Moderator, if this is not the best forum to post in, please move my topic
I’ve searched the internet high and low and cannot find good information about developing a commercial website that sells long play downloadable (NOT streaming) video products. The reason I don’t believe streaming would be a viable option is because the videos I offer are not “movies,” i.e., watch once and then you’re done. My videos are educational in nature and the student will want to watch parts over and over again, refer to it in the future, etc. In addition, the content is long play (catalog of 3 dozen tangible DVDs to be converted to downloadable videos) These DVDs range from 1-2 hour DVD-5’s all the way up to a 2 set DVD-9 totaling EIGHT hours. All that in addition to the new content that will be created. I think the download-to-own model is the best way to go unless I’ve missed or not considered something about streaming that could make this work?
To make the download process easier for these long videos, I’m envisioning a backend account area where, after the purchase is made, the student can download the DVD chapter by chapter so that he doesn’t have to download everything at once. Just simply break it down into digestible chunks. Customers are from all over the world so I believe a CDN would be necessary, perhaps making use of Amazon Cloudfront and S3 for storage?
The research I have done thus far turned up these sites/services that specialize in downloadable products:
Have you created this type of website before? If so, what would you suggest for a platform, or would something like this need to be coded from scratch? Wordpress? A particular shopping cart? I should mention that I’m not a coder and I’m actively seeking someone to develop this site.
Wow. That’s a lot of data. Downloading all of that would be pure torture. No offense. Maybe w/ a school network…
It shouldn’t be any different from other products that offer digital downloads. See, for example, sites like Total Training ([b]fantastic product[/b], I’m using it right now for Illustrator CS5), or even [url=http://www.adobe.com/]Adobe.com. They offer large downloads. Of course, for Adobe, the key is the only thing purchased. I wouldn’t recommend using a key to unlock it, just because it doesn’t seem like a fitting system. I would look more into the Total Training network because that’s basically what you want, just on a smaller scale (not hundreds of GBs of data like you wanted).
To be honest, physical CDs that are shipped would be a better idea. I can’t imagine that packaging and printing them would cost much, and customer pays for shipping… (sadly) You could offer a choice, if you want (choose between download or shipped, physical like Adobe does).
Well that’s the thing, we’ve been shipping tangible DVDs for the last 9 years. But as more people get high speed internet connections, and more people become accustomed to services like Netflix, we’ve begun to get more and more requests for downloadable video products. Especially from international customers because the cost of shipping is high, and then on top of shipping, they also have to pay VAT and other taxes. I will look at the total training website that you linked to, thanks =) My thinking is to offer the new video content in 720P and the bitrate won’t have to be TOO high because it’s mostly talking head type stuff, not high fast action, so possibly even 1.5Mbps would work… All the older stuff is standard definition… So there’s numerous services that help you to sell these downloadable products, for example digitalcontentcenter.com looks to be a great service, but they don’t support the ability to break up the downloads into smaller pieces. I think that would be a nice feature to have because it fits with the type of video products being sold…
Maybe w/ a school network…