The online video industry has received constant growing interest and demand for a few years now. As people are staying home more, they are consuming more video content than how they used to. Especially technologies like video streaming and hosting are becoming a crucial and indispensable part of our daily lives. Streaming sites like Netflix or Disney+ are examples of over-the-top and video-on-demand platforms that have been receiving significant growth in recent years.
Castr provides video on demand features in all of our livestream plans, making it easy and accessible for everyone to get started and make the most out of streaming videos online.
To fully understand how you and your business can get started with your VOD models with Castr, we’ve put together this article focusing on video on demand.
Why Businesses Should Start a VOD Project
VOD is short for video on demand and refers to video content that is hosted online for users to access anytime, from any device. Such ease of accessibility makes VOD hosting ideal for businesses to make the most of their content after it is released.
There are many reasons for teams and businesses to start considering using VOD:
Rising demand for online video content
The online video industry is booming for more than a couple of years now. The value of the industry stays rising, yet amid a global pandemic, the numbers are now even higher than before. Research from Statista revealed that in 2020 the VOD industry grew 12% in user base and another 15% in annual revenue.
Multiple monetization options
There are many ways for businesses with VOD models to monetize their online video content with minimal effort. Depending on the type of content and your users, you can choose between Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD), Transactional Video on Demand (TVOD), or Advertising Video on Demand (AVOD) to monetize the video content for your business.
Scalability for businesses at any stage
Video on demand files is hosted on the cloud that requires little to no maintenance effort from your staff. As your company grows over time, the VOD model can grow accordingly easily. It is entirely up to you to decide how you want to distribute and use the VOD content you have and make the most out of it.
How to Save Your Livestreams as Video on Demand
Besides uploading videos to Castr’s Video Hosting, you can take the shortcut by using Castr’s newest Live-to-VOD tab in the Livestream Dashboard.
All of your livestreams are auto-recorded and auto-saved for your convenience. The recordings are available for download as mp4 files or made into VOD files hosted on Castr in a single click. Here’s how to do it:
1. Get started with a livestream project
2. Once your stream ended, head over to the Live-to-VOD tab to find the recording
3. The recording is saved as a temporary file. It will be deleted after 3 days if you don’t want to save it as a VOD.
4. Click the Save as VOD to permanently keep the file on Castr. You can choose to save the whole recording or trim to save just a part of it.
5. Castr provides an Embed Url and an Iframe Snippet for you to put the stream-now-VOD file anywhere you like.
6. You have successfully converted a livestream into an embeddable file on Castr!
How to Host VOD Content with Castr
Castr’s VOD Hosting fits into the demands of teams and businesses of any size. With the partnership with Fastly and Akamai CDNs, the VOD content is streamed in a reliable and stable connection with guaranteed quality.
To start a VOD project with Castr, simply follow the steps below. It cannot be faster and easier to set up a video on demand model than this!
How to Host VOD Content on Castr
1. Make sure you are subscribed to a Castr’s plan that fits your needs. Check out our product here.
2. Log in to Castr Dashboard
3. At the top of the web app, choose the Video Hosting tab.
In the Video Hosting Dashboard, you can find all the details of your VOD project on Castr: the number of your folders, the number of your files, how much storage is used vs. how much is available, and how much bandwidth you are using vs. how much is available.
4. Click New Folder and enter a name to create a new VOD folder
5. In the newly created folder, you can begin uploading files from your device or import from Google Cloud and Dropbox
6. You can also choose the settings for all the videos in the folder in the Settings and Security tab
7. Once the files have been uploaded successfully, you can use the Embed Url and Iframe Snippet to stream the videos anywhere you want.
Learn more about Castr’s HTML5 player in this blog.
8. You’re all set for VOD Hosting. Stream on!
We hope this article helped you get a clear overview of how to host VOD files and convert livestreams into VOD content. If you have any further questions, reach out to our 24/7 Support team via Castr’s live chat.
Join 200,000+ streamers worldwide
With Castr, you can easily livestream videos on any platform in no time.
No Castr Branding
We do not include our branding on your videos.
No Commitment
No contracts. Cancel or change your plans anytime.
24/7 Support
Highly skilled in-house engineers ready to help.
