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Turn your videos into HLS playlists (.m3u8) or mp4 and host the individual video files behind Cloudflare. Serve them on the frontend using JW Player or some other JS video player and from the backend using a $5 DigitalOcean droplet that serves the files from block storage.

You’ll have to learn some ffmpeg incantations but the bandwidth will be free and your total costs will be the tiny VM and block storage. Might even be able to point Cloudflare at a public bucket and skip the VM.

If you need to store and serve several terabytes of content, a dedicated server instead of block storage will be your best bet (again with Cloudflare), you’ll just need to figure out offsite backup and restoration.




> Serve them on the frontend using JW Player or some other JS video player

Just make sure that player supports right click->Save I'd much rather download and view a video in VLC than somebodies janky JS player


<pkg-manager> install mpv ytdlp

give site-url to mpv

watch video

PS:

vlc can play from urls too, but isn't as compatible with the way most sites implement it


You might, but the UX of that process for a 57s video is... below standard expectation.


Doesn't cloudflare TOS forbid video content?


Huh, looks like it does unless you use Cloudflare Stream. Thankfully this is a throwaway account :-)

I think by keeping the HLS segments at a few megabytes each and not using a file extension in the URL, I've slipped through the cracks.

(My religion forbids me from recognizing any terms of service that haven't been given the three blessings of the matriarch)


I think it's more likely you just don't generate enough traffic for them to care to stop you. I think the main issue is that their business model of not charging for bandwidth doesn't work well for video. As long as you aren't using a ton of bandwidth, they won't care you are doing some video.


I’ve heard that third blessing is pretty much impossible to get.


There hasn’t been a matriarch since the last one died in 1842. The two last surviving religious orders with voting rights have been in a deadlock ever since because they can’t agree on what color sesame seed belongs in “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning.

Saint Trader Joes tried to unite them by using both light and dark sesame years ago, but there’s just too much bad blood for them to work together. We are still waiting for the chosen one that will bring balance to the bagel.


Ahh, the utter tragedy of the Sesamoschism of 1842. The sad thing is that the deadlock between the Correctly Righteous Matriarchaleanbageloptomistrists and the Righteously Correct Matriarchaleanbageloptomistrists all comes down to one member’s error in mixing toasted light sesame seeds with raw dark sesame seeds, and neither side being able to agree which member needed to suffer the rites of immaculate defenestration.

May the bagel balanced be.


Yes, then in 1863 we had a brief window of hope as Frau Blücher, a charismatic blind preacher, wrote her famous “Two Theses” on a bagel bag: “1. I cannot taste the difference; 2. It all looks the same in your stomach.” This ecumenical message sadly did not endure and she too was thrown out of a first floor window.


It's not quite that clearcut:

> Unless you are an Enterprise customer, Cloudflare offers specific Paid Services (e.g., the Developer Platform, Images, and Stream) that you must use in order to serve video and other large files via the CDN. Cloudflare reserves the right to disable or limit your access to or use of the CDN, or to limit your End Users’ access to certain of your resources through the CDN, if you use or are suspected of using the CDN without such Paid Services to serve video or a disproportionate percentage of pictures, audio files, or other large files.

- https://www.cloudflare.com/service-specific-terms-applicatio...

Reading between the lines a bit: they really only care if you're using Cloudflare to front a site whose primary purpose is to deliver video content, and lots of it (like, say, if you're running a tube site or a livestreaming site). They don't care about web sites which happen to incidentally include a small amount of video content.




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