How You Can Put Large Video Files to Use by Moving Them to The Cloud?

Benefits of video cloud storage. Let us explore one of the best video cloud storage free options. Archiving videos is a common practice for some organizations, and it could be done for many different purposes. For instance, you can archive surveillance footage, or old historical videos in a museum, or even famous speeches from politicians. Traditionally, videos are archived on hard drives and stored in some dusty room.

This is not the best idea as it’s difficult to access a video when you need it. And talk about sharing the video with someone – you’ll have to connect it to your PC and upload it on some network to send it ahead. All of which are a hassle and costs you in time.  

Benefits of video cloud storage

Thankfully, with cloud computing, things have changed and now you can store videos in the cloud rather than on hard drives. This has the following benefits:

• Storage on the cloud is scalable and you can get more GBs instantly as you need them.
• Files stored on leading cloud providers such as Azure or AWS, have copies maintained to prevent data loss in case of unforeseen circumstances.
• Sharing files is easy as it’s all on the cloud. Share a link with someone and they can access it.

But archiving videos on the cloud isn’t that easy as it sounds. Video files aren’t similar to other types of files such as documents, presentations etc. This is because video files are large – in GBs sometimes. Whenever someone needs to play a video, they would need to download this large file, and this means waiting for hours.

To store videos on the cloud, you have got two options. You can either get an online software (SaaS) to upload and store them, or directly store them in a cloud datacenters. This means that you can store videos on Google Drive, pCloud, Dropbox, or a video platform like YouTube, VIDIZMO, Brightcove. Or directly on Azure or AWS. Learn more about the different video cloud storage vendors that you can opt for.

Option 1: Using an Online Application to Store Videos

Using an online application has a few advantages. It’s easy to use and there are no technical complications involved. It’s also cheaper for a small business as the overall cost you pay is less. However, in the long run, you may have more costs if you opt for this.

Here you can simply upload your videos on Google Drive in Video Cloud Storage free, Dropbox, or OneDrive. The drawback here is that large video files aren’t optimized for playback. You’ll have to download them to watch them.

Or you can buy a license for a video platform or video content management system like Brightcove or VIDIZMO. These are basically like YouTube, but secure, private and your own. You can upload large video files in a secure library (that you access after logging in) and they will play directly in the browser when you share it with someone (no matter the size). These also offer powerful search capabilities to enable search for spoken words in a video. This is helpful if you have to store 100s or 1000s of files.

Option 2: Storing Video Directly in the Cloud

This is where you get a Video Cloud Storage computing account and purchase storage on a per GB basis. Or you could just upload content and pay as you consume GBs. Here we are talking about storing videos on Azure Blob storage or AWS S3.

The advantage of storing videos this way is that you pay less in the long run. Azure and AWS also offer storage tiers so you can move videos that you don’t use to a cold archive storage, which costs way less than the hot one.

The greater advantage is that you get to benefit from security and compliances offered by these cloud providers. Azure and AWS cover most compliances like HIPAA, GDPR, FIPS etc. and offer robust encryption mechanisms to keep your video files secure.

The drawback here is that you need technical expertise to put videos to use. Videos on your cloud storage are not much of use. You’ll need to connect it to services in the cloud (server, streaming engine, encoder etc.) to make them playable through any browser. However, you also have the option to skip the technicalities and get a ready-made streaming app from the cloud marketplaces – Azure Marketplace or AWS Marketplace.

Conclusion

Either by storing on some online application or directly in the cloud, you can move from traditional video archiving mechanisms. This way you can put your videos to good use. Make them available to those that need them readily. And at the same time, you can optimize your costs by paying only for the hardware that you need (no need to purchase loads of physical hard drives). Lastly, your data can remain compliant with various regional and industry requirements in Video Cloud Storage free. If you’re still not sure how to send long videos, check out a dedicated file transfer service like FileWhopper.