Hosting your own videos is a Very. Bad. Idea. Sure, you can upload them to your own site and/or media library. That doesn’t mean you can control how they are used–or that this provides your end users with the best service. Here are some reasons why you should consider uploading your video to a streaming service like YouTube or Vimeo, and simply linking to it (or embedding the videos) within your own site. And here’s a link to an excellent article on the subject, if you’d like to read more.
- Video files are typically very large, some well into the GB range. By definition, this is NOT friendly to mobile devices, which represent an ever-growing share of users. Streaming services generate low-res versions that will load quickly and easily on mobile devices. They make viewing significantly faster on larger devices as well, with optimization, buffering, and so forth.
- Hate scrolling? So does everyone else. Streaming services have built-in smart styling that makes your video look good on any size screen as well as loading fast!
- Videos come in multiple formats: Android devices record in .mp4 by default, but iPhones default to .mov. Older files may be .wmv, .avi, .mpeg, .swf, etc. Not all browsers cope well with those. The good news is that the major streaming services take them all, and give back a standard, universally workable file format.
- Better access control: Want your video to be password-protected? Want to prevent it from being embedded in other sites? Want it to be downloadable (or not)? While those constraints may be possible if you’re hosting the videos directly, they’re really tricky to implement, even for experienced developers. Streaming services have good, easy-to-use options for video privacy settings.
- Promote your brand: If you plan to provide video content on a regular basis, or you want someone who watches one video to see others you’ve produced, you need a streaming channel. This gives users the opportunity to browse more than the single video on that one page of your site that they visited. Both YouTube and Vimeo provide a free level of service that’s sufficient for most situations.
- Your host will thank you–uploading and downloading large files consumes inordinate amounts of bandwidth. Nuff said.
YouTube versus Vimeo. These are two of the big players in streaming services. And each one has its advantages. But before you make a choice, ask yourself this important question:
Do I want users to be able to download my videos?
If the answer is YES, then your best option is Vimeo. As of this writing, YouTube is not designed to allow users to save/download videos that they view, i.e. for projection. Vimeo, on the other hand, allows users to download at a variety of resolutions, recognizing that your needs are different if you just want to watch something on your cell phone, or if you want to show it via an LCD projector in a church service.
One other factor in Vimeo’s favor is that its ecosystem is not quite so polluted with junk and disinformation as is YouTube’s. Someone browsing your Vimeo channel is a lot less likely to see ads for “adult” or other questionable material.
