- by Lon Naylor
Why You May Need Your Own Video Player
When I first started creating video I never worried much about a player. It didn’t seem important. If I uploaded my video to YouTube and linked to it or embedded it on my blog I would use the YouTube player. If I created a video with Camtasia Studio and uploaded it to Screencast.com I would use the Camtasia Player. And if I tried to play some random MP4 that somebody sent me it would just magically open in whatever player I happen to have loaded.
It wasn’t until I discovered Amazon S3, about 4 years ago, that I actually had to think about players at all. See, Amazon S3 is an amazing hosting site that is used by ALOT of people who create videos. It can stream them quickly, is easy to use and gives you pretty much unlimited storage for very, very (Did I say very?) cheap.
But, here’s the thing.
You need to arrive there with your own video player. They don’t have one for you. So, what are you going to do?
My friend David Perdew has about 700 videos he has been hosting on Amazon. And he kept getting support calls saying that they weren’t playing in all browsers plus a multitude of other issues. And, just like the rest of us, he was looking for the perfect video player and couldn’t find it. So he had one developed.
Lon and I had a chance to review it on Thursday and Friday and I have to say that we both thought it was pretty darn good. Here is a video review I did shortly after our discussion over Skype as to what we did and didn’t like about it.
It’s at it’s lowest price right now through Memorial Day so if you think there’s a chance you will ever want to host your sites on Amazon S3 or even YouTube (it has features that make it much better than the YouTube Player) you’ll want pick it up while it’s cheap.
https://screencapturevideo.com/s3player/
Take Care.