Hosting Your Videos and More with Amazon s3
Videos eat up a lot of bandwidth…sure you can upload your videos to your own server, but the problem with that is you’re limited to the amount of bandwidth you can have and once you reach that limit, it’s going to put a strain on your account and your videos are going to play really slow or worse…won’t play at all.
So for a really good streaming experience – that’s where Amazon S3 comes in.
Remember…most people that have hosting are signed up to SHARED HOSTING meaning…the hardware you are using is also shared with other people as well and could already be reaching its full capacity. One choice you have here is to update to a dedicated hosting account and even then…if you get a lot of hits on your hosting from people landing on your site at the one time, it’ll eventually do the same and your hosting service could shut you down – and without warning too.
So how do we get around this? — well we’ve now got Amazon S3.
Amazon s3 is simply an online storage service…now it offers a whole lot more than just uploading videos too…but for the most part, people are mostly looking for somewhere to host their videos because of their size and amount of bandwidth videos use up, leaving the possibility of their hosting to come crashing down.
When you do get signed up – your best bet is to also sign up for Cloudfront too and I’ll explain why in the video.
A great addon I use that coincides with Amazon very well is S3 fox…
Amazon S3 is very cheap to use, but it is not user friendly at all and a lot of people signing up for the first time have a difficult time navigating around it. Remember! This (plug in) is for FireFox, but you can do a search for other windows clients that connect to Amazon too and also mac clients and so on. When these clients are opened up – they all work similar to an ftp client like filezilla, so if you are familiar with using such clients like filezilla…then you’re life will be a whole lot easier when you go to use S3 Fox 
I’ll briefly talk a little here about Content Distribution Networks and then we’ll move into the video.
So what Content Distribution Networks (CDN) are is this…they have got a lot of servers in a whole lot of different places around the world — like Europe — Asia — and America. So that’s what we’re after, we want the fastest way available — with the higest transfer rate possible, no matter where that request is made from and with cloudfronts (CDN) – having servers in all these different places throughout the world means that the person requesting the file/video and so on, will have no downtime.
So simply put your amazon S3 is where you upload your content/media too, then when you set up a Cloudfront distribution – your content and media form amazon S3, gets transferred to your Cloudfront where it takes care of the distribution – remember!!! Cloudfront is a Content distrabution network that has servers all over the world that speeds up the user (friendliness) of (for example) – streaming videos.
So when your clients makes a request to see your information – that url that you give them to view your videos, is coming through Amazons Cloudfront, meaning they’re going to get that information from the closest server near them — and that will get routed to the closest location to them…meaning now downtime…basically if a person you give the url to is from Ireland – they’re going to get that information from Ireland – even though your server could be in America.
So this really is the fastest way to get your videos out to these people without any buffering issues and it’s all down on a pay as you go basis – which is (very very) cheap, big companies used to pay thousands for this before Amazon made it dirt cheap for everyone.
Remember, you’re not going to get charged for any on-going monthly bills or anything like that, it’s simply a pay for what is being used service…(so it’s pay as you go).
P.S. (CLOUDFRONT) is the distribution service…you don’t need to use it…but if you want the most optimal speed for the distribution of your videos, then it’s certainly something to consider – most people that sign up use Cloudfront also.
I hope you enjoy the video…
~ Eamon.
Fantastic post Eamon.
I absolutely love S3. In fact, I load all of my blog images to S3 so that my site loads quicker.
I haven’t used any of the plugin you mentioned. I’ll have to check them out.
Des recently posted..10 Email Marketing Alternatives To The Aweber Autoresponder 2012
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Eamon Diamond
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November 25th, 2011 at 7:30 pm
Hi Des
Thanks for the comment.
Glad you liked the post – yeah I love it too, great place for uploading to so that…as you say the likes of images/videos and other things can get opened and have no issues with downtime.
S3 Fox is another fantastic addon/plugin from FireFox where it leaves things so much easier for us
Eamon.
