How much storage space do I need for my demo video clips? I'm thinking about having 3-4 clips including examples of a photo montage, getting ready clip, ceremony and reception highlights. Also what kind of bandwidth can I get away with? I'm very new to building/launching websites so any insight into this would be greatly appreciated! Thank You!

Video clips: what dimensions? What quality? What length? What compression?

Bandwidth: how high traffic do you anticipate?

Actually, depending upon your host, you should be able to buy like 500mb / 1gb/mo. transfer for your business and then ramp up or ramp down if you need. All it should cost you is a month of monitoring your true needs before you decide to go up or down a package. A good host will allow you to do that. A good host will also give you plenty of warning if you are going over the traffic package and not shut you down if you go over.

Website space is cheap these days. I have a 30gb server with unlimited bandwith for $250 a month. I host 10 websites and charge them all $100 to $50 a month. Not a bad deal if you ask me :)

I have about 4 gig on my site. I have client videos hosted for 30 days so out of town guest can watch their videos.

If I am not mistaken, I think I have about 450 mbs of demos on the site. It's a about 30 minutes of 1.5mb streaming wmv files.

I will check to see how much bandwith I used for the month. I get unlimited, so I don't check often.

Jon

The amount of storage needed depends entirely on how you compress the video for what groups of users (e.g. for dial-up, DSL, T1 connections).

Keep in mind that your viedo files don't need to be on the same server as your Web site. You can sometimes do better in terms of total cost by having the media hosted on a service like www.playstream.com and putting your HTML content on a cheap host like www.fatcow.com.

Depends on your situation. The nice thing about the streaming service providers is that they can help sort out problems and they have servers optimized for media streaming.

Playstream quotes a price of about $43 a month to host 30 minutes of video aimed at dial-up to high bandwidth users. That's 516/year. Add Fat Cow and that's $616 -- better than $3,000 a year and you don't have to go into the Web hosting business.

Am I missing something here? Why are so many of you paying so much for web hosting?

I use a company named Powweb and it’s only $7.77 a month (annually) for 2 Gigs of storage and 5 Gigs a DAY of transfer. They have a lot of whistles and bells I don’t even use.

I have been with them for about two years now, and they have been great.

Yeah--I have to agree with Todd: I'm using Yahoo for hosting, and for $12/mo I get 25gig transfer/mo and either 2 or 4 gig of storage (doesn't matter because i'll never use it all). Even with 50 unique hits/day (including my vid-samples), I still wouldn't use all my transfer. (and 50 hits/day would be miraculous for the market I'm in)

Am I (too) missing something? Is there something about Yahoo or other less expensive hosts that I don't know?

I could be wrong, but I'm going to say it anyway: I think you guys over-answered Brian's question.

My advice is "go with Yahoo." It's cheap and easy. That Powweb looks good too, though, so check that out as well.

Fat cow is only $9.99/month.

Todd,

I've heard of Powweb before. However, if you post a clip, doesn't the person's PC have to download the clip in order for them to watch it? Or does Powweb have video players that will pop up with quasi-streaming?

Thanks!

<<<-- Originally posted by Dave Wagner : Todd,

I've heard of Powweb before. However, if you post a clip, doesn't the person's PC have to download the clip in order for them to watch it? Or does Powweb have video players that will pop up with quasi-streaming?

Thanks! -->>>

The way I understand it true steaming is a rare bird. I simply link to a file and it works pretty well. WMV files will buffer in IE but not in Netscape without a plug in. QuickTime files have to load completely into cache before they will play in IE but will buffer in Netscape.

As far as I know, this is pretty common. I do not pretend to know too much about it, I just know that it seems to be working well for me. What I mean by that is when I click on a link the video plays within a few seconds...as it buffers into cache.

I don't want to violate any etiquette here, but if anyone decides to use them, I can get paid a referral bonus if you use my link. I don’t tell people about them for the fee, I really am happy. If anyone wants to use the link, email me, or you can just sign up on their home page.