Which video streaming platform would you choose today?

Question

We have decided that it is time to ditch the ad-hoc method of deploying video on our web properties and pick one or more Video Platforms to handle this task for us. High level requirements are:

• Needs to have an easy to mount and embed player.
• Needs to make uploading and converting existing video.
• Needs to have strong analytics, preferably integrated with google analytics.
• Needs to be capable of "canned" video (ie -- video on demand) and live streams (ie -- live events).

Some other things that could tilt the balance:

• Mobile-friendly.
• Multiple-bitrate streaming.
• Flexible APIs.

Hosting this ourselves isn't an option--we just don't have the manpower to care/feed for it. Price is not a major object.

So, who would you pick?

Answer 1

I had some experience with Kaltura.com, and it was positive experience in general.

Not sure if they have 'multiple-bitrate' and 'live stuff' yet, but you can ask them to implement that.

Answer 2

In such case I would recommend Influxis, which provides flash media server. Adobe hosts live broadcasts etc using that.

Answer 3

Maybe it's just the programmer in me but I would suggest rolling your own system using the Sothink Video Encoder Engine and Flowplayer on the front end.

Flowplayer is probably the easiest Flash/jQuery player I've found. Easy to embed, Multi-bitrate, mobile friendly, a lot of plug-ins (including social media) and did I mention EASY?

Sothink has a very stable product for PHP. It will convert just about anything to FLV. It's not free, but if you're serious about it. That's what I'd use.

Hope that helps.

Answer 4

Sounds like YouTube :). Is it feasible to use them as a service? You could embed the videos easily on your site and they have the capabilities you mentioned.

Answer 5

Major sites like Youtube ,Vimeo uses the ffmpeg for video streaming, conversion and other stuffs.. ffmpeg is completely free and you can imagine it's strength by assuming that youtube completely runs on ffmpeg technology...

And as far as players, you can create your own and that's not a great deal if u have a designer and if u want to use that is pre-built then i would suggest to use flowplayer(has both free & commercial version) which has more plugins..

ffmpeg can be used across different development platforms , ffmpeg-php for php and java-ffmpeg for java is available..

Answer 6

I'd recommend Ooyala or BrightCove as a professional video platform for mid-to-large size businesses. Both have scalable pricing as demand increases (including support for mobile, API's and live-streaming). They're expensive (see pricing: Ooyala and BrightCove), but acceptable for mid-large businesses. Brightcove is used by big names such as Fox, DiscoveryChannel, etc. Ooyala is used by EA, Dell, etc.

Competitors to also consider: Kaltura, Delve, Viddler (no live), Wistia (no live).

Ps. personally I wanted to recommend Vimeo because I love their player's interface, but Vimeo Plus' 5gb/week limit means it's probably not suitable for businesses.

Answer 7

I would use a CDN Provider. It depend's on your customers region which to choose...

Just use google to find something like this: http://www.maxcdn.com/video.php

Answer 8

@john swaringen, or anyone else for that matter: So I don't drag my question into this post.. would you be open to taking a look at my question (link below) regarding video streaming?? We're open to hosted or in house solutions and have servers available if we are to roll our own... BUT, we have no experience with streaming, media servers, etc..

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4056982/software-and-or-hardware-solution-for-multi-camera-recording-and-streaming-setup

Thanks!!!