Video Content Management: Exploring the Storage Options

As the content needs of consumers continue to change, video is growing more important. Video marketing is on the rise, and it’s having a massive impact on whether or not brands can convert their customers. Around 84% of people become convinced to buy a product or service if they watch a brand’s video.

Video content is no longer helpful to have for brands, it’s become essential. But video content requires a lot more storage space than other content types.

Content management already requires appropriate infrastructure to get right, but when video gets added, then companies need to decide if their storage options are up to scratch.

If you want to manage your video content properly then you need a capable CMS, let’s look at some of the video storage options.

The Rise of Streaming Video

Streaming video is commonly associated with Netflix, but now it can be found just about anywhere, and it takes a lot to do streaming video right.

Delivery speed is probably the first thing that companies try to tackle when coming up with solutions to their video issues since that can make the difference between good service and poor one. Speed is paramount when it comes to effective streaming execution.

More online content is being streamed than ever before, so viewers aren’t necessarily spoiled for choice. Slow video or consistent buffering can force viewers to look elsewhere for their streaming needs since there is no shortage of content.

Continued video streaming also has a knock-on effect on video storage. Video content management, in general, already requires a lot of storage space and the various factors associated with streaming video only help to increase this burden.

As streaming quality increases from 1080p to 4k and higher then things like color gamut, resolution and HDR can lead to the creation of larger video files. These video files need appropriate storage solutions as brands provide the options for replaying videos at a later date.

But video storage can be expensive, and solutions that don’t break the bank are the challenge that many brands are focused on overcoming. As libraries grow, storing that content needs to be done in a way that suits each provider individually. Thankfully, there are a few options available. 

Video Storage Infrastructure

Storing and managing video content requires more than the standard content management platform. Unlike images and text content, video takes up a lot more space. When other factors like high definition quality are added to the mix, then storage options need to be carefully considered. 

On-Prem

An on-prem solution may be suitable for organizations that want to hold onto proprietary content necessary for internal use, but for effective video marketing, it isn’t up to par. The large video files prevalent today mean that such a solution will cause organizations to fall behind.

Cloud Platforms

The answer to video storage options is undoubtedly in the cloud as cloud storage has become the go-to method for all types of file storage. Platforms such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure are common among enterprises, but for video storage options, there are some things organizations need to be aware of before coming to a decision.

Object cloud storage is the category of cloud storage which videos typically fall under. In the battle of AWS vs Azure, this means that organizations need to weigh the pros and cons between AWS S3 and Azure blob storage.

Both of these options provide scalability for unstructured data and allow you to expand the usage for as much data as required. For video storage options, this feature is absolutely crucial since high definition video continues to improve.

AWS S3 is the dominant player in cloud storage due to the functionality and popular video streaming platforms like Netflix already utilize AWS. The Netflix content library is quite extensive, so it illustrates the capabilities of AWS.

Storage in AWS is ideal because it’s ready to be delivered anywhere and can seamlessly associate metadata to files and videos wherever they’re stored. Effectively storing video content is half the battle, but to win the war, companies need to be able to manage this content effectively, that’s where a video CMS comes into play.

Video Content Management with Crafter

Crafter’s video CMS platform allows organizations to manage video content and deliver it to any digital location required. As a headless CMS, Crafter provides the flexibility for this content to go to a website, mobile phone or tablet or smart TV.

But, CrafterCMS also uses the power of the cloud to great effect.

Crafter makes storage seamless through AWS and uses its highly distributed, almost unlimited computing power.

For content authors, it can be a time-consuming task to ask their more technical counterparts for help processing content continually.

Just as CrafterCMS provides the user-friendly interface that makes content management of other types easy for non-technical users, it does the same for the processing and delivery of video content.

CrafterCMS helps non-technical users take advantage of these technical capabilities and cloud infrastructure. CrafterCMS stores the metadata (i.e., wrappers or jackets) around the video in its Git-based repository, but the actual video files can live anywhere whether that be in on-prem storage devices, AWS S3 for real-time access, or AWS S3 Glacier for long-term storage and higher latency access.

Video Content Management at Marriott

Global hospitality company Marriott International wanted to create a video delivery solution that would let its employees watch the live stream of company events wherever they were in the world. The solution also needed to have replay capabilities so that those who joined late could attend the event from the beginning, and it could be recorded for future use later on.

A new live streaming and video-on-demand (VOD) solution was created on Crafter Video CMS and AWS to meet this requirement. For storage of the resulting VOD library, AWS S3 was used for cost effective and reliable video storage.

Want to learn more about how Marriott used Crafter and AWS to improve its video streaming and storage capacity? Read our case study.