I have always been interested in using my www.fabandpp.org web site to publish videos of my poems. I've never been able to publish in the form of 'streaming' video, however, because www.fabandpp.org has been hosted by commercial ISVs who have either not supported the format or who charged substantial fees.
Because of the way the most popular format is licensed (by RealNetworks™,) the fees are typically stated as per-stream, per-month. In the case of an otherwise inexpensive web site, the fees for even a couple of modest video streams could more than triple the monthly cost.
The size of the underlying video files also precluded staging more than a few selections, even as simple downloadable files, because of overall limitations on the storage alloted to the commercially hosted site.
Now that I am hosting www.FABbnet.net on my own systems, however, I am free to use the low-volume, entry-level, non-commercial and 'free' streaming server from RealNetworks™.
There are still some drawbacks, the most notable being that my ADSL link is relatively slow. The other drawback is that I have to make some serious modifications in my firewall setup to allow these streams to go 'out' of my site. And even with those modifications, not everyone will have their player configured to receive the content in the same way I am delivering it.
If you're interested in technical details, you can visit the RealNetwork™ web pages intended for server administrators (click here.)
In any event, here is a small gallery of clips. For each clip I have tried to identify the source format, and the various conversion steps used to produce the final output.
I must add my usual disclaimer that all of these clips are copyrighted by me, and you have permission to download them for viewing only, not for reproduction, sale or other forms of commercial exploitation.
Otherwise, Home Movies!
