Best Practices for Video Hosting

  • Resolved ElColo13

    (@elcolo13)


    3 years, 6 months ago

    We’re using some video in our stories, and are wondering about how those files are actually served in stories. The plugin only allows us to select items from the media library (unless I missed something), but hosting a video file from our library might not offer the best experience, and will use a lot of bandwidth. Should I use a third party, like Vimeo? Or will the videos actually be served on AMP servers when the story is published? Is there a specific format that would work better? Like GIF? Or MP4?

    Thank you!

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • Plugin Author Pascal Birchler

    (@swissspidy)

    Hi there,

    Excellent question!

    While embedding videos from platforms like Vimeo or YouTube is not yet supported, one can use third-party WordPress plugins to help host videos in optimal formats on fast servers.

    MP4 is the recommended format for videos in stories, as it works in almost all browsers.

    That being said, if you just drag & drop a video into the editor, the Web Stories plugin will actually automatically optimize your videos and convert to MP4 if necessary.

    On top of that, we’re indeed working on a feature to automatically serve videos from AMP servers when the story is published. So stay tuned!

    @elcolo13 Following up here as we’re working through some options on storing videos and I wanted to hear your thoughts.

    In the past few months, we have implemented to new features to address concerns around video hosting bandwidth:

    1. Video Optimization –?Videos uploaded to the Media Library within the Web Stories Editor are automatically optimized, and you also now have the option to optimize a video that was previously uploaded in the Media Library. In our testing, a 50MB video is reduced to <1MB in file size, about the same size as a high-res image.
    2. With the new Video Cache option, which can be turned in Web Stories > Settings > Video Cache, your site will automatically serve videos from Google’s servers (instead of your own) which should eliminate bandwidth costs for most videos.

    With these new features, have your concerns about video bandwidth addressed? Or do you also still want the ability to upload videos elsewhere and link to them within Web Stories? If so, why?

    We’d really appreciate any feedback here – we want to make sure that the updates that we’ve made or plan to make will directly address your needs.

    Thanks so much!

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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