Hello everyone!
I'm the interactive media editor at the Norwalk Reflector, a small newspaper in northern Ohio. We are currently building a new website on Drupal, which we plan to take live Aug. 1. I'm pretty excited about it, but since I'm the only one in the building who can program, I'm also a little overwhelmed.
Right now, my biggest issue is figuring out the best way to do video on the site. If any of you have some wisdom to impart on this one, I'd be very grateful. We're looking to be able to have video with stories, to do videocasts, and to have video sharing for our users.
It seems like finding a good host with FFMPEG already installed will make all this much easier, so if anyone has any host recommends, that would also be v. appreciated!
Thanks in advance, and I look forward to getting to know everyone.
Comments
Simple path
If advanced video is not a requirement, there are easy ways to grab selected YouTube content. I can pass some code if needed.
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http://ken.therickards.com/
http://savannahnow.com/user/2
http://blufftontoday.com/user/3
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http://ken.therickards.com/
Twistage video
Get a hold of these guys...
http://www.twistage.com
They offer hosting, video sharing for your users, and A Lot of control over what is done with your video. You can do a lot with the video as its uploaded on th e fly, and it offers some really cool features regarding the administration of the whole thing and how it ties into your site.
They don't brand your video, so people don't even have to know you're using them. (And with that it's also not free, but it seems to be a very fair price)
Check em out.
Use the force, Luke
Like Ken, I'd suggest that you plug into one of the existing video services -- YouTube is fine -- and just embed the code in your postings. You do need to make some adjustments to your HTML filtering.
Hosting your own video is quite expensive in storage, bandwidth, and -- if you're transcoding server-side -- CPU. Using an existing service routes around those problems and adds distribution as well.
It may indeed come to that...
Thanks for the words of advice.
However it seems to me that drupal has all the pieces for both videocasts and for video sharing, and it would be a shame not to take advantage of that. As far as I can see, storage and bandwidth aren't really very expensive -- you can get 400GB of storage and 4TB of BW from dreamhost for $20/mo. -- especially since we're not talking about huge volumes. And if drupal can let you keep your content integrated, your administration simple, and let you God forbid serve ads...
It seems like it shouldn't be that hard to keep it all in drupal, and it seems like it has some real advantages.
What am I missing?