Do videos consume more web bandwidth?

Layn

Member
Greetings everyone,

I have heard that Google loves Videos and we are currently shooting a video for our website. Do videos consume more web bandwidth?

Will they reduce our website loading speed?

I have 2 options to play with videos on my website.
- Post to Youtube and sharing them on my site.
- Post directly on my site.

What is your way and suggestions?
 

elcidofaguy

Active Member
For sure videos consume bandwidth... the more people watching it the more burden it has on your server should you host the video yourself...
Personally I would host the video on Youtube and then embed it on my website. The advantages are:
1) More exposure as people on Youtube may see it as well as on your website.
2) Less bandwidth burden on your website as Youtube will stream the video to user.
3) No need for additional software i.e. video player which is needed when it is self hosted.

That said Youtube does have some disadvantages:
1) You cannot place high quality resolution videos as when you upload it youtube will downsize it automatically. For most its acceptable.
2) You cannot stop people copying your video as its easy to do so when its on youtube. If you want high quality, secure video then I recommend Amazon S3.

Hope that helps!
 

PTTed

Active Member
Yes do what @elcidofaguy suggested. Host your videos on Youtube.com. That way your visitors get that bandwidth from YouTube instead of your site.

I almost always host them on YouTube unless there is a special circumstance. It works very well.
 

The Dark Wizard

New Member
2) You cannot stop people copying your video as its easy to do so when its on youtube. If you want high quality, secure video then I recommend Amazon S3.
How to secure/protect my videos with Amazon S3?

For my video on YT, i couldn't protect it from copying or re upload. what is the best solution for this?
 

hmb-robert

New Member
I will suggest you to place your videos on youtube and then use them in your site. It will save your bandwidth also not increase load on your server.
 

Dean

Well-Known Member
Anything that is graphical like videos and images are going to use more bandwidth as well as slow the load time of the website. They won't always slow the website load times drastically but they will have some impact on the load time. The higher definition the video or image then the more bandwidth it's going to use up.

Uploading the videos to Youtube and embedding them on your site is the best choice for lowering bandwidth if that's a concern.

Cheers, Dean.
 

ulterios

Well-Known Member
Videos are usually always high in file size, so having them served to your visitors is of course going to use more bandwidth that just text, optimized or lower file size images and so on would.

Embedding them is the better choice to lower your bandwidth usage as some others have stated above. ;)
 

Traveler

Active Member
Videos do take more bandwidth because they are bigger file sizes than regular images. That's why if you stream something from online it will use a lot of your data up.
 
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