What is the best solution for embedding videos on an ASP.NET site?

Question

Well first, I don’t know anything about video player technologies, so any help is generally appreciated. I apologize if this is vague, but I hope that with feedback I can clarify. I’m basically trying to figure out what are the options for implementing video player technology on an ASP.NET website, and what are the pros and cons of each.

Now I know that there are sites like Vimeo where you can upload videos and link them to your site, but this solution does not seem very customizable. You can also embed flash movies in a website without having to have a Vimeo account, but I don’t want to convert every video to flash, and that will be a maintenance problem later. If I host the video on the server, this will slow down and could potentially be a problem. There are many options and compromises, so I just wanted to get feedback from people who did these things.

If you have already implemented embedded video content on an ASP.NET page, what solution did you choose and how did it work?

EDIT Videos are not the main part of the website and they do not need to dynamically submit or anything else. I would have videos during development, and I'm just wondering what the best overall solution would be for any client who wants a simple video on their website.

Answer 1

I just had to deal with this, but mess around with the new ASP.Net MVC3 with the Razor view engine.

You can quickly embed a video using the Razor video assistant method.

Syntax:

flash:

@*Video.Flash(filename [, width, height])*@
@Video.Flash("test.swf", "100", "100")

Media player:

@*Video.MediaPlayer(filename [, width, height])*@
@Video.MediaPlayer("test.wmv", "100", "100")

Silverlight Video:

@*Video.Silverlight(filename, width, height)*@
@Video.Silverlight("test.xap", "100", "100")