Hi,

I'm setting up a site in a similar vein to www.youtube.com

My site will revolve around the streaming of video and the abilty of users to submit their own content.

Initially ofcourse, I wont be anywhere near as big as youtube so I'm just wondering what are my minimum requirements in terms of hosting and servers are concerned?

I want to get the site up and running for as little cost as possible. I flash the best option for the streaming or should I go with Windows Media?

I appreciate any help on this.

Thanks!

If you're going to stream Windows Media, you'd need a Windows server (to the best of my knowledge, no other server supports it).

Your major expense in the whole site idea is going to be bandwidth...if you grow even remotely popular, you're gonna be taking nice chunks out of an OC line no problem.

You probably won't need much else other than that and a server that supports streaming. If you want to cut down on bandwidth costs, you may want to consider the option of allowing streaming and download.


www.sectorlink.com <--- talk to these guys...tell them I sent you. Whatever you need, they'll get it for you and then some. They also use ASPUpload for allowing people to upload stuff...rockin' component.

[quote=ADAM Web Design;287516]If you want to cut down on bandwidth costs, you may want to consider the option of allowing streaming and download.[
quote]

Hi, thanks for your help and quick response!

What did you mean by the above qoute exactly (in lehmans terms!)

I found a smaller site at www.uvtv.info They state that they use flash. Do you know how they went about getting their video to work?

Well, bandwidth is the amount of data required to send stuff from one machine to another.

Streaming and download means you'll allow users the option to play the video right on their computer without storing a copy (streaming), or save a copy with them for their own personal use later (download).

I couldn't tell you how these guys did their site. I'm not a Flash-type by nature (although I can work with it to do relatively simple animation.)