We’re Talking About Embedding vs. Self-Hosted Video
First, you upload your video file to a third-party video hosting
service like YouTube, Vimeo, or Wistia.
Then, you copy a small bit of code that they furnish to you, and paste
it into your post or page on your own WordPress site. The video will
appear on your site, in the location where you pasted the embed code,
but the video itself is being streamed from the video host’s servers,
as opposed to your own web server, where your WordPress site is
hosted.
4. No Single File Format Standard for Web Video
The current HTML5 draft specification does not specify which video
formats browsers should support. As a result, the major web browsers
have diverged, each one supporting a different format. Internet
Explorer and Safari will play H.264 (MP4) videos, but not WebM or Ogg.
Firefox will play Ogg or WebM videos, but not H.264. Thankfully,
Chrome will play all the major video formats, but if you want to
ensure your video will play back on all the major web browsers, you’ll
have to convert your video into multiple formats: .mp4, .ogv, and
.webm
5. Hope you like converting videos. A lot.
Most of your audience will likely watch your videos from their desktop
or laptop with the benefit of a high-speed Internet connection. For
those folks, you’ll want to deliver a large, HD-quality file so they
can watch it full-screen if they so choose. Generally, this means a
1080p or 720p file at a high streaming bitrate (5000 – 8000 kbps).
But you’ll also want to encode a smaller, lower-resolution version for
delivery to mobile devices like phones and tablets, as well as
delivery to viewers with slower Internet connections.
6. Video Players
A video player is a small piece of web software you install on your
site that will automatically detect which device is requesting your
video, along with its connection speed, and then deliver the
appropriate version to that person.
7. Cumbersome Code [or Shortcodes]
Whether you use a third-party plugin or WordPress’ built-in video
capabilities, you’ll need to create a bit of code to tell the video
player which formats you’ve created, as well as their location on the
server. It looks something like this…
<video poster="movie.jpg" controls>
<source src="movie.webm" type='video/webm; codecs="vp8.0, vorbis"'/>
<source src="movie.ogg" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"'/>
<source src="movie.mp4" type='video/mp4; codecs="avc1.4D401E, mp4a.40.2"'/>
<p>This is fallback content</p>
</video>
So what’s the best solution for adding video to your site?
Simply use a third-party video hosting service, then just embed your video into your WordPress post or page.
Step One: Upload your video to one of the popular, well-established video hosting services like Vimeo PRO.
Step Two: Once your video has been uploaded and is ready for viewing, copy the URL to your video. Return to your WordPress site and
paste the URL into your post or page where you want the video to
appear.
When folks view your page, the video will appear in the location where
you pasted the URL. But the video file itself will be streamed from
the video host’s servers, as opposed to your own server, where your
WordPress site is hosted.
The embedded video player will automatically detect the user’s device, browser, and Internet connection speed, and then serve the appropriate
version of the video file to them. Nothing to install on your site. No
plugins to keep up to date. No tricky code.
source