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DanBlake

My suggestions:

1- Ditch youtube

2- Start transcoding both into one video instead of two like it is now, so when I seek I have both timed up correctly

3- Use your own video player (goes with #1)

4- Modify homepage to be more "imgur" like- Move the browse button off of the "get started" page to the homepage.

5- Get a video ad network in place (many to choose from- integration takes about a hour) and start profiting from embeds

I know the argument on using youtube. Its easy, its free, they have a ad program you get a cut of. Its still worth it to roll your own if you get this to take off- You want to be "the easiest way to share your replay"

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Thanks for the input. Yea I went YT cuz I dont have much time/$ to invest now, unlimited vid length in YT is hard to pass up to get an idea off the ground.

I made it flexable however, that if it takes off I can switch to a diff vid streaming provider.

Good call on #4, will do.

At least, are there hooks into the YouTube player to know where the stream is at? Can we then keep the progression synced? For myself, at one point, one of the videos needed to buffer and got the two out of sync.

Seems the above can be achieved via YouTube's JS Player API: https://developers.google.com/youtube/js_api_reference

I'm curious: how do the bandwidth costs of streaming 1 video file compare with the ad revenue from said 1 video stream?

Video ads average about a half cent per view.

Display ads (google ads, for instance) average about .05 cents per view ( ie- you need 1k views to get 50 cents )

A server that comes with 100TB of bandwidth is about 200 bucks a month.

Now, is it going to be profitable? That all depends on the quality settings of the video + length + bitrate, etc..

Both video adverts and traditional banners can be a lot more expensive on that, depending on the situation. In my line of work, for example, I never see banners for less than $0.003/view, and $0.02/video advert is considered cheap.

As to whether advertising can cover streaming costs - yes it can, certainly when it comes to gaming content.

Cloudflare might be ideal for this.

Cloudflare don't cache video files, you can't use it to save bandwidth.

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