Video Streaminf from non-local server, does it affect loading speed?

The loading time is not so much an issue - your video hosting costs will be an issue though.

If you put video on shared hosting, performance can be an issue no matter where your audience is viewing from - you would need to be on either dedicated or virtual private servers for your videos - both of which can be an expensive way to go.

The better alternative is to get an Amazon S3 simple storage account and manage your videos in a WordPress based website combined with the Easy Video Player by Josh Bartlett.

I'm using Amazon S3 for online video courses and video marketing, and performance (i.e load times & progressive streaming) is very good.

This is a very cost effective way to stream your own videos to your audience (outside of the free video sharing sites such as Youtube).

The process is:

1. Sign up for an Amazon S3 account (free to setup) at:

Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)

You can see the pricing for Amazon S3 storage & bandwidth here: Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) - as you will see, it is very cost effective and you only pay for what you use.

2. Setup a WordPress Website - no need for expensive hosting as your videos are going to be served separately an Amazon S3.

3. Get Josh Bartlett's Easy Video Player at EasyVideoPlayer

Currently the Easy Video Player is $127, but it is well worth the investment. Once set up it provides a secure admin to upload your videos to Amazon S3, select video player settings, and then provides you with the code you just copy and paste anywhere into your Website. It provides statistics, and you can edit your individual video player settings that will update live without changing the code.

This system is widely used by most all the big internet marketing gurus - very effective, easy to use, and cheaper than putting videos on a hosting service (rather than Amazon S3).

Finally - when you set up your Amazon S3 account, you can choose your storage to be in Europe rather than US, which could be beneficial for UK video streaming in your case.

Any other questions on this, let me know mun.

If you are playing your own (not YouTube) videos then yes, you will need a video player plugin to be able to play your own videos on your wordpress site (no matter where the video files are hosted).

A WordPress plugin I have used that has worked well is the Flash Video Player Plugin at:

WordPress › Flash Video Player WordPress Plugins

I really advise against uploading your video files on the same server as your wordpress website - this is a good way to slow your whole website down, not just the efficiency of the video itself.

I recommend either using another hosting account just for your videos, or better still go for the Amazon S3 account method of storing your video files (much cheaper all round).

Storing your files on Amazon S3 you can still use the free Flash Video Player Plugin to easily embed the video player with your video files on your WordPress site.

You can use the Firefox add-on Amazon S3 Firefox Organizer(S3Fox) to upload and manage your video files in Amazon S3, and simply use the Flash Video Player Plugin to embed the player + video on your site. It is really a simple process once set up.

Here is the link to the Amazon S3 Firefox Organizer(S3Fox) add-on:https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3247/

All this is assuming that you are creating .flv (flash video) files.

Josh Bartlett's Easy Video Player at EasyVideoPlayer does the same as above but is not a plugin, and if you are going to have lots of videos, the features of the Easy Video Player make it very easy to upload & manage your videos, and track visitor stats etc from one admin area without needing to use the Amazon S3 Firefox Organizer(S3Fox) add-on. It does everything including customizing the video player, and gives you the code to copy and paste in your WordPress post or page.

Finally, there are other WordPress plugins that let you manage and do more with YouTube videos on your wordpress website. One I have used is Viper's Video Quicktags at: WordPress › Viper's Video Quicktags WordPress Plugins This is only for videos uploaded to video sharing sites such as YouTube, Vimeo etc.