See also
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Video hosting .
An online video platform (OVP) [1] enables users to upload, convert, store, and play back video content on the Internet, often via a private server structured, large-scale system that may generate revenue. Users will generally upload video content via the hosting service's website, mobile or desktop application, or other interfaces (API), and typically provides embed codes or links that allow others to view the video content.
Online video platforms can use a software as a service (SaaS) business model, a do it yourself (DIY) model or user-generated content (UGC) model. The OVP comes with an end-to-end tool set to upload, encode, manage, playback, style, deliver, distribute, download, publish and measure quality of service or audience engagement quality of experience of online video content for both video on demand (VOD) and live delivery. This is usually manifested as a User Interface with log-in credentials. OVPs also include providing a custom video player or a third-party video player that can be embedded in a website. Modern online video platforms are often coupled up with embedded online video analytics providing video publishers with detailed insights into video performance: the total number of video views, impressions, and unique views; video watch time, stats on user location, visits, and behavior on the site. Video heat maps show how user engagement rate changes through the viewing process in order to measure audience interaction and to create compelling video content. OVPs are related to the over-the-top content video industry, although there are many OVP providers that are also present in broadcast markets, serving video on demand set-top boxes.
OVP product models vary in scale and feature-set, ranging from ready-made web sites that individuals can use, to white label models that can be customized by enterprise clients or media/content aggregators and integrated with their traditional broadcast workflows. The former example is YouTube. The latter example is predominantly found in FTA (Free-To-Air) or pay-TV broadcasters who seek to provide an over-the-top media service (OTT) that extends the availability of their content on desktops or multiple mobility devices.
In general, the graphical user interface accessed by users of the OVP is sold as a service. Revenue is derived from monthly subscriptions based on the number of users it is licensed to and the complexity of the workflow. Some workflows require encryption of content with DRM and this increases the cost of using the service. Videos may be transcoded from their original source format or resolution to a mezzanine format (suitable for management and mass-delivery), either on-site or using cloud computing. The latter would be where platform as a service, is provided as an additional cost.
It is feasible, but rare, for large broadcasters to develop their own proprietary OVP. However, this can require complex development and maintenance costs and diverts attention to 'building' as opposed to distributing/curating content.
OVPs often cooperate with specialized third-party service providers, using what they call an application programming interface (API). These include cloud transcoders, recommendation engines, search engines, metadata libraries and analytics providers.
The vast majority of OVPs use industry-standard HTTP streaming or HTTP progressive download protocols. With HTTP streaming, the de facto standard is to use adaptive streaming where multiple files of a video are created at different bit rates, but only one of these is sent to the end-user during playback, depending on available bandwidth or device CPU constraints. This can be switched dynamically and near-seamlessly at any time during the video viewing. The main protocols for adaptive HTTP streaming include Smooth Streaming (by Microsoft), HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) (by Apple) and Flash Video (by Adobe). Flash is still in use but is declining due to the popularity of HLS and Smooth Stream in mobile devices and desktops, respectively.[ citation needed ] Each is a proprietary protocol in its own right and due to this fragmentation, there have been efforts to create one standardized protocol known as MPEG-DASH.
In the 2010s, with the increasing prevalence of technology and the Internet in everyday life, video hosting services serve as a portal to different forms of entertainment (comedy, shows, games, or music), news, documentaries and educational videos. Content may be either both user-generated, amateur clips or commercial products. The entertainment industry uses this medium to release music and videos, movies and television shows directly to the public. Since many users do not have unlimited web space, either as a paid service, or through an ISP offering, video hosting services are becoming increasingly popular, especially with the explosion in popularity of blogs, internet forums and other interactive pages. The mass market for camera phones and smartphones has increased the supply of user-generated video. Traditional methods of personal video distribution, such as making a DVD to show to friends at home, are unsuited to the low resolution and high volume of camera phone clips. In contrast, current broadband Internet connections are well suited to serving the quality of video shot on mobile phones. Most people do not own web servers, and this has created demand for user-generated video content hosting. [4] [5]
On some websites, users share entire films by breaking them up into segments that are about the size of the video length limit imposed by the site (e.g., 15-minutes). An emerging practice is for users to obfuscate the titles of feature-length films that they share by providing a title that is recognizable by humans but will not match on standard search engines. It is not even in all cases obvious to the user if a provided video is a copyright infringement.[ citation needed ]
A more recent application of the video hosting services is in the mobile web 2.0 arena, where video and other mobile content can be delivered to, and easily accessed by mobile devices. While some video-hosting services like DaCast and Ustream have developed means by which video can be watched on mobile devices, mobile-oriented web-based frontends for video hosting services that possess equal access and capability to desktop-oriented web services have yet to be developed. A mobile live streaming software called Qik allows the users to upload videos from their cell phones to the internet. The videos will then be stored online and can be shared to various social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Videos will be stored on the servers and can be watched from both the mobile devices and the website.
