[asterisk-users] AstriCon videos: a question of method

[John Todd]

I'm doing some quick research on how to get our videos from AstriCon  
available in a "reasonable" format that allows easy viewing, reduces  
our bandwidth costs, and allows good tracking for who/where/what is  
viewing the videos.

YouTube seems to have a very nice set of tools and statistics  
collection methods, and might be perfect EXCEPT....  Their main  
limitation right now seems to be that they limit videos to 10 minutes,  
which clearly doesn't work for our longer presentations.  I could  
"patch" them together in multiple 10-minute sessions, but... ugh.  UGH.

There are other video sites out there - lots, actually.  I could spend  
hours digging through them all, or hopefully ask here on the list and  
have some people give me prior experiences based on their expertise  
with hosted video solutions.

Requirements (not exhaustive list):
   - free or very close to free (we'll pay, but not a lot)
   - good statistical collection (who is linking? how many views? how  
much video watched each view? where do people stop?)
   - reasonably easy interaction (good upload tools, good UI)
   - good viewing experience from North America, Europe, Asia

Before anyone suggests it, I'm not interested in Torrent-based  
distribution for various political reasons.  I've started to look at  
Flowplayer, which is appealing due to it's OSS nature and  
customization capability, but it leaves us holding the bandwidth bill  
(which may not be horrible, but it's a concern.)

What are your experiences?  I can't say we'll end up actually using  
what you might think is best, but I'm very interested to hear what  
everyone might suggest for distributing Asterisk-focused video material.

In the interests of keeping this thread from getting out of control,  
please limit yourself to factual, content-rich posts.  "I hate  
YouTube" or "Why didn't you film blah" is something we can discuss off- 
list.

JT

---
John Todd                       email:jtodd at digium.com
Digium, Inc. | Asterisk Open Source Community Director
445 Jan Davis Drive NW -  Huntsville AL 35806  -   USA
direct: +1-256-428-6083         http://www.digium.com/