Streaming video hosting allows individuals to stream live media from their hosted site or from your own web site. The streaming video host will then store the media on its servers, and provide code to allow others to embed that media and act as a media server. Because many users do not have personal web space, web video hosting services are becoming increasingly popular, especially with the explosion in popularity sites like Myspace and Facebook.

Stickam is one of my favorite streaming video hosting sites. You can sign up for free and get your own streaming video channel. You will need a digital video camera to capture your streaming video, but then Stickam will stream your video for you.

The idea for Stickam (pronounced Stick-cam) is simple: Without having to pay a dime or install any sketchy software, you can fire it up and start a streaming video. All you need is a decent broadband connection and, of course, a webcam. More audacious souls “go live” — Stickam lingo for enabling your webcam. A small window will appear in your browser with a video of you — What else? — staring at a video of you in your browser.

uStream is a another streaming video hosting service. It’s video streaming is very similar to Stickam and it allows you to stream video directly from your site.

Streaming video hosting costs are a lot less than most companies expect, and in many cases, zero! In many cases, depending upon the level of traffic you have on your web site, you’ll conclude that you don’t even need additional hosting for your streaming video.

The majority of streaming video on the Net is coming right from the same web server that hosts the web site itself. The ability to stream video does not require that your ISP have either a Real Video or Windows Media video server. If they have one, fine. If they don’t, you can still stream video from your web server without any additional cost.

Streaming video storage size (in the common file system measurements megabytes, gigabytes, terabytes, and so on) is calculated from streaming bandwidth and length of the media with the following formula (for a single user and file):

storage size (in megabytes) = length (in seconds) · bit rate (in kbit/s) / 8,388.608
(since 1 megabyte = 8 * 1,048,576 bits = 8,388.608 kilobits)

Real world example:

One hour of video encoded at 300 kbit/s (this is a typical broadband video for 2005 and it’s usually encoded in a 320×240 pixels window size) will be:

(3,600 s · 300 kbit/s) / 8,388.608 = 128.7 MiB of storage

If the file is stored on a server for on-demand streaming. If this stream is viewed by 1,000 people using a Unicast protocol, you would need

300 kbit/s · 1,000 = 300,000 kbit/s = 300 Mbit/s of bandwidth

Some streaming video hosting providers include

• Streamhoster.com
• Rackspace.com
• Upstreamnetworks.com
• Advecton.net
• Powerstream.com