Website Video (On A Shoestring Budget)

Written by Peter Devereaux | Feb 1, 2008 6:00:00 AM

By David Glassman
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It's hard to imagine that just a few, short years ago advanced website video capabilities were primarily available to large, Global 2000 companies with the financial means and technical resources to implement. Services that formerly cost thousands of dollars can now cost as little as $100 a month - thanks to plummeting hosting and streaming costs due to new compression technologies, ubiquitous high-speed Internet access, readily available bandwidth and lower storage costs, to name a few.

As a result, website managers today can easily implement any number of new media strategies to their Web presence without breaking the bank, including video on demand, user-generated content, podcasts, auction video, audio and video testimonials, product showcases, flash demos and more. There are now sophisticated, easy-to-use Web-publishing tools providing clients of all sizes and industries with a secure, affordable Web-based system for storing, managing, publishing and delivering live and/or archived digital media over the Internet.

In fact, you no longer need a monster budget or even the technical expertise to easily:

Upload, manage and deliver audio and video assets
Organize rich media assets and directories in a familiar milieu
Edit audio and video asset metadata
Publish rich media assets to the Web
Retrieve publishing URLs or XML code for embedding assets into existing Web pages.

In addition, website operators and media managers of small, medium and large businesses can now access premier content delivery networks (CDNs) at a fraction of the cost from previous years without meeting onerous volume requirements.

Leveraging today's established CDNs provides the instant scale and distribution capabilities needed to overcome the delays and connection problems that often complicated internal and single data center solutions of years past.

Today, store and stream solutions are typically subscription-based, so there are no up-front capital expenditure costs, making it an ideal solution for small and medium-sized businesses as well as .org and .edu clients.

As for storing your rich media assets, there's no shortage of offerings that scale to multi-terabyte storage levels with full back-up protection. Content link information can be automatically generated for rapid set-up and integration, making website video content easily available to users on demand, anytime and anywhere.

Publishing rich media over the Internet has also never been easier. Off-the-shelf tools enable website publishers to:

1. Browse your hard drive for the file;
2. Upload (a publishing URL will be automatically generated); and
3. Paste the URL into your site page or Shockwave Media File, if using Flash.

It's that simple. Publishing staff require little training because store and stream solutions use a standard, intuitive file management interface. And, most solutions support the delivery of practically any type of rich media file.

For example, store and stream solutions enable:

Publishing of non-streaming media file types which can be delivered via geo-optimized file delivery methodologies. This is an ideal approach when distributing a file to large numbers or recipients and/or geographically distributed audiences simultaneously.
File streaming services for on-demand access to rich media content. This ensures that Flash video will play quickly and smoothly to audiences across most modern computer operating systems.
Playback through popular streaming formats such as Windows Media, Real MP4, QuickTime and Adobe Flash. Now is the time to jump on the new media bandwagon and explore what you can do with video by adding low cost, rich media alternatives to your website and marketing mix.

About the Author: David Glassman is Chief Marketing Officer of Onstream Media Corporation (Nasdaq: ONSM), a leading online service provider of website video solutions and digital media services. For more information, visit Onstream Media at www.onstreammedia.com or contact David at dglassman@onstreammedia.com or 954-917-6655.

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