Forum Moderators: open
At our company, we use Brightcove's free service, because we're a smaller company and simply don't have any use for their paid subscriptions. I know there are a lot of angry people out there. I understand that Brightcove needs to make decisions that ensure the future of their company, but they certainly dropped this bombshell on everyone by surprise.
I would like to use this thread to post some alternatives to Brightcove. Here are some of the criteria:
1. Videos must not show up publicly on the company's main site (such as what Youtube does).
2. Players should support advertisements (either served by the company, the subscriber, or both).
3. Service may charge a nominal fee, no more than $100/month.
4. A choice of more than one player is preferable, but not crucial.
5. Unlimited (or close to) storage and bandwidth.
Tough cookie, eh? Well, I know there are some out there, and I bet there will be tons of other services popping up, that will want to fill in the gap left behind by Brightcove's bold move to outprice and effectively cut off their smaller clients.
Thoughts? :)
[edited by: travelin_cat at 3:18 pm (utc) on Nov. 28, 2008]
[edit reason] removed link to commercial product [/edit]
You can moderate who is able to view the video, customize your player and choose where it is located on your site. You can also upload pictures and audio files or stream live.
In addition, you can take advantage of their viral sharing and social distribution features, run a contest, allow and control user-gen uploads or embed videos and players on other websites, blogs and social networks and allow your viewers do the same.
Various monetization options like pre- and post-roll ads, banner advertisement, subscriptions and more are also available.
[edited by: travelin_cat at 10:50 pm (utc) on Dec. 12, 2008]
[edit reason] removed link and phone number per TOS [/edit]
Anyhow, if anyone was/is in the same boat, we switched to KickApps. It's not quite as user-friendly, but once you wrap your head around it, it can be very powerful.
[webmasterworld.com...]
You can use encoding software like Handbrake to encode your video to MP4/H.264, then upload it to your web host and use a free player like JW Player (http://www.longtailvideo.com/) or Flowplayer (http://flowplayer.org/) to embed it on your site.
