Will Self-Hosting be Sufficient for Video Streaming Services?

There were times when people could only use to enjoy videos through CDs, video rentals, mixtapes, or TV. With changing times the ways of video streaming have also revolved like a whole another level. With the advent of some leading protagonists in the line of video streaming field, the days of old streaming like TVs and cassettes have almost been extinct in the market. The continuous decline in the costs of internet services and the development of cloud technologies have changed the plot of the picture. Due to such powerful cloud services nowadays we can stream videos straightway onto our devices. So much we can do together and simultaneously these days like streaming videos on Netflix and simultaneously doing our office work on the same device. Now there is no stopping to it and the journey is too long to go.

As the options for the video streaming are endless so is for the hosting these video streaming websites. But selecting the most appropriate one is the real deal here. Things are warming up with the online video streaming hosting and are going to explode one day as per the expert researches going on.

What are Live Video Streaming Sites?

Every other site cannot be acting as a video streaming website. Live video streaming sites are specially developed to support your brand new videos and streaming them at the right time and the desired quality. A video cannot be treated the same as a simple photograph as a video cannot be just directly posted on your website and hosted by itself. Self-hosting a video streaming website sounds to be a really bad idea. Let us go through this in detail-

A typical 10-minute video weighs more than approximately 100MB. Publishing this 10-minute video through normal WordPress video hosting will seem to you a good idea at first but when it will be delivered in the hands of the viewers then is the time when the actual problem starts. The feed-backs will be flooded with “late streaming” and “stopped playing” comments. Actually, this involves reasoning with a technical background. There is a big difference between uploading and embedding a video on your post.

Embedding a Video	Uploading a Video
When the video is embedded, one is hosting the video at some other location and creating a link between it.	When the video is uploaded, one takes the video file itself and uploading it on their own web hosting account.
Embedding a video is a two-step process where the video gets streamed straight from the video host’s server.	Uploading a video is a one-step process wherein the video gets streamed from the same web server from where your WordPress site is hosted.
Embedding a video comes with many beneficial optimizations	Uploading a video does not provide any further optimizations

Benefits of Embedding Over Uploading a Video-

• The space on your own server would be anyways limited. Thus after posting some videos that space would definitely get exhausted. This situation does not arise ever in the case of embedding a video. The space on a video host server is generally unlimited or more than enough to support millions of pf videos.
• When you think of simply uploading your video, you have to put a limit to the number of videos which is not at all the case when you decide to embed videos. Multiple videos uploaded, the load times will get affected. Load time is something you need not worry about while embedding multiple videos.
• There is no file size limitation while embedding a video. The file size limitation in uploading a video depends on the video uploading limitation set by your web server. For example, if you are uploading video through WordPress then the video size would be less as compared to the video size set by YouTube free video hosting.
• Embedding videos through video host server enjoy an unlimited amount of bandwidth while uploading videos through own web server has to suffer plenty of bandwidth problems. The powerful bandwidth rendered through these dedicated and shared video host servers allows hundreds and thousands of people to stream your video at once.
• From the viewer’s perspective, uploading a video creates so many problems for the future. Viewers suffer slow loading, unexpected pauses, and in some extreme cases “refusal to play” also.

Third-party video host servers are known to bring more views and subscriptions in-house. Also, it gives your video content a cross-channel presence. This will help your video to rank higher organically without spending even a penny on any of the SEO techniques. So like if you have posted your video on YouTube then it can be searched on other platforms also giving it global recognition. Thus, you can consider video hosting server open source.

If these reasons are not enough then there are still more. Embedding videos gives you the freedom to embed them in any video file format in which you might have originally shot. You need not convert the file format for different browsers that would be taken care of by your video host service provider.

The added SEO benefits without paying for the same is something that you won’t be able to ignore irrespective of how hard you try. Server load worries and file formats make uploading videos the last resort and embedding videos the priority.

The added SEO benefits without paying for the same is something that you won’t be able to ignore irrespective of how hard you try. Server load worries and file formats make uploading videos the last resort and embedding videos the priority.

But our main purpose behind elaborating the benefits of embedding videos over uploading them was to make the readers understand the advantages they will miss out if they opt for self-hosting for video streaming server.

Problems with Self-Hosting Video Streaming Site

Automation for Streaming:

The required level of automation will not be catered through a self-hosting video streaming server. Handling hundreds of users is not a competency that self-hosting can support. The dedicated video web server hosts have that infrastructure and embedded Content Delivery Network Implementation that has the capacity to serve users at peak times. While with self-hosting you will be going to regret when there will be maximum users on your page and the website will be on the edge to collapse.

Downloads and Piracies:

The factor of vulnerability automatically comes into the picture when you self-host the link of your video. People would anyways want the video to be downloaded for free and this makes a big room for plagiarism. Apart from this, the loss in the revenue is unmetered. Secured third party video hosting servers will protect your video content from any piracies and makes viewers enjoy unlimited live streaming.

Multiple Browsers, Multiple Codes:

Different browsers need a different set of video codec segments to support it. Although leading browser like Chrome supports almost all formats there are many others who don’t even support the major codecs. For example, Internet Explorer (The very next to Chrome in ranking) does not support H.264 and also not Ogg, etc.

While self-hosting, it will become very hectic to convert codecs for which you will be needing trans codes. This is not the end, different devices also require different trans codes. Desktops need a different set of encoding while iOS and Android will be needing a completely different set of the same.

Expenditure:

Self-hosting can lead to hefty expenditures. As everything would be handled in-house hence will require the expertise of every field. This will involve a large development team and infrastructure. The salaries of plenty of the developers and the time to launch a proper full-fledged video infrastructure will leave you tireless with leading you nowhere. The costs will not incur just once, any setup undergoes trials and errors and will be needing a proper support team as well. Ignorance at any part may lead to a reduction in the ranking of your website.

Going through this article will make you think twice or even thrice before opting for self-hosting for posting your videos. Video streaming servers is the next generation solution for empowering your business online. Hence, get ready to experience real-time video transmission from the server in a continuous state as smooth as a flowing river.