What's the best solution for embedding video into an ASP.NET website?

Question

Ok first off, I know nothing about video player technologies so any help whatsoever is appreciated. I'm sorry if this is vague but I'm hoping that with feedback I can get more specific. Basically I'm trying to figure out what options there are for embedding video player technology into an ASP.NET website and what are