Practical online video hosting and video streaming was made possible by advances in video compression, due to the impractically high bandwidth requirements of uncompressed video. Raw uncompressed digital video has a bit rate of 168 Mbit/s for SD video, and over 1 Gbit/s for full HD video. [6] The most important data compression algorithm that enabled practical video hosting and streaming is the discrete cosine transform (DCT), a lossy compression technique first proposed by Nasir Ahmed, T. Natarajan and K. R. Rao in 1973. [7] The DCT algorithm is the basis for the first practical video coding format, H.261, in 1988. [8] It was followed by more popular DCT-based video coding formats, most notably the MPEG and H.26x video standards from 1991 onwards. [9] The modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT) is also the basis for the MP3 audio compression format introduced in 1994, [10] and later the Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) format in 1999. [11]
The first Internet video hosting site was ShareYourWorld.com. and Second site Ifilm [12] Founded in 1997, it allowed users to upload clips or full videos in different file formats. However, Internet access bandwidth and video transcoding technology at the time were limited, so the site did not support video streaming like YouTube later did. ShareYourWorld was founded by Chase Norlin, and it ran until 2001, when it closed due to budget and bandwidth problems.[ citation needed ]
Founded in October 2004, Pandora TV from South Korea is the first video sharing website in the world to attach advertisements to user-submitted video clips and to provide unlimited storage space for users to upload their own clips. The company has developed an auto-advertisements system that automatically inserts advertising to the clips posted to the website. It was founded in the Gangnam District of Seoul. [13] [14]
YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim and Steve Chen in 2005. It was based on video transcoding technology, which enabled the video streaming of user-generated content from anywhere on the World Wide Web. This was made possible by implementing a Flash player based on MPEG-4 AVC video with AAC audio. This allowed any video coding format to be uploaded, and then transcoded into Flash-compatible AVC video that can be directly streamed from anywhere on the Web. The first YouTube video clip was Me at the zoo , uploaded by Karim in April 2005. [15]
YouTube subsequently became the most popular online video platform, and changed the way videos were hosted on the Web. [12] The success of YouTube led to a number of similar online video streaming platforms, from companies such as Netflix, Hulu and Crunchyroll.
Within these video streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube, there are privacy concerns about how the websites use consumers' personal information and online behaviors to advertise and track spending. Many video streaming websites record semi-private consumer information such as video streaming data, purchase frequency, genre of videos watched, etc. [13]
A playlist is a list of video or audio files that can be played back on a media player, either sequentially or in a shuffled order. In its most general form, an audio playlist is simply a list of songs that can be played once or in a loop. The term has several specialized meanings in the realms of television broadcasting, radio broadcasting and personal computers.
Transcoding is the direct digital-to-digital conversion of one encoding to another, such as for video data files, audio files, or character encoding. This is usually done in cases where a target device does not support the format or has limited storage capacity that mandates a reduced file size, or to convert incompatible or obsolete data to a better-supported or modern format.
Streaming television is the digital distribution of television content, such as television shows and films, as streaming media delivered over the Internet. Streaming television stands in contrast to dedicated terrestrial television delivered by over-the-air aerial systems, cable television, and/or satellite television systems.
Google Video was a free video hosting service, originally launched by Google on January 25, 2005.
The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of current, notable video hosting services. Please see the individual products' articles for further information.
Blackbird is an integrated internet video platform, video editing software, covering non-linear editing and publishing for broadcast, web and mobile.
Internet video is digital video that is distributed over the internet. Internet video exists in several formats, the most notable being MPEG-4i AVC, AVCHD, FLV, and MP4.