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Hi Eamon, another fantastic post and video. I’ve just signed up for an Amazon s3 account, but am yet to use it. I will be placing some videos there so found your video really handy
The s3fox plugin looks super easy to set up and makes things easier to use and that’s always handy.
Thanks Eamon, once I finish the videos I’ll come back and refresh the memory before uploading.
Take care mate,
Barry
Barry Wells recently posted..I’m Going To Interview An Expert, Do YOU Have Any Questions You Need Answering?
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Eamon Diamond
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November 25th, 2011 at 7:29 pm
Hey Barry,
How things…I here you’ve finished Sally’s course, I’m sure you’ll all miss her, you’s had nothing but good things to say about her coaching.
Amazon’s left it a level playing field for us all and it’s so cheap Barry – I have videos and images uploaded to it myself after my blog started to slow down a couple of times, so I wasn’t going to take any chances and went ahead and opened an account…noticed a hugh difference right away.
Thanks for stoping by Barry – I’ll catch you soon.
Eamon.
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Hi Eamon, yes the course finished last night.
It is an excellent course mate, first class. Taught me loads of new skills and showed me many things I didn’t have a clue about. Now to put it all to good use
I’m interested in what you said about moving things to Amazon and seeing the results on your blogs performance for doing so.
Do you think it might help me out because I’ve been having issues with my resource limits for months now.
Every time I load a post i start hitting 100% on CPU and memory. Tried delving into plugins and went down to 8 and it still keeps happening. Then it settles down for a few days, maybe a couple of weeks and boom off it goes again.
Any ideas Eamon?
Barry Wells recently posted..Will I Take The 7 link challenge? Yes Of Course I Will
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Eamon Diamond
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November 25th, 2011 at 10:03 pm
Hey Barry…
…I know how you feel
you know website outages/slowness can be caused by a myriad of reasons.
If your site is frequently down/slow, it may be your website’s content that is contributing to the problem.
You will want to look for large images, movies, or any files with large sizes, those will take the longest to load for any website.
Once you’d find and identify the problem files Barry, you can work on optimizing their size with compression. You may also want to take a look at the browser plugin called ySlow which can give you detailed reports about long page load times / optimization, I have never needed to use it — touch wood, but I did look into it one time and it can show up a lot of results.
Another problem that can slow your site Barry, is if you are grabbing content to load from outside sources like Google AdWords or rss feeds. If that other server responds
slowly it will delay your site in the loading time…until it has loaded the feeds. Don’t know if you’re set up that way or not – but if you are, you can try disabling the outside inputs to your site and then test the load times.
You know wordpress is notorious for causing throttling problems too, because of the amount of commands and executions they perform…and if you’re using a database on your site, I’d check if that’s up to date – If your databases are corrupt, haven’t been re-indexed/optimized, it makes the database dependent functions of your site slower.
But as you say Barry – definitely switching your LARGE images/ files and videos to amazon s3 will certainly help big time – because…well you know this already – it’s pulling all from a different source altogether.
I hope you get it sorted, let me know how you get on.
Eamon
[Reply]
Hello mate, wordpress can’t find yslow
I’ve started using CloudFlare so optimize the site and it’s helped speed it up so that’s ok
But i’m still having resource issues. Every widget i add seems to hit the limits
Still a work in progress i’m afraid mate
Thanks Eamon,
Take care, Barry
Barry Wells recently posted..I’m Going To Interview An Expert, Do YOU Have Any Questions You Need Answering?
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Eamon Diamond
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November 26th, 2011 at 3:27 pm
Hello Barry…
Sorry to hear you’re still having problems mate.
YSlow is designed by Yahoo – if you’re using firefox you can download it as an addon – you will have to have firebug downloaded too – that’s just required for the following add-on YSlow to work properly.
