# Best way to show video on your website?



## Mike Finley (Apr 28, 2004)

What are some of the options, pros and cons to ways to show video on your website. I'd prefer to not have a visitor leave the website, like having to go to youtube to see them.


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## Sir Mixalot (Jan 6, 2008)

Mike, If you have a Facebook business page You can upload a video and then put on your site
and it doesn't take a visitor away from your site to view it.

-Paul


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## Sir Mixalot (Jan 6, 2008)

After further investigation.:blink:
At the end of the video 1 of the 3 clickable options is to "view video" which takes the visitor away from your site.
It still is a good option for some though.

-Paul


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## Mike Finley (Apr 28, 2004)

You can embed the face book video on your business website or only view it on your face book website?


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## angus242 (Oct 20, 2007)

You can embed a youtube video on your site. Of course, a double click on the video will take them to youtube.com

Whatever you do, for the love of god, don't make the video automatically start when a visitor arrives


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## gideond (May 17, 2007)

I've never had an issue embedding from Youtube. Plus you get the exposure on Youtube which can drive more business to your site.


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## Mike Finley (Apr 28, 2004)

I'm looking for something different then hosting them on a 3rd party like Youtube. I don't want Youtubes logo on my videos, I don't want thier video player and all the other issues that you have, clicking away etc...

I'd rather have something where the video is embedded on my site. Think of it like images. You don't host your images on a 3rd party site and show them on your site that way right? I want the video to be the same way, part of my site, just like the images and text are, that way I can control it and keep it looking professional and different then what others are doing.


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## shanekw1 (Mar 20, 2008)

You can get flash or java scripts to embed video on your site.

Google will turn up lots of them.


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## angus242 (Oct 20, 2007)

Just make sure your hosting packing is set for enough bandwidth. Videos can eat up your monthly bandwidth quick if you have a lot of traffic or low limits.


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## cbscreative (Dec 17, 2008)

Shane is right. Video players can be custom made in Flash Pro or you could seek out pre-made players and just insert the video. Both the programming for the player and the video file can be hosted on your site.


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## Cole (Aug 27, 2004)

HTML5

http://www.html5video.org/

http://www.html5rocks.com/tutorials/video/basics/


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## angus242 (Oct 20, 2007)

Cole,

Are all browsers HTML5 ready?


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## Cole (Aug 27, 2004)

angus242 said:


> Cole,
> 
> Are all browsers HTML5 ready?


Most are with the exception of the older IE versions. HTML5 is the future.


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## angus242 (Oct 20, 2007)

I thought that HTML5 was part of the beef with Apple & Flash. Apple wants to support HTML5 for internet video but none of the current browsers were capable of using it. That's why Flash still rules.

But then I can be completely wrong.

It would be nice to know what version of each browser became HTML5 capable. If you're designing a website, you wouldn't want cutting edge technology as not all users are always up to date with software releases. It would be a big turn off to visit a site but can't view because you need a browser update.


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## Cole (Aug 27, 2004)

angus242 said:


> I thought that HTML5 was part of the beef with Apple & Flash. Apple wants to support HTML5 for internet video but none of the current browsers were capable of using it. That's why Flash still rules.
> 
> But then I can be completely wrong.
> 
> It would be nice to know what version of each browser became HTML5 capable. If you're designing a website, you wouldn't want cutting edge technology as not all users are always up to date with software releases. It would be a big turn off to visit a site but can't view because you need a browser update.


Right. If you are running a website analytics software, check and see what browser is the most popular and see if it will run html5 video correctly. The last thing you would want to do is alienate some visitors because of the browser. Granted there are ways around this if the only part of html5 you have on your site is video. You can always upload it to Youtube and put a link for it.


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## Mike Finley (Apr 28, 2004)

So if I have this right, I should look for flash based video software? This is pretty much the most compatible format?


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## angus242 (Oct 20, 2007)

Mike Finley said:


> So if I have this right, I should look for flash based video software? This is pretty much the most compatible format?


Honestly, HTML5 might be the future but I believe Flash is the way to go currently.


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## Cole (Aug 27, 2004)

angus242 said:


> Honestly, HTML5 might be the future but I believe Flash is the way to go currently.


I agree. Sucks but right now, we have no other choice.


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## Cole (Aug 27, 2004)

http://www.longtailvideo.com/


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## Mike Finley (Apr 28, 2004)

Cole - is flash no supported on the Ipad?

If not do you think it's a short term issue and Apple will get on board and support flash eventually or are they locked in some death battle dead set against it?


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## angus242 (Oct 20, 2007)

Apple does not support Flash and said they won't either. They are hoping HTML5 takes off. That's where Apple is putting their support.


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## cbscreative (Dec 17, 2008)

That's an interesting problem, I think. Apple and Adobe were pretty good pals at one time (Adobe took over Flash when they bought out Macromedia), so I'm not sure where the animosity came from. Although HTML5 has been rumored to be the end of Flash, that's a huge stretch and not very likely. Apple's refusal to support it is definitely a problem though.

I think Flash is a very mixed bag. Due to the abuse when designers used Flash just because they could and didn't worry whether it served a useful purpose or not, Flash put a foul taste in many people's mouths. I decided not to blame that on the program because it has some very useful application. Had the designers not used it just to impress people with a useless wow factor, attitudes toward Flash would probably be different. I blame that on the designers.

In the context of this thread, Flash is very useful for creating video interfaces. The lack of support from Apple is intriguing because I still don't get their reason for that decision. In a way, you as web site owners are the ones suffering for that. Your site requires more programming to facilitate the squabbles going on in the industry. More programming means more expense to develop sites that are compatible with all the devices currently in use.


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## carlsore (May 10, 2008)

If you are going to be hosting multiple videos on your website on your own hosting account you're going to want a fairly fast server, so that the videos can buffer quickly.

YouTube is on monstrous servers that have zero issues streaming video and you get the benefit of keyword tagging the videos.

LongTailVideo/JW Player is probably the best solution if you want to host your own videos but once again if your server isn't setup to quickly buffer the videos for your visitors (and you have limited bandwidth) then there is not much of an advantage to hosting them on your own.

Carl


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## Mike Finley (Apr 28, 2004)

carlsore said:


> If you are going to be hosting multiple videos on your website on your own hosting account you're going to want a fairly fast server, so that the videos can buffer quickly.
> 
> YouTube is on monstrous servers that have zero issues streaming video and you get the benefit of keyword tagging the videos.
> 
> ...


Interesting. I guess I'm going to have to test it and see how it looks with one video and go from there.


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## CatAlii (Feb 19, 2008)

carlsore said:


> If you are going to be hosting multiple videos on your website on your own hosting account you're going to want a fairly fast server, so that the videos can buffer quickly.
> 
> YouTube is on monstrous servers that have zero issues streaming video and you get the benefit of keyword tagging the videos.


I agree. I've done both for various websites we have (not just for the construction biz) and I prefer hosting our videos on YouTube. You can embed them so that the user watches them on your own page - they don't have to pulled away from your website into YouTube. And as carlsore said you get the benefit of people searching YouTube, faster streaming, no storage or extra bandwidth being hogged from your hosting account. I really don't see any downside.

When we hosted our own videos we were limited to Flash videos because that's all I could produce in a reasonable size using the tools we had (Adobe Creative Suite). I'm not a Flash fan because it excludes so many users on iPhones, iPads, certain browsers, etc. Plus it took up precious space and bandwidth on our site. I much prefer using YouTube.

But if you really want to host your own you can also look into Adobe Flash Professional to embed your videos.


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