smoothly in web browser. Once you encode your video file you just need to upload these files on a server running streaming media software so that all your video files can be delivered to all webusers.
You can consider a streaming server as a special server which is responsible for ? true streaming ? True streaming have following advantages as :

• They are specially designed for handling large traffic for all video embedded sites.
• They can detect users internet connection speed and will accordingly send data at your user end.
• They are capable for broadcasting LIVE VIDEO events such as Live Sports Matches, Live Shows, Live Presentations etc?

You have two different ways for getting a Streaming server, either you purchase/lease your own dedicated server and set it for streaming video files by installing some video streaming software or you can signup with a host offering you video streaming hosting package for fixed rent.
If you are planning to get a standalone server which can be used as streaming server then you need to get and install some streaming server software on your server or on your existing server. You have range of Streaming softwares which can be installed on both Linux and Windows Hosting Server platforms.

Following are most common video streaming software which are widely used by all webmasters

*) Helix Universal Server from RealNetworks : This server supports a variety of formats, including RealMedia, Windows Media, Quicktime and MPEG-4.
*) Apple Quicktime Streaming Server : Support few video formats which includes MPEG-4 and 3GPP.
*) Macromedia Communication Server : Commonly used for all Flash-based video and interactive multimedia presentations.

Each of above streaming technologies have their own proprietary server and types of media files that they use. Each have their own corresponding server designed to stream files in a preferred formats.

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Placing informative or funny videos on website can be a attractive medium for attracting visitor for your website. You can easily grab attention and can convert all your website visitor to your loyal customers. If you have video presentation for your products/services which can describe your product/service in more clean and easy way then you have won your customer. Visual impact is most powerful as compare to other media forms. Video presentations are easy to digest and can last long in your memory thus your website visitor will never forget your website or your product. Before developing a video presentation you should check if your webhosting service provider allow videos to be hosted on your hosting account. Most webhost allow video hosting on their servers but its always suggested to crosscheck with your webhost to avoid frustration.
There are two different forms which can be used for hosting video on your site. HTTP streaming and Live Streaming. First of all you need to shoot/edit and create video file which you want to put on your website, then you need to upload it on your hosting account or on your server. when using http streaming method you need to embed your video file using some code within your webpages so that they can be displayed and view by your website visitors. If you are using Windows Media Files as your video files then you can use following code to embed your Video File in your webpage.
CODE : -
<OBJECT ID=?MediaPlayer? WIDTH=?192? HEIGHT=?190? CLASSID=?CLSID:22D6F312-B0F6-11D0-94AB-0080C74C7E95?
STANDBY=?Loading Windows Media Player components?? TYPE=?application/x-oleobject?>
<PARAM NAME=?FileName? VALUE=?videofilename.wmv?>
<PARAM name=?ShowControls? VALUE=?true?>
<param name=?ShowStatusBar? value=?false?>
<PARAM name=?ShowDisplay? VALUE=?false?>
<PARAM name=?autostart? VALUE=?false?>
<EMBED TYPE=?application/x-mplayer2? src=?videofilename.wmv? NAME=?MediaPlayer?
WIDTH=?192? HEIGHT=?190? ShowControls=?1? ShowStatusBar=?0? ShowDisplay=?0? autostart=?0?> </EMBED>
</OBJECT>

Note : in the above code you will have to provide proper video file name which you have uploaded on your web hosting account in place of ?videofilename.wmv?
If you want you can also customized Windows Media player which would be appearing on your webpage. You can set option to show the playback controls, status indicator, size and dimension of player which would be on your webpage etc.
you should be sure that you have enough Diskspace and bandwidth, server resources allocated for your webhosting account so that all video files would be played smoothly.

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Sometimes you may face issues with playing Flash embedded videos, either they will not play or they will play but without sound which can be very irritating. This may be due to your web browser settings or may be due to older version of Flash eg YouTube embedded videos does not play smoothly in Flash 9. So if you are facing such problem you may just try to update registry, update your Flash player settings and also sound settings of your computer. But if still your problem is not solved and you are not getting audio for your flash embedded videos then final solution would be by ditching Flash 9 and going straight to the Flash 10 Beta
I am sure now you can get sound and video playing smoothly with the flash player from youtube videos, embedded videos for Firefox and Chrome webbrowsers.

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Internet TV or Video over internet is boom and is getting much popularity day by day. Today there are hundreds of popular video media sharing sites all of them are totally free, you just have to register yourself and get your account and start uploading, sharing all your sweet video memories, events or whatever you want. Recently popularity of such media/video sharing sites have increased rapidly, you have many such video sharing sites available, few of them which you can try??

YouTube : Youtube is most popular and widely for sharing and finding video. You can upload any number of videos at Youtube but there is limit on file size and its duration, your uploaded video clip should not be beyond ten minutes. Due to its tremendous popularity you can spread your video far and wide across the globe.

Vimeo : Similar to Youtube but don’t have much popularity as like Youtube have so expect much views for your piece of work over here.

Revver : If you are trying to make money off your video work then this is the place for you, it’s not much into social community rather offers you and option for getting some extra revenue from your work. The Revver service will match ads to your video, and give you a piece of the action from whatever the advertiser pays. Most important thing is that when your fan plays the video on their own site, they can earn money from it too. Thus its all about making Money, money, money from your video.

Dailymotion : Dailymotion offers you some more advance features and capabilities, its heavily focus on social networking by offering you the ability to create groups, leave comments, and ratings. So if you are looking to get reviews for your creativity you can consider to have a account at Dailymotion.

iFilm : If your video is good enough, VH1 may select it to appear on its Web Junk 20 program.

MySpace Video : Brandname goes with it hence its popular but their service is not much impressive. You should just know that MySpace video exist and you should know about it.
Grouper : A unique service from SONY using which you can edit your videos and can easily upload them directly onto your site, they provide you desktop software using which you can play with your video file [ capture, edit and upload ] Good service if you just want to have basic cuts for your videos and want to get them onto your website easily.

AOL Uncut Video : Like other major search engines AOL also offers you to upload and share your video creativity by offer you AOL Uncut video services. Its much similar to Youtube but not in popularity and stability.

There are many other video sharing website but above listed video site are more popular and are reliable.

Enjoy and share your media creativity

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If you have many flv flash video format video files which you want to convert to some other video format in one go then you can use following bash script developed by Jake Hilton

If you are using ffmpeg on your dedicated server then you can use below bash script for batch convert of flv files to other required video format.

#!/bin/sh
for f in *.flv;
do
echo “Processing $f”
ffmpeg -i “$f” -target ntsc-dvd “${f%.flv}.mpg”
done

Thus using above script all flash video files having flv extension will get converted into a ntsc dvd format with file extension mpg. You can tweak it for required video format you need.

Vote of thanks to Jake Hilton http://www.jakehilton.com/?q=node/41 for sharing such excellent script

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