Barry are you using shared hosting (99%) of the time that’s the problem – if other people are sharing with you and they’re taking a bigger slice of the pie so to speak…that can cause lagging and downtime whenever other websites hosted on the same shared server has a spike in traffic…a lot to do with (cpu usage and resources.)
Ah there’s so much it could be Barry a poorly designed plugin can cause the resource utilization too, I know it can be stressful mate and you’ll maybe not want to hear me say this but…it might be time to look at the VPS or Dedicated hosting options, because they’re not restrictive when it comes to server resource usage.
Eamon.
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Hello mate, yes I thought it may be a plugin and took mine down to 8 and it still had problems so i left it at 8 for a few days and it leveled out. So I activated my other ones, 2 at a time and it was all ok. Got up to the normal, still ok but then load a post and boom 100% again.
I think you’re right about time for an upgrade, it’s just funding it
There’s something in the pipe line though
Just in the process of loading some images on to S3. When I checked my images on blog I was pretty shocked at how many I’ve built up.
Thanks for the advice Eamon, appreciated mate. Off to grab the add ons now……
Barry
Barry Wells recently posted..I’m Going To Interview An Expert, Do YOU Have Any Questions You Need Answering?
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I have to admit, I haven’t used S3 Fox yet, even though I’ve activated it.
Is it really that much easier Eamon?
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Eamon Diamond
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November 30th, 2011 at 3:46 pm
Hi Des
What I like about S3 Fox Des – is that when you have it set up on your computer, you very seldom have to go back into s3′s control panel again. Everything can be down easily by just opening up s3.
You can also do everything from within s3 itself – but I suppose everyone will have a different way that suits them.
Some people also like to use Cloudberry which works similar to s3 Fox and if one has got Easy Video Player you can do it from within there too.
My preference is using s3 Fox
Thanks for the Comment Des,
Eamon.
[Reply]
Hi Eamon
Whay a great post, and the video was real easy to follow Eamon. I already had an Amazon S3 account, but I have just downloaded and installed S3 Fox.
I followed the video mate and now I have all my videos loaded! Brilliant
So now I am going to replace all the videos I have on my blog with the S3 URL links via EVP, sounds like a winner to me!
Thanks for sharing this Eamon very much appreciated mate.
Hope all is well with you and hope to catch up later…
Take care
Ian:)
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Eamon Diamond
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December 8th, 2011 at 9:49 am
Hi Ian
Thanks for the kind comment, I’m really glad you got use out of the video.
A lot of people online today are having trouble with their videos not loading well, or for that matter…their websites or blogs taking ages to load because of the large images and files.
Well Amazon s3 sure takes care of that
and for what it costs! – I don’t know why more people aren’t using it…to be fair though, I suppose there are a lot of people who don’t know about it, some have even contacted me confused on how to navigate around it, that’s why I love the s3 Fox organiser, it leaves it so handy to upload – works just like FileZilla if anyone’s familiar with that software.
In the video I showed the s3 fox sitting down in ones tool bar on the bottom right – but one can also get to it if they look in Firefox’s own toolbar on the top left “under tools,” – then search for s3 organizer and that will open up the entire console if one prefers to upload that way.
Again thanks for the comment Ian – much appreciated – take care mate,
~ Eamon.
[Reply]
Hi Eamon,
Barry sent me over here as I have just set up a As3 account. Can’t work out how to make my uploads downloadable!
I have tried to watch your video but all I am getting is a green screen.
Have you got it on youtube at all??
I have uploaded my files into a folder in a bucket but I have had to make the links public for them to be downloadable. Is that correct??
Or should I set up cloudfront??
Let me know if there is another way I can watch your video! I have tried listening to it, but just seeing a green screen isn’t helping. lol.
My quicktime plugin crashed I think.
Hope all is going well.
Cheers
Jacinta
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Eamon Diamond
Reply:
February 2nd, 2012 at 12:44 pm
Hi Jacinta
That’s strange it isn’t playing for you, it’s working here OK, but I’ll send you to ==> Click Here and you can check to see if it works on this page.
