Video sizes and download limits are a big factor when creating proposals for video download websites buts the important point to make, that has been made below in a sample conversation, is that if the site exceeds any pre-set limit it can be easily and quickly enhanced / upgraded to cater for the new demands.
[Website Owner] The files that we are converting from our Sony cameras are of HD quality. We have turned it down from full HD as I said before, UNLESS we do it for full videos to sell.
I’m very happy at the quality we are getting at this level and am unsure as to how a lesser quality would work on a quality website. So if we take what we are doing at the moment, with a rate of say 1000kbps, we are looking at a 10 minute file being some 75MB. Therefore our 15 minute clips would come in at around the 100MB mark.
We propose say 20 to start at launch, 16 updates in month one and subsequently 8 more per month. So in total, year one would have 124 x 15 minute clips of around 100MB each.
How would that work in with your proposed allowances ? Would I be correct in calculating that this would use disc space of 12.4GB and therefore exceed what you proposed originally by 2.4GB? How would this work in terms of the monthly bandwidth allowance?
[Website Project Manager] Are files from other websites really 100MB each ? that really is quite big but can obviously cater for anything you want to do. As long as you give me some first year predictions and it looks like you have with disk space allocation of 12.4GB then we can work to that, If the files are 100MB then this allows you 50 downloads per month and if they are all real paying customers that will obviously bring in lots of revenue negating the worries / concerns about disk space / bandwidth
Here are you revised proposed allocations
Monthly bandwidth 45GB
Disk space allocation 15GB
Obviously if you go over these then the website is being a big success and we can upgrade your account easily and cheaply:
extra 20GB Bandwidth every month will be £200 per year or £20 per month
extra 20GB Diskspace per year will be £200 per year or £20 per month
The perfect (but most effective solution) having your own dedicated server with massive limits on disk space and bandwidth should be considered at the end of the first year I would suggest.
From my perspective the site design / built / promotion are the real challenges involved here for us and for yourselves the task should be working out the best / most industry standard video file sizes is the thing to concentrate on.
I can appreciate you want an idea of your allocations for your project but believe me the diskspace / bandwidth worries are easy to address / resolve / fix / upgrade if they crop up once the site is launched as it will be a ‘good problem’ to have as it will mean the site is more successful that you anticipated. Either way we can cope / handle the site growth with the end goal of getting you on your own dedicated server.