YouTube or S3 For Videos on My WP Site?

Thanks Josh. Makes sense. I put the vid (which is HD web-optimized) on Amazon S3, and tried using JW Player on my article as the player, but it is taking forever to load. Is there a way to fiddle with it in S3 to make it faster? Or will I just have to re-render it at a smaller size, do you think? He video is here: Audio For Videos – Do Not Let Bad Sound Ruin Great Video

Thanks!!

Ken

I've never tried the S3 thing, but I have saved unlisted You Tube videos.

Unlisted videos can be seen by more than the 26 people that private You Tube videos allow. Unlisted videos aren't crawled or indexed on the search engine either.

You can still embed them onto your blogs, and if you want to make a particular blog page private, you can. It's preferred.

Don't provide a link leading back to your unlisted video on You Tube itself because readers will be distracted by the suggested videos on the side bar.

So embedding your unlisted You Tube video can minimize leaks,

But...

Just keep in mind that the title on the video itself is clickable and can lead people back to You Tube.

Thanks Josh!

I used the Vegas Pro "Internet 16:9 HD 30p" template, which says "Use this setting to create a high definition file suitable for uploading to Internet video sites such as YouTube." I'm re-rendering it to better match what you said. Also, JW Player (the licensed version anyway) does allow control over buffer settings.

I will check out your site. Thanks again!

Ken

Don't fool your self... youtube videos are some of the slowest loading and buffer stutter ridden videos out there. Don't think that your experience watching a youtube video is indicative of the rest of the market.

There are many reasons for this... but its endlessly frustrating watching youtube videos embedded on a website on my iPad for example. I have a 10meg cable connection at home and my ipad, connected wirelessly, testing at 10meg down on speedtest.net... watches Youtube videos buffer stop buffer stop and take forever to load.

Its so frustrating that I often just skip the video alltogether.

One benefit is that they automatically render in html5... but since their delivery system sucks so bad I cannot watch unless I am lucky enough to be able to turn off the HD and see one in the lowest def... it just never works.

The key is that if you want to reach the widest market possible and if you are publishing direct response videos you want FULL control over buffer times, hosting, bit rates etc. to optimize the entire process.

The rule of thumb is to encode your video at a bit rate that is slightly lower than the average bit rate of your average target market. If you are targeting the US market then this is 256kbps because many rural broadband connections are that slow... even commercially available connections such as hotel and various hot spots can be well under 1mb in speed.

With youtube, unless you are watching on their site, in a standard flash enabled browser where you can select the quality they are often rendering videos above 500kbps or sometimes defaulting to HQ (which often happens in the iPad.

It just comes down to what your goal is... if your goal is to publish a direct response video displayed on your website that loads the fastest to get the highest possible response and consumption... then you should host it your self and seek that high level of control.

After producing about 400 videos and using every hosting option available over the last 5 or 6 years I have come to the conclusion that unless you are serving videos for a PAID membership area, Youtube is the easiest and most reliable video server to use, not to mention the widest reach to ALL devices.

Notwithstanding the position Josh has detailed here, since moving most of my videos to Youtube I have eliminated complaints about slow serving or no-serving videos that were either on my host or other. When self hosting, (especially shared) I think it is a given that you WILL get complaints about slow serving videos. S3 on the other hand has always been very reliable for me too.

I have never looked into bit rate or any other details, because all I need to know is that Youtube serves my videos in HD, with an array of sizing options and the quality is outstanding. My list also has a strong European base and like I said, ZERO complaints since I stopped self hosting. I have come to look at self-hosting as a last resort, however, my demands for video might not be as complex as others that Josh may be trying to help here.

I have on several occasions released a video and sent out an email to promote it and have had 5,000+ HD views on the same day on Youtube. FREE. I just can't be bothered to try and look for a better solution than that.

And yes, as mentioned above, use the UNLISTED feature for those videos which you only want to direct traffic to. This is perfect for an auto-responder series and I have 5 or 6 using this very feature.

One more thing about the link-back to Youtube. I never worry about it because if your video content cannot hold your viewers attention for the duration of your video, guess what? They are not buying from you and they are not signing up with you anyway. Your video wasn't good enough to begin with. Think about it next time you are watching a video. If the content is valuable, you are glued to it, and eager for the CTA. Personally, I welcome any viewers scouting other competitors' videos because I know if they are buyers, they will come back to mine for quality and value.

In addition, never forget the value of having YOUR videos show up in related content on Youtube. That is one of the most under-rated sources of NEW leads to your content, that even if you do decide to self-host or S3, then you should also have a copy on Youtube as well.

This is as big thing and alot of marketers are testing this at the moment.

For me its better self hosted, and others on youtube. It think it depends on content FREE stuff, or you are plugging something and want people to buy it.

we are finding mixed results, but josh is right test and measure everything.

MS - I am using that exact combination. I have the licensed version of JW Player and am trying to stream videos from S3, but it takes like 5 minutes to start playing once you click the "play" button on the player on my site! And this was for a video rendered at 256kbps and is only about 30MB in size (.MOV format).

I still cannot figure out what I'm doing wrong. I am using WP with Thesis theme.

Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks.

Ken