(How to Host Video On A Website) Amazon S3, Cloudfront & S3 Fox

[wizsoft]

Very clear thanks!

[TheInfoExpert]

Wow, thanks for the clear explanation! Another quick question:

1. Do you use Wordpress? If so, so you need a player now, or can you just drop the video into the html?

2. How big is too big for video files? Should I reduce size, some of them are large - 200mb plus

3. What format do you put videos in? Is flash the best/most accepted?

Thank you thank you

Scott

[KevinMcKillop]

@TheInfoExpert

1. Yes I use WordPress. You'll need a 'player' of some kind in order to display the videos. There are plenty of options, some paid, some free.

2. Size is relative, depends on how long it is and how high of quality you want. 200MB is large, but if you have a 45-60 minute video, it's not that big at all.

3. The best solution is to save your videos in a MP4 format, with H.264 encoding (typical MP4 setting in most software)

[DrummerEtc]

Quick question...I go to my bucket, which contains folders. Each folder has a PDF and a video...is there anyway I can allow the folder to be downloaded instead of having to go inside the folder and create two separate download URL's? It's telling me it's "undefined" when I try to do it. Any help is appreciated!

[KevinMcKillop]

@DrummerEtc Unfortunately it's on a file by file basis, you can't 'download' a folder.

[DrummerEtc]

@KevinMcKillop Ok, I was afraid of that...that sucks. Thanks for the info though.

-ST

[DrummerEtc]

This is amazingly helpful. I had actually gone in and changed the meta data of every video and PDF file I had to enable them for download...and peeps are having problems with the video links. If I had only known it was this easy, it would have saved me TONS of time, lol. So glad I found this...Amazon S3 isn't the easiest thing for the casual user to navigate. Thanks!

-Stephen T.

[KevinMcKillop]

@DrummerEtc Glad it was of help for you Stephen!

[Thedestressguy]

Hi Kevin, I liked how you simplified the process. I will forward your link onto those who are now using my video marketing program and need help with "hosting". I have to ask why not just use the built-in "upload" feature of AS3 vrs Firefox? Will the standard player from Amazon buffer the video so it plays ASAP? Good work and thanks. RR PS: the cost is incredible low for hosting on AS3

[KevinMcKillop]

@Thedestressguy I just chose one that was popular at the time. There isn't any huge benefit of one over the other. Buffering has everything to do with the encoding of the movie and nothing to do with how you upload it. So if it does or doesn't buffer as you want it to, it's an encoding issue.

[aaronrs2002]

Very useful. Thanks!

[GjonetoTV]

excellent video...thanks a lot

[rootsicalUK]

that was really useful thanks.. maybe a bit more info about pricing would be good as committing without that is a little daunting and the amazon site plus calculator is hard to understand. but thanks for this I understand it a lot better!

[WealthSecretsOnline]

Hi Kevin Great Information and Video - I've had an Amazon account for along time and I had forgotten I was using Cloudfront in mine - To be honest I must have activated it when i was following the instructions on EVP - Cam across this video while I was searching for Optimize press reviews - Great video content and the Fox 3 plugin as well - Now I know hoe to actually use it - Thanks

[fofs1435]

This explains the concept so clearly. Thanks for the great information! I may use Amazon S3 and CloudFront in the future.

[gmartins]

great video, thanks!

[50kT]

TANK YOO :D

[sarahrussellcsm]

Wow - super helpful! Thanks so much!!!

[KevinMcKillop]

I don't know of one for Joomla specifically. But in theory, any player should work if you embed it into a Joomla article. Joomla proviers the authentication and authorization to see the article, then the article can display the video player.

There is a JW player in the Joomla directory that's free.

Now if you want something more robust, I recommend Easy Video Player (which is based off JWPlayer, same as above) but more features.

[bongojam]

Hi Kevin, do you know a video player for Joomla 1.6 which can deliver the streaming videos you put into your distribution?

Thanks for this video. I'm thinking about using video streaming for my videos but I need to have a video player for joomla 1.6. And the videos need to be only seen when you are logged in in Joomla 1.6. So can you make the url of clouldfront of your video hidden?

[KevinMcKillop]

Not that I'm aware of. I'd leave towards no but I've not tried every single tool there is to access S3.

[marzipan4402]

is there any way of just generating a html or text list of the urls for all the files in a bucket?

Thanks for all of your help?

[KevinMcKillop]

They need to be able to download each file individually? Can't create archives instead? Amazon S3 doesn't work like a typical web server that would allow directory listing unfortunately. Without that, you'll be dealing with each link individually, even in an index.html file.

[marzipan4402]

Trying to publish a website that will have links to about 80 sound files so that our collaborators across country can download them. We are hosting them on s3.

I don't want to copy and paste each link separately. I'm not wedded to s3, I would work within the aws console if needed.

I'm a complete newbie to the developer world. Can I use this "index.html" file in my bucket to tell it to publish a list of links to all my files?

[KevinMcKillop]

Multiple links to your files from within S3Fox? I don't believe you can do it with S3Fox. It will be up to the 'tool' you use to access your S3 storage, I don't know of any that would do that, just based on typical usage.

What is it you're trying to do exactly? At some point you'll have to deal with them on a link by link basis for the most part.

[marzipan4402]

HI Kevin,

Is there anyway to get multiple links at once? We have tons of files we want to post online, and don't want to copy the URLs one by one....

Thanks!

[WinterXL]

Aren't there costs associated with moving your videos/data around to the local servers (ie from US to a streaming viewer in Hong Kong)? Does that get expensive?

[KevinMcKillop]

@WinterXL Yes there are costs, but that's just part of 'Cloudfront' I've had about 2600 requests and almost 20GB since April 1st (using Cloudfront). I've paid $3.15.

[KevinMcKillop]

Haha! Glad you liked it. Had many questions and also don't like putting out crap! :)

[BellamoraFreeSample]

Excellent video Kevin, very professional, brilliantly clear, I only wish the other 99% of contributors trying to do "How-to Vids" would be as professional as you. Great work Amazon should hire you !

[TheSentenceTrailsOff]

Thanks for this.

[themogulmomblog]

I'm with Elisa - consider yourself kissed. :D Thanks so much, Kevin!

[KevinMcKillop]

@themogulmomblog More than welcome. Any other videos you'd like to see or questions you'd like to see explained?

[themogulmomblog]

@KevinMcKillop Hmmm...if I think of any, I'll let you know. This one was so awesome because I'd been trying to figure this out for about SIX months. Seriously. :D (I am having a little trouble creating a distribution in CloudFront though - keeps telling me "The AWS Access Key Id needs a subscription for the service". Any ideas?)

Thanks again!

[KevinMcKillop]

@themogulmomblog Have you actually signed up your account to use Cloudfront? Sounds like you haven't, or for some reason Cloudfront is not associated with your AWS access key. Double check you have signed-up specifically to cloudfront.

[themogulmomblog]

@KevinMcKillop Ah ha! I think that was it. :D Thanks again! You rock.

[elisamg22]

If I could kiss you for this I would - thank you, thank you!!

[KevinMcKillop]

@elisamg22 Haha, glad I could help!