Hi all,
I’m building an app that will allow users to watch a series of videos. I’m currently weighing up whether to upload them to Vimeo or to use the HTML plugin and upload them onto bubble’s servers.
What are the pros and cons of each approach?
Thanks,
Max
As with most things, the answer will depend on your use case but, in my opinion you’re much better off with something like Vimeo.
Firstly, Bubble only gives you 5GB of storage on the personal plan which, depending on the length and file size of your videos, may only be enough for 5-10 videos.
Even the production plan only gives you 50GB, which might be enough for a few dozen videos and that’s it.
So, unless you’re only planning on uploading a few short videos you’ll need to look at other options for storage.
You can either use a self-service option like Amazon AWS, or use a purpose built service like Vimeo or Ziggeo.
Storage on Amazon S3 is very cheap, but storage is not the only consideration when it comes to video. You also need to think about transcoding.
Certain video file formats are only compatible with certain devices and operating systems, so if you, or your users, upload a video file that other users devices don’t support, then they won’t be able to view them.
Also, if you upload a high resolution video and your users have a slow internet connection, they will struggle to view the video.
That’s why transcoding is vital if you want to offer a professional video viewing service.
If you want your videos to be viewable by anyone, on any device, with any connection speed, then you’ll need to transcode your videos once you upload them (convert them into various formats and resolutions).
You can use Amazons AWS video transcoding services to do this yourself, but if you plan to transcode a lot of videos it can get very expensive. It’s also fairly complex to set up and integrate.
Services like Vimeo and Ziggeo do all this for you automatically so you don’t have to even think about it. They also usually work out much more cost effective.
Although at the end of the day it will depend on how many videos you’ll be uploading, the formats you’ll be using, and the who/where/why/how people will be viewing them.
If you’re not worried about unsupported file formats and slow loading speeds then you could just upload to Amazon S3 and let users access the non-transcoded files directly from there.
But if you want to ensure compatibility and good streaming speeds then you’ll need to do things properly and transcode your videos.
If you’ve only got a handful of videos to upload just once, then transcoding using Amazon AWS will probably be cheaper.
But if you’ll be regularly uploading videos, it’s probably more cost-effective to use a service like Vimeo or Ziggeo.
From my experience, Vimeo offers the best combination of cost and service here, so that’s what we went with for our recent video related project.
But, it’s best to research all the available options to see which on will best suit your needs.
Thanks so much Adam, this is really helpful
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