I haven’t uploaded it to YouTube because of the length…that particular video is uploaded to AS3/Cloudfront, but if the video doesn’t work for you on that page either Jacinta…I’ll upload it to my server for you and send you forward the link to see if you can view it that way.
You can checkmark download or streaming, but you have to look for everyone under EDIT ACL/permissions and then click the first red x under read – so as you only give permission to the person that receives the link.
As for Cloudfront – it’s not really necessary, that’s really for people that are maybe going to have a coaching course…50/100 videos, where a lot of people would be hitting the server at the one time – then you could use Cloudfront for optimal speed when downloading.
Hope that helps,
Eamon.
[Reply]
Hey Eamon,
As your previous readers have said, FANTASTIC article man!
Even though I’m a Computer Systems Engineer I am not familiar with Amazon’s S3 Services and Cloudfront (yet).
I plan to create a product around the playing guitar niche that is going to rely heavily on videos so I am currently searching for solutions to address this.
So far, I had Vimeo in mind but I’m currently thinking about S3 and maybe the CloudFlare combination.
I am still going to test out everything before deciding what solution to go after.
Thanks for sharing this great information and special thanks to Barry Wells for referring me to this article.
Speak soon mate, cheers!
- Sergio.
Sergio Felix recently posted..6 Hours Self-Imposed Social Media Blackout
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Eamon Diamond
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February 13th, 2012 at 11:15 am
Hi Sergio
Thanks for stopping by, I’m glad you liked the post and I hope it has helped a few out when it comes to figuring out where to navigate around Amazon’s console – PHEW! It can be frustrating looking at it for the first time
.
I see you mentioned you’re a Computer Systems Engineer – that will really benefit you online Sergio, do you build your own computers?
All the best,
Eamon.
[Reply]
That is correct Eamon, I’m actually in the process of building a new custom computer.
(I’m already done building it but I still need the solid-state drive and the video card)
I am currently looking to put something temporal to get it going.
Sergio
Sergio Felix recently posted..6 Hours Self-Imposed Social Media Blackout
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Eamon,
Thank you so much for the video on Amazon S3. I was looking for something that told me how to use Amazon S3and distribute the videos that I up load.
I have one question thought. As I have looked around the internet I have read a lot about security with Amazon S3. Do you know anything about that? Do I need to do something else to the URL’s that are produced by S3 Fox to make sure my account it secure.
Thanks again for the video.
Dee Ann Rice
Dee Ann Rice recently posted..7-Links Challenge – A New Look
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Eamon,
One more question. What size are you making your videos that you up load to Amazon S3?
Thank you for your help.
Dee Ann
Dee Ann Rice recently posted..7-Links Challenge – A New Look
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Eamon Diamond
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February 20th, 2012 at 10:07 am
Hi Dee Ann
Thanks for stopping by.
You can use Amazon s3 data encryption Dee Ann which provides added security for the data stored in your buckets.
You can encrypt your date on your (client side) before you upload it, or you can use their (server side) and let them do the encryption for you…which would really be the best way as you don’t have to worry about encryption keys, and other related tools and so on.
If you use as3’s server side encryption they will encrypt your data before it is saved in their data base, then they will decrypt that stored data when it comes to downloading…hope that helps.
When you say size Dee Ann…do you mean file size? If so – if I think a file is going to be to large I use the free software called Handbrake to take its size down to the lowest I can, but still leave it at a high enough quality.
If you mean dimensions – I set my screen in camtasia to 1280 x 720 to record first off, that way if I decide I want to put it on different video sharing sites later I can because I have it stored in camrec; however, when I go to render that particular video for as3 I use camtasia’s function where you can set the dimensions and I set it to 710 x 400, then render my video.
Hope that helps Dee Ann.
All the best,
Eamon.
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