Accessibility and usability

For performance reasons we try to off load all media to another server and try to stream it.

If you serve videos from your main Moodle server you can run into load issues in which the web server tried to serve the entire file that can be gigabytes large. And it takes up an https connection.

With a streaming server only the part of the video that the user is watching is send and the user can also skip around the video without having to wait for the whole thing to download. Much better user experience.

Mr. Marc, which is the best car to buy?  

Yes, you will get many opinions.

All of my videos are on a university "streaming server," and I am fortunate to have this for my course videos for free.  Then, I simply provide a URL to the video wherever I need to.

I have been finding that the word "stream" might have some different meanings.  In the old days, one had a choice to either "download" or "stream" videos.  Streaming meant that software would download a little, then play, then download a little more in the background, then play.  Today, with faster servers and Internet speeds, I never know if my videos are being streamed or not.  Somehow, browsers seem to just figure these things out.  This is a rather long paragraph that I have to end with "I don't know."

What I do know is that if you upload videos into your Moodle, backups will grow in size.  I am one who prefers to separate videos, and other content, from my Moodle, especially for this "backup growth" issue.

A while ago, I did experiment with Kaltura.  I actually liked it.  However, I learned that it got to be very expensive very quickly, so I aborted.  

As mentioned before tere is not the one answer.  Here my criteria:

• Size of videos: If most of the videos are small it doesn't make a difference.
• Number of videos visited at the same time: If it may be possible there are lots of videos visited at the same time you need a lot of power
• Number of videos on the same page. Same as above
  
• Do you need different sizes and resolutions for different devices?
• Are the videos confidential?
• How many people are administrating videos? (upload process, access)
  
• Do you need backup and restore processes for dfferent platforms
• Do you have technical und human ressources for internal hosting. A streaming server needs different competencies than a Moodle server
• What is your budget? Additional services needs additonal budgets.

Hello, Mr. Marc,

We use the Kaltura Community Editon (self hosted, and free version) for our university.
Moodle plugins provided by the Kaltura Inc. can not be used with the Community Edition.
We have developed other moodle plugins as "YU Kaltura Media Package".
Therefore, no fee is required for software.
And, we are satisfied with the performance of the Community Edition.

However, the cost of hardware and labor is required.
Since update of Kaltura servers often cause troubles, it takes time to respond to the troubles.
So, operation experience of Kaltura system is required.
In addition, the Kaltura system will work with a single server, but multiple servers are required to obtain sufficient performance.
Because Kaltura server goes slow when uploading video or when periodic batch processing about database is running, you will need at least two servers (front end and back end).
As a reference, we use 7 virtual servers ( 2 front nodes, 1 load balancer, 1 database and data warehouse server, 2 batch servers, and 1 administration server).

Regards