Announcing: 23Video Module for Sitecore

We've created the Sitecore module for creating seamless integration with 23Video.com. Uploading, managing and sharing videos in Sitecore using 23Video is simple and easy as 1-2-3.

Introduction
While Sitecore's Media Library is pretty good at storing lot of things, video files have their own needs once the website is starting to have plenty of them. The module allows you to continue working with familiar Sitecore Media Library as if the video would be stored on the local Media Library but we are sending in background the actual video file to 23video.com and stream it from there. This will ease load on your CMS servers and gives you dedicated streaming servers for videos from 23Video.com while whole video management is still been done through Sitecore Media Library.

If you are familiar with 23Video you may have noticed that 23 is a lot more than just a streaming server but since I, as a CMS Consultant, like to keep and maintain my data on Sitecore in order to better handle training, asset management, as well as getting full power of Sitecore OMS on analytics, I decided to use 23Video just as regular CDN.

The 23Video -Module provides several advantages over a standard Medial Library, such as:

• External Storage for Video files
• Fast Dedicated Streaming servers with CDN capabilities
• Store in any common format and stream in FLV, MOV, AVI or M4V
• Smaller Media Library / Disk usage

But the best part on this module is that you can just plugin to Sitecore and CMS Editors will not have to learn new tools, in fact in Editorial environment they probably won't even notice that the videos are not streamed from the Media Library.

Video reference pointing to 23Video in Sitecore Media Library

Technical details

Sitecore communicates with 23Video API; we upload and delete video through API calls. The calls are hooked to ItemEventHandler.

When Editor wants to add video to the website s/he goes to Sitecore Media Library and uploads video file normally as it would be a media item internally.
Once video is uploaded successfully we send the actual video file to 23Video.com from the CMS. After successful upload 23Video.com returns us URL for uploaded video in 23Video.com. We, then, delete video from CMS Media Library and replace it with URL reference to 23video.com.
Editor can then continue editing, publishing and adding meta data to the media item in Sitecore.
The module is designed so it can be installed on existing solution without having a risk to break anything.
I have not created migration script (sending existing video files from media library) but that is easy to extend if needed.

Installation
- One package that adds text field to file -template for 23Video ID.
- 3 DLL's: DotNetOpenAuth.dll, 23API.dll and Addition.TwentyThreeVideo.dll
- ItemEventHandler, Hooks and appSettings keys for 23video API calls on Web.Config.

...and yes, it is HTML5 Video ready.

Pricing
23Video service comes with flat monthly price (at the time of writing this $675 per month) check out the price on their website.
For Sitecore module price,  please drop me a line at jp at additionconsulting.com in case you are interested.