MP4 hosting and playing

[DemOnstar]

Greetings..

If I want to host a video on the site and allow users to play it back at any time, which is the best way to do this?
Do I use the on board film icon in the editor and store the file on the server in a folder?
Or does anyone know a better method?

Thanks all....

[ForceHSS]

Unless you have a very good unlimited host would be best to pull videos from youtube

[Max Taxable]

MP4s are massive files, this is why YouTube uses .FLV.

[Jain Farstrider]

I just use PHPmotion (http://phpmotion.com/). The software is open source, so it is free for you to download and use! It also has music hosting tab as well.

You can embed YouTube into PHPmotion via powertools (http://phpmotion.com/content/view/39/183/).

It can also be integrated into your vBulletin database if you wish to do that.

If you really want to host, I would recommend Future Hosting (http://www.futurehosting.com/) as I had nothing but great experience with them and their dedicated server pricing is very competitive.

[DemOnstar]

Splendid responses.. Thanks..

I am only looking at hosting one video at the moment, it is 30 minutes long and meant to be a pilot show..
I don't intend to over burden the site with more than six of these videos. I want to use it as a private showcase..
Hence the question..

I guess I should look at the options recommended above..

Thanks....

[RichieBoy67]

Vimeo also works well. I tried this a few weeks ago but it was slowing down my site too much so I stopped. I had a few videos Youtube was giving me problems with and wanted to host them on my dedicated server just for VIP members but it was just way too much strain.

I also tried to use amazon aws but this did not work well for me with vimeo.

[DemOnstar]

Bit messy for me too..

I am currently living in China and neither youtube nor vimeo works from here..
Proper bad censorship system they have in this country..