Twango was an online media sharing site that supported multiple file types such as photos, video, audio, and documents. Founded in 2004 by Jim Laurel, Philip Carmichael, Randy Kerr, Serena Glover and Michael Laurel in Redmond, Washington, it provided users a means of repurposing their media, including sharing, editing, organizing and categorizing. In addition, Twango saved all the original media and its metadata. Non-members were free to browse the site, however only members could upload media to the site. Sign up for a basic account was free, and provided 250 megabytes of upload bandwidth a month.
Orb was a freeware streaming software that enabled users to remotely access all their personal digital media files including pictures, music, videos and television. It could be used from any Internet-enabled device, including laptops, pocket PC, smartphones, PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii video game consoles.
Babelgum was a free-to-view Internet television platform supported by advertising. The project was set up in 2005 by Italian media and telecommunications entrepreneur Silvio Scaglia and scientist Erik Lumer, with the aim of developing interactive software for distributing TV shows and other forms of video over the Internet.
Tudou, Inc. is a Chinese video-sharing website headquartered in Shanghai, China, where users can upload, view and share video clips. Tudou went live on April 15, 2005 and by September 2007 served over 55 million videos each day.
Sevenload was a German-based video-sharing website on which users can upload, share and view videos. Since its founding in April 2006, the platform emerged on international markets to become a Social Media Network for photos, videos and web TV content. sevenload shows licensed content channels and allows users to upload their video and photo contents onto the site and then tag them, put them in albums and share them with other users, and is considered by some to be a counterpart to hulu in the US. Premium content and user generated videos at sevenload.com create an entertainment portal of editorial and professional web TV shows online. Selected content of sevenload's entire program airs on next generation TVs, set-top-box technology and games consoles with partners such as Sony, Philips Net TV, T-Home Entertain, Medion and Nintendo Wii. sevenload is currently available in twelve languages and offers localized country portals in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Poland, Russia, Turkey, UK, USA, Netherlands, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, Japan, Indonesia, South Korea, India, China, Colombia and Mexico.
Clesh is a cloud-based video editing platform designed for the consumers, prosumers, and online communities to integrate user-generated content. The core technology is based on FORscene which is geared towards professionals working for example in broadcasting, news media, post production.
A video portal is a website offering user created or professionally created video content. Furthermore, it is video content management system, providing further access to a variety of visual sources with an interaction for users to upload, make, create, and make modifications to videos. Content creators, who have the ability to maintain, upload, organize and edit clips and reels, acquiesce spectators and nonparticipants to view those through a Netflix-type UI. That can be furthermore used by organizations, who used those to train their own employees, go Dutch in important announcements, or divide out recorded meetings. Video portal use cases are the knowledge sharing platform, product video catalogs, editorial hub for marketing team, further collaboration amongst unique departments, and video archives. Types of it include, external and internal video portals. VIDIZMO is one of the biggest examples of video portals easily set up. In recent years, such as 2023, Artificial Intelligence (AI) have the huge potential to construct savings and increase in revenue, as well as offering powerful search. To this day, it is absolutely an growing rapidly as an enterprise content type
A music streaming service is a type of streaming media service that focuses primarily on music, and sometimes other forms of digital audio content such as podcasts. These services are usually subscription-based services allowing users to stream digital copyright restricted songs on-demand from a centralized library provided by the service. Some services may offer free tiers with limitations, such as advertising and limits on use. They typically incorporate a recommender system to help users discover other songs they may enjoy based on their listening history and other factors, as well as the ability to create and share public playlists with other users.
Pandora TV (판도라TV) was a video sharing website that hosted user-generated content. Founded in October 2004, Pandora TV is the first video sharing website in the world to attach advertisement to user-submitted video clips and to provide unlimited storage space for users to upload. The operating company, Pandora TV Co., Ltd., has its headquarters in the Seoul-Gangnam Building in Yeoksam-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul.
Kamcord was a social media platform where users post and interact through video content from their mobile devices. Kamcord has pioneered a new content format called "shots," short videos or stills of a user's phone screen annotated with facecam, voice commentary, text, highlighting/drawing, animations, and other tools.
Dacast Inc. is a French live streaming online video platform that allows businesses to broadcast and host live and on-demand video content as well as offer free or paid programming.