I have recently finished a big video editing project and I am debating putting it online, however if I do, I would want to make it available in such a way that it can be played in a persons browser. I am planning on using flash to do this, but the file will be several hundred megabytes if I did it in one file. I would like to either get a free host that can support huge file sizes, or split the video up into 19 to 20 megabyte flv files (as that is the file size limit of my current free host) and have a single swf play them all back, does anyone know of a good system to split up the flv files or one to play them back? I can probably make the playback system, but that would rely on having the split up file. I have found tools that claim to split up flv files, but I haven't seen any free ones, or ones that do it based on size. I would also like to make a download available, but the file that would be downloaded would be a 761MB divx file, so I would need a host that could support lots of bandwidth and huge files. If anyone has any ideas please let me know as I would like to get this figured out.

Thanks

I've definitely seen full-length (read, 1-2 hour) video files on Google Video; wouldn't that mean it supports pretty big files, or smaller files with some extreme lossy compression?

YouTube supports up to 10 minutes long, files up to 1 GB. Given that obscene size, I'd expect GV allows decent bitrates for such long videos.

GV has ceased their hosting services. Depending on the genre there's a site I could host it on for you though.

http://vimeo.com/

YouTube would not work as the video is almost 2 hours. I will look into vimeo.com, as it looks like it might work. I am not sure what the genre of the video is, it is an edited version of a recording of a school play. The play was a Greek tragedy. Elfprince13, what is the site? This video is a lower quality version of the 2.73GB version that will also be made available. I am hoping to make this video easy for people at school to access, so having it on some hard to get to non-permanent url won't work, but if it is a permalink It might be able to be linked to. I like these ideas, though I would still prefer to be able to put it on a site that I control. I would ask the person from the school that runs the website to put it there, but it is hosted in house on an old Linux box that she doesn't know her way around very well, and the box is served from a single T1 shared with all of the school internet users (and therefore bandwidth is at a premium).

Thanks to all of those who have provided suggestions (and to all who will continue to do so).

EDIT:

vimeo is questionable as it will not support the quality that I would prefer (the low quality (with insane compression) version is still bigger than there free account will allow.

EDIT 2:

I may have found a solution, I am not sure yet, but blip.tv might work. Though if anyone has any ideas for me to host it myself I would still prefer that.

Hold on, you can convert the divx video to flv, right? So why don't you split the source video file (avi, I presume) into many pieces and then convert those to flv? Then you should be able to use your idea of playing though all of them with a single swf.

I don't because then predicting resulting flv file size would be a pain. Though I might if I find that is the only viable option.

Ah, I see.
You would definitely have to approximate, and you'd probably end up with files smaller than 20 mbs, which would mean you have to deal with more individual files than you would want.

Right now I am looking into something that might help you, so I'll post later about what I find.

EDIT: Nope, what I was thinking didn't seem to work. I was thinking that programs for converting video to FLV would have a file splitter option. Turns out, none of the ones I could find do. I hope that host you found does the trick, because this line of thinking doesn't seem to be leading anywhere (except splitting the source video into smaller than necessary chunks to assure that the flvs aren't too big).

Aberdeen Sci-Fi. I'm an admin, and we have terabytes of server space + bandwidth. We're mostly sci-fi (with some action + horror thrown in), but my guess is, if you talked to one of the guys who pays the bills, and offered say, a $20 donation nobody would complain.

your other option of course is to upload it to youtube (I think they support HD now?) in segments.

Archive.org will take it, as long as you provide it under some sort of free license (Creative Commons, for example). They don't have any size cap, either.