Video Solution for Video hosting website

Hello everyone,

I want to create a website where users can submit a video much like Youtube. I want the ability to HOST my own videos but I am very worried about bandwidth and storage costs. I need to be able to host my own videos because I want to control my CPM and have ads that target the right viewers for each one of my videos.

I want to know how much you guys think it would cost to host 1,000,000 views a month at an average playing quality of 480p with a max at 720p. Would I have to get my own dedicated server? How can I compress the videos when the user uploads them without losing much quality? Is there a service you guys recommend that hosts the video for you but allows you to choose your own ads (minotovideo) for example/

Bitrate? Length of video? What type of loading method are you using? CDN or none?

I believe a 480p 3 minute long video with actual video (not a still image) will take up around 15-20 megabytes. At 1 million views of full length that would 15 million megabytes. That's 14 terabytes in transfer. Now lets say I'm horribly off and its actually 40 megabytes. That 40 terabytes. There is no shared or VPS host I know of that would support that. You're looking at, at the very least, a $150/month server.

You also need to take into account storage for videos, compression of videos and the CPU required to do so, and the bandwith pipe. You'll need atleast a gigabit if you want to support even a small amount of users. You could look at using a CDN or service such as Amazon Cloudfront. Also expensive, but less of a headache of managing servers.



Take a look into h.264. It's currently the best compression method afaik.

Zapdos said:

Bitrate? Length of video? What type of loading method are you using? CDN or none?

I believe a 480p 3 minute long video with actual video (not a still image) will take up around 15-20 megabytes. At 1 million views of full length that would 15 million megabytes. That's 14 terabytes in transfer. Now lets say I'm horribly off and its actually 40 megabytes. That 40 terabytes. There is no shared or VPS host I know of that would support that. You're looking at, at the very least, a $150/month server.

You also need to take into account storage for videos, compression of videos and the CPU required to do so, and the bandwith pipe. You'll need atleast a gigabit if you want to support even a small amount of users.



Take a look into h.264. It's currently the best compression method afaik.

Click to expand...

Well I know there are websites out there that host their own videos or do something similar to youtube. How would the CDN reduce the size? Would I be better off paying someone to host x amount of data per month?

A CDN doesn't reduce the size. It reduces the amount of infrastructure you need. A CDN also hosts the data for you, so yes, that is what I'm suggesting.

The pipeline would be similar to this:

Uploading:
1) Vistors uploads VideoX to yoursite.com
2) Your server processes VideoX into required formats
3) Your server temporarily stores the videos
4) Your server uploads the temporary videos to the CDN/Storage service
5) Your server deletes the temporary videos on your server
6) Your server now links the video entry in your database to the URL provided by the other service

Viewing:
1) Visitor wants to view VideoX
2) They go to the page which has VideoX
3) Your code links to the video on the external service
4) The video is transferred from their server which is not limited by your servers connection speed.

ztak buddy, if you are intrested in setting up a video sharing site add me on skype or send me a pm maybe we can talk about JV in this kind of site, i have servers and I know how to compress the videos.
waiting for your replay

I would definitely recommend you take a look at the following scripts that just might help you out if you're looking to build a video-community.


PHPMelody - One of the best for the price

Free Alternatives


I know of a few people running these scripts on some of the 'unlimited' plan hostings and having no problems (i.e. - pacifichost, mediatemple, dreamhost).


Cheers,
- ice

Hello,

I will recommend you to consider at least a VPS. For videos, you might want to start looking at CDN option..

i need advice as well thinking to do that type of site will watch it