Embed video on a asp.net-mvc website

Question

I will be embedding a video to my asp.net mvc website. A video on the homepage which will help people to better understand the website. I have never done this. Can anyone tell me whats the best way of doing it. Flash or silverlight??

Answer 1

My suggestion would be to go with Flash and to achieve what you're looking for, utilize swfobject. It's really quite simple to use and has a bunch of options that will be useful when you get more used to using video.

Answer 2

I have had pretty good success using silverlight with the Silverlight 2 Video Player as an example. However, it depends on what your requirements are.

Pros to Silverlight:

• Performs Video Streaming very well
• Easier to develop/customize if you are a .NET developer
• Works on a variety of browser and platforms

Cons to Silverlight:

• Does not support every video media type (the example above only plays .WMV files, Silverlight in general supports .WMV and .MP4)
• Is not installed on as many client machines (less penetration)
• Is not as well known (users may be reluctant to install it compared to Flash)
• Is not as popular so there are less solutions/resources out there

Here is another discussion on the topic.

Answer 3

I've used JW FLV Media Player. I was pretty happy with it, and it's easy to use. Flash-based.

http://www.longtailvideo.com/

Answer 4

I would go with flash for only one reason: the 99% (or whatever it is today) installed base.

Then go with swfobject or JW FLV Media Player as suggested in the other answers. There is also a jQuery plugin floating around somewhere that helps deal with flash video on a site.