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[meofcourse]

I might have to ask this one to the admins.....however, if someone else has had experience with this, feel free to add some input.

We have our church website hosted here, and currently have a library of sermons in mp3 format.  The average file is 8.6 MB and chalks up to about 2GB/month.  We want to move towards video, however I would like to continue to use a flash video player.  The flash player I currently use supports the H.264 format, as does the video camera.  Since we are talking about 40 minute video clips, I am expecting the data usage to be much higher even if I keep the quality low (ie around 300MB).  Assuming that we maintain the same number of downloads each month, this means our total bandwidth for videos could balloon to 70 GB/month. Since I am using a php script to provide the bit stream, I am wondering how adversely this would affect the cpu usage on the server?  As well, how would the best way to ensure that the php script does not time out? 

Ps. We do have a robots.txt file to attempt to stop robots from downloading all of this media.  If someone has other suggestions to limiting this that would be great as well.

Pps.  The site is www.edmontonimmanuel.ca

Ppps. Why the php script to supply the media? Authentication ability for other files.....I could remove this for the files that are accessed publicly.

Thanks 

[HelpingHand]

I would suggest NOT running the videos from the hostpapa servers. They overcrowd the servers with too many customer accounts and suspend anyone who even slightly overuses the CPU. I've seen it happen hundreds of times. I would suggest storing the videos on Youtube or some other video service and simple link to them on your site.

[meofcourse]

That is what I am afraid of.....do you know of any good hosts to do that though?  Unfortunately Youtube only allows 10 minutes clips rather than upwards of 30-45 minutes.  I would also like a host that supports ftp as I have a vb program that uploads the media files for me?  Maybe I'll have to convince the church to spend a bit of money each month for this one.....

[HelpingHand]

If you want to host your own video files I would suggest finding a host who offers dedicated or semi dedicated servers. Shared hosting is not the answer for you and yes, you might have to shell out real money for this.

[mentalist3d]

try vimeo.com for hosting your videos, they do notrestrict the length of the video, only the file size.