I'm looking to create my own online portfolio of my film projects and the ability to keep fairly large video files on for download.
How does the hosting process actually work, how much it would cost, what are some good/bad deals, and what companies are good for hosting?
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
If you can deal with the resolution, use YouTube or Google Video to hold your videos. That will save you significant amounts of effort and money.
What is the intended purpose of this online portfolio? Who do you think is most likely to view it? Could you give some idea as to how large an individual video file you want to host there will be on average, and how many you want it able to host? These answers will help us assess how much space and bandwidth you might need, and from there approximate costs.
The basic way hosting works is, you acquire a hosting account, and a domain name. The domain name can be acquired separately (usually a good idea, though then you might need a little help getting everything set up) or at the same time.
After acquiring the hosting account and setting up the domain name to point at it, you use a tool (like an SFTP client) to transfer files to the hosting account. Those files can be made accessible to people going to your domain name by putting them in the right locations/giving them the right permissions (mostly you won't have to worry about permissions).
If you want more than just static pages, things can get more complicated. Most hosting accounts support at least a few languages/setups for web applications, so things like message boards and blogs are relatively easy to install (emphasis on relatively).
Posted by Kasie H (Member # 2120) on :
http://www.icdsoft.com is the best hosting service ever, in my humble opinion. Relatively cost effective, great tools, and, most important, *wonderful* and *fast* online tech support.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
my friend runs a hosting service which I use and can personally vouch for www.zambinidirect.com, his email is
sales@zambinidirect.com
its like 1$ a month for a gig of storage space.
Posted by B34N (Member # 9597) on :
icdsoft is dope! 1and1 is really cheap and easy to set up, but if you want streaming more expensive!
Posted by Earendil18 (Member # 3180) on :
A quick Google search says 1&1 != friendly, and ICDSoft == friendly. Case closed.
I'm not going to put my vids on YouTube or GoogleVideo because that gives everybody on the internet full rights to the video, it's stated in the EULA's. I'd rather people just came to a site that was run by me, the author, and download them there at a higher quality than what they'd get streaming. I can put up full res, well compressed videos for at most 50mb depending on the length of the project.
The people who would be watching these videos would be my family, friends, hatrack , and most importantly, people in the industry whom I can connect and collaborate with. Networking! I could put the webpage in all of my forums signatures etc, and get some feedback and critiques.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
If you're intending to ever have many more than 30 vids up, none of the ICDSoft plans will do for you. Actually, its even worse. On their larger plan, if you had 20 videos up, each could only be viewed 40 times before you ran out of bandwidth.
Also, you are somewhat mistaken about YouTube's TOS. They do not give everybody on the internet full rights to your video. They explicitly state 'For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your User Submissions.' You do grant visitors certain limited rights, viz
quote:You also hereby grant each user of the YouTube Website a non-exclusive license to access your User Submissions through the Website, and to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display and perform such User Submissions as permitted through the functionality of the Website and under these Terms of Service.
But extremely importantly,
quote:The foregoing license granted by you terminates once you remove or delete a User Submission from the YouTube Website.
For your purposes, though, it seems resolution and similar issues are important, so the point is largely moot .
I would suggest a host with at least five gigabytes of storage unless you're planning to keep the number of videos to at most 20, and significantly more bandwidth -- unlimited would be ideal, but you need at least 100 or 200 GB a month if even a few people are going to be hitting those videos (a couple postings a month on hatrack alone would easily surpass the ICDSoft bandwidth limits).
Posted by Earendil18 (Member # 3180) on :
Yeah, I'm not sure the amount of videos would ever go over 15, much less 20.
If not ICDSoft, and not 1&1, any recommends?
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
You pay extremely reasonable per-unit costs for storage and transfer, and nothing else.
Example: if you had 20 50MB videos hosted via S3, that would cost you about 15 cents a month in storage on S3. If there were 2000 video views a month (likely far, far higher than you'll actually get) you would pay about $20 a month in transfer costs.
Definitely the way to go.
Posted by B34N (Member # 9597) on :
fugu13 - thanks for the info that's pretty good prices and you only pay for what your using and get unlimited use as long as you can pay for it. Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
The prices (and reliability) are so good a number of recent startups are using S3 for storage instead of spending a lot on their own content storage mechanisms.
Posted by Earendil18 (Member # 3180) on :
What an interesting way to go!
Posted by Euripides (Member # 9315) on :
I would embed streaming google videos to your pages, with links to the actual high res clips.
I've only ever been with one hosting company, but asmallorange.com is fantastic.
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
, and most importantly, people in the industry whom I can connect and collaborate with. Networking! I could put the webpage in all of my forums signatures etc, and get some feedback and critiques.
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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