How To Stream Amazon S3 Video On Your Website

Posted by James in Affiliate, How To, Traffic, Video

I needed a replacement Video provider

Since Google Video stopped allowing uploads I needed to find a better way to get externally hosted videos onto my site.

Many people use Amazon S3

Amazon S3 is a natural choice because it is super robust and very cheap. The only downside is that it is not very easy to make players. Storage and strength is the main benefit. You can be pretty sure Amazon will be around for a while. They also have a cloud hosted solution you can extend to so you get reasonably fast streaming times and it serves from multiple locations.

I did some research

I decided to research my options and thought it was worth sharing my results. Here is a summary of what I was trying to achieve.

Google Video was great because it quite good quality and it did NOT display advertising. The other benefit was the externally hosted bandwidth was free.

What I needed

I wanted low cost, high quality, ad free and easy to use.

I contacted Brightcove. They are expensive and unpopular according to the blog comments. One day they pulled free content from users and the entry point is $2000. You cannot use it as a storage place because you can upload but not download. I did not like the vibe from them.

My own server?

I use my own spare dedicated server for streaming but when I do that I need to install both the javascript and a local file to call the external server. This was a little complicated. It does not offer the benefit of cloud serving either.

StreamCast

This service did not seem as flexible as Amazon S3. S3 can be used to store backups of files as well as just video media. I wanted more than just video hosting.

Veeple

This looks similar to EZS3 but has the option of clickable links. It will cost a little more if you get a lot of views. I liked the look if this one but I did not need clickable links.

Mozzo

This is another cloud CDN. Content distribution network. It seems similar to S3. No easy player option that I could find. You can play the media directly on the URL however sometimes it is easier to hide that URL using an add-on player.

Fliqz

You need to spend a little more per month to get the unbranded player and these guys say they are a direct competitor to brightcove. I found the homepage a little confusing. It is a little over the the top for direct sales promos rather than explaining what the service is. I never got past that.

Youtube

No good. They have poor quality video streaming and they play ads unless you modify the player. I wanted something far more controlled and plain. I use Youtube for offsite videos but not onsite. I would use Vimeo or Viddler before Youtube if I wanted a free solution.

Viddler
I like Viddler because it has clean players. You can make a nice skin, there are no ads and you get basic analytics. The player allows you to have a graphic banner with clickable link on it to your own URL. (Youtube only allow this to another Youtube video). Also you can pay for hosted solutions from them. I decided to use Viddler for my public videos to embed on public blogs since it is like having a private player.

Using Amazon the cheap (but slower way)
Firefox users can have a handy FTP add-on called S3Fox to load files fast to Amazon. I use this as well for ease of loading and getting direct URL’s for download zip files etc… To make a player for your video file for free you head over to JW player and create your player.

The paid solution I chose for my sales pages and private memberships

The end solution has a number of benefits. It is EzS3video. It works like an ftp combined with a player creation tool. You can control access for specific URL’s only and make players that will allow full screen mode. This is the best paid solution I have found to combine the upload and player controls together.

How it works

You load your files up via the interface directly to the Amazon S3 account (YOUR account) and you then make the player. You can select a re-direct URL on end of play…. Very powerful and customizable. EZS3 supports different file types.The player output is just one javascript snippet you place on your page where you want the media to display. You can make players in any size and with different skins. The javacsript helps obscure the URL of the resource file.

You pay a flat $20 monthly fee for the service and then you pay Amazon S3 for the use of the server bandwidth.

Downside?

The downside is if EZS3 go out of business you will lose your players. The protection is that your files are all still on the Amazon S3 site and you can make a new player later. You always retain your source files.

The other benefits

You can use this service for FLV, MPEG4, MOV, SWF, JPG, GIF, Camtasia Codec, WMV, AVI, PDF, MP3 and it has other widgets as well. The service also supports cloudfront.net streaming (cloud serving) so that you get fast streaming in your local area. You select this option at Amazon and then tick the box in EZS3. Other features of the player are controls for auto play or not. Center or left / right align and the use of watermarks. You can also see the view rates for your video by graph. This is handy if you want to see how popular your videos are or use it for split testing.

Summary

For secure, fast, high quality brandable videos that are easy to load and stream use Amazon S3 combined with EZS3 video and you have a great low cost robust solution.

Start a $1 Trial of EZSvideo

...if you liked that you might want to check these out:

Tags: amazon s3, amazons3.com, aws, best streaming video service, dedicated server, ezs3, how to make a player for s3, how to put video on my website, make amazon s3 player, mosso, s3 streaming video, stream video, streaming video, veeple, video for websites

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26 Comments

Donna-Marie

12. Apr, 2009

Great resource James – thanks. I was going to compare S3 with other options and had it on my list for tomorrow. You’ve just saved me a couple of hours… at least.

James

12. Apr, 2009

Cool!

I was a complete novice the other day and now I have streaming set up the way I want.

My forum has a lot of videos in it and all my sales pages have video on them (or coming).

This was the easiest way for me to get what I needed.

Andy

12. Apr, 2009

I always enjoy learning what other people think about Amazon Web Services and how they use them. I hope the readers of this blog will want to check out CloudBerry Explorer that helps to manage S3 on Windows . It is a freeware. http://cloudberrylab.com/

James

12. Apr, 2009

Thanks Andy,

Another S3 manager is the Firefox addon:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3247

Shelby

14. Apr, 2009

S3 is a great tool, I don’t think you need EZS3 though, there’s a multitude of free players out there that allow you to put videos on your site pretty easily.

James

14. Apr, 2009

Shelby I looked at free players but many of them require coding and mucking about.

How do they go for security and allowing for full screen mode etc…?

Do you have any recommendations?

(Often I have found that free is very expensive in the longrun. The last thing I want to be doing is mucking around with code).

Shelby

14. Apr, 2009

I just used JW FLV player

http://www.longtailvideo.com/players/jw-flv-player/

I think it’s free for non-commercial items, for a commercial licence it’s not that much though.

Basically you just upload your file to S3 change permissions so people can watch it – all done with your ftp client.

Next Upload JW FLV files to your server – you only do this once.

Then you can customize your player here – http://www.longtailvideo.com/support/jw-player-setup-wizard

Note – Make sure to include a link to your file in S3 and that the video player links are the correct file locations on your site – you may want to direct link to them.

Finally you paste the code in your site that the above link generates.

Not too much hassle and basically free. It also seems to take about as much time as the above service.

James

14. Apr, 2009

I think ezs3 is considerably faster and easier!

Upload,

Create player

One java script code paste to site.

(any site or blog)

Shelby

15. Apr, 2009

Same thing, but in all fairness I haven’t tried EZS3.

1. Upload file – Same as FTP
2. Create Code – Almost the same thing minus the cool visual interface
3. Paste Code – same thing

Of course the first comment is how to setup everything so it sounds longer, but admittedly if you were doing hundreds of these a month it would make more sense to have a program to manage them.

IMHO

James

15. Apr, 2009

True – I am uploading to hundreds of different sites and using multiple formats – MPG4, flv, swf, avi, pdf, MP3 so the easy to use player interface is a MUST

Steve Ovens

19. Apr, 2009

Hey James,

Thanks for the recommendation – I found EZS3 to be very easy to use and can see how it could become addictive. Got my first video up and running very easily. Ties in nicely with the page creator tools too!

Gotta go find some offline clients to fund my addictions now…

Steve

Steve Ovens

19. Apr, 2009

Doh! I put the wrong site URL in to show off my wonderful video skills.

Reckon Russell Crowe’s got anything to worry about?

Steve

James

19. Apr, 2009

“Reckon Russell Crowe’s got anything to worry about?”

…having met him and done business with him I am sure he has plenty to worry about…. in contrast, you are nothing like him so you have nothing to worry about. For example you can play decent music……. (G’Day Russ )

Gail

20. Apr, 2009

What is your opinion of viddler.com? It’s free with no ads.
Cheers,
Gail

James

20. Apr, 2009

Viddler looks pretty good. If I wanted free hosting with no ads then that looks like the best way to go.

I want control of my content now in case they change later.
(for example brightcove told people to remove the free stuff with short notice).

Gail

20. Apr, 2009

OK. I see where you’re coming from. Thanks James!
Gail

VoIP Phone

30. Apr, 2009

Very nice information. I have been looking for a video hosting service so this article is extremely helpful to me. I’ll give it a go!

peter

15. May, 2009

Thanx James, Just the info I was looking for. Direct and simple. Keep it up.

George Fourie

21. May, 2009

Thanks James, read this post a few times while comparing options. I completely missed the EZs3 part until I watched the movie. Signing up right now… CHeers!

James

21. May, 2009

Thanks George!

It is an excellent service.

eZs3

27. Jun, 2009

Hey James

Thanks for the write-up

We have been busy re-investing and developing our services… setting up the Cloudfront for all our users and making it easy to roll-out for their accounts and players, upgrading and expanding on our servers etc

These were all key improvements to allow us to roll-out the Premium Video Marketing services that we’ve been working on behind the scenes

The first one is codenamed: underlay

It’s what happens when the video finishes.. instead of seeing a blank video frame.. you can now show something else….

It allows you to automatically re-direct the video (think affiliate marketing – do a video review and then re-direct to the site, cart item, eBay auction or whatever)

It also allows you to put a script there (think Landing Pages / Squeeze Pages and Opt-in Forms… the video finishes.. and the form to join your list appears! )

—–

I have more in the pipeline….

(Let me know if you would like to beta test the underlay)

TomC

James

27. Jun, 2009

Tom I would definitely be ready to use that service. I’m loving your product since I use it almost every day now for my private membership site!

John

01. Aug, 2009

Can IP address of server be used instead of url to limit where the file is viewable from?

The embeded call references the file by a number – file name would be better.

David Duffield

04. Aug, 2009

Excellent review and how-to video thanks James. As a non-techie it made setting all of it up very straight-forward, which was a relief as the Amazon side of things seems to be tailored towards fully fledged geeks.

Shaun