Part 2 of our series about hosting and playing videos in Drupal explores hosted video solutions in detail, and offers some basic information about using video sharing sites. See part 1 for a short explanation of the most popular Drupal modules for video handling, and an introduction of CDNs and cloud storage services.
Cloud-hosted video solutions
Hosted video platforms are specialized for video storage, transcoding and playback. Unlike CDNs and cloud storage services, they already include the transcoding software, and also have additional features like players (for different devices), playlists, ads, live streaming or DRM (Digital Rights Management).
As they are highly optimized solutions for video hosting and playback, we’ll introduce one of the most popular solutions in more detail and list others worth checking out.
Brightcove
If you want enterprise video hosting, we suggest you use Brightcove, a leading global provider of powerful cloud solutions for delivering and monetizing video across connected devices. We are not unbiased, since we are working for them, but that shows how committed they are to their Drupal customers: they make sure that their Drupal integration modules are constantly taken care of. Trusted by more than 5,500 customers around the globe, Brightcove offers a highly-scalable, secure video hosting platform; providing a single, integrated solution for all of your online video needs.
Main features:
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Uploading and encoding: You can upload single titles or an entire video library through your browser or automate your upload process using Brightcove’s media APIs or FTP batch processing.
Brightcove accepts your media in almost any format and encodes it using single- or two-pass encoding technology to maximize quality and minimize file size. Brightcove Video Cloud automatically generates multiple renditions of each source file based on default settings or your custom encoding profile. Their Zencoder product offers developers a stand-alone, cloud-based encoding solution that can be integrated into existing workflows through the Zencoder API. -
Content management: Brightcove’s online video CMS makes it easy to sort, manage and organize your media library. It offers convenient features like batch editing and drag-and-drop playlists, so video content can be managed by content editors.
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HTML5 video: Brightcove players deliver video content for Flash as well as HTML5. With a single embed code, you can operate multiple players that render automatically based on the viewer’s device.
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Delivery and live streaming: Brightcove provides solutions for HD video streaming and live broadcasting, as well as a robust API for deep customization of settings and workflows.
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Players and styling: You can choose from 15 pre-made player and playlist templates or fully customize them according to your design needs.
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Content protection: Brightcove offers varying levels of protection for your content:
- access restriction features ensure that content is only played back from an authorized account or can only be viewed in specific geographies
- basic content encryption for the transmission of the video stream or video packets as they are transferred over the wire
- DRM, a robust content protection program that enables publishers to enforce policies and rules for usage of their content. Brightcove Video Cloud supports popular DRM packages like Adobe Primetime DRM, Google Widevine, Microsoft Playready and Marlin (an open source DRM technology created by five companies: Intertrust, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung and Sony).
Beside these, Brightcove offers ad integration and management, YouTube synchronization, integrated social sharing controls, and comprehensive, real-time analytics across different devices.
Drupal modules to use
Use the Brightcove integration module to add Brightcove videos or playlists to your content and access the information from Video Cloud in your site. You can find two modules in the package. The Brightcove module provides the API integration with the Brightcove service and the Brightcove Field provides the necessary fields to be able to handle Brightcove media assets. After enabling both, with the field provided by the module you can:
- browse and use previously uploaded videos and playlists from your Brightcove account
- upload new videos or create new playlists to Brightcove and display them
- display the video player on the page or in a modal dialog
- use other formatters (e.g. thumbnail linked to a dialogue with the video)
- add description and other metadata
- display metadata as fields
Combine this module with the Brightcove Media module to make Brightcove videos and playlists available as File entities.
Other solutions with Drupal integration
Let’s see some other hosted video solutions that you can integrate into your Drupal site:
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The Platform: They offer different online video packages from an enterprise-class complete video management system to businesses with smaller video libraries. They also provide a transcoding engine including easy access to high-quality mezzanine files with a Media Library and rapid file conversion with Elastic Transcoding. Their Drupal module, Media: thePlatform mpx, integrates with the Media module.
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Wistia: Wistia is professional video hosting solution with analytics and video marketing tools. In Drupal, you can either use it with the Media:Wistia module or the Video Filter media module that has extended Wistia support.
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Vzaar: A video hosting solution offering quick, secure and reliable services with much praised support. Use it with the Media:vzaar module for Drupal integration.
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Viddler: They offer two solutions, Overture, a video hosting platform for enterprise corporations, and Arpeggio, a a responsive HTML5 video player that enables you to create interactive video content and in-timeline commenting. Use the Viddler module for Drupal integration. (Note: The D7 version is in development, currently for testing only with limited functionality.)
Self-hosted video solutions
If you are looking for an open source solution, you can opt for Kaltura, the world’s first open source online video platform, or set up your own hosted video platform with OctopusVideo.
Kaltura
Kaltura provides enterprise level commercial software and services, as well as free open-source community supported solutions for video publishing, management, syndication and monetization. They provide out-of-the-box video applications and a flexible framework for creating customized video solutions. Kaltura not only helps you manage your video content, but you can use it as a one-stop solution for all your rich-media including images, audio and documents.
Kaltura offers all the usual features of a hosted video solution:
- Video upload and ingestion
- Video transcoding and processing
- Video management
- Video publishing
- Video player (mobile and HTML5 players)
- Video syndication and distribution
- Live streaming
- Video monetization
- Analytics
- DRM
They also provide a lecture capture feature for capturing and managing recorded videos of your lectures with Kaltura and third party recording tools.
Drupal module to use
Using the Kaltura module, you can either leverage the Kaltura hosted platform or grab the free source code and self-host the entire platform for free.
The module is actively maintained and offers full integration with the Drupal platform, Views (including predefined views) and full synchronization of content, metadata and tags between Drupal and the Kaltura system.
Visit the module’s page to learn more about the key features and added value of the Kaltura video platform.
OctopusVideo
If you’d like to have your own hosted video platform, try OctopusVideo, open source video transcoding and delivery platform built on Drupal. You can take a closer look on their demo on simplytest.me.
Video sharing sites
If simply embedding Youtube or Vimeo videos in your Drupal site would be enough for your project, you have more options to choose from:
- In Drupal 6, you could use the Embedded Media Field module and the Youtube integration for the Media module. You can use this integration in Drupal 7 as well.
- You can simply use the Media module to embed videos from Youtube or Vimeo. This can work by adding the URL to a field or through an editor.
- In Drupal 7, you can use the Video Embed Field module to create a simple field type that allows you to embed videos from YouTube and Vimeo or show their thumbnail previews simply by entering the video’s URL.
- Use the Media Embed plugin for CKEditor that opens a Dialog where you can paste an embed code from YouTube or Vimeo.
This wraps up our post about video hosting and playback solutions in Drupal. As you can see, there is a wide variety of available solutions ranging from installing a module and embedding Youtube videos to having your own video hosting platform. Solutions widely vary in price and performance, so choose the approach that best suits your needs after careful consideration. We hope we could help you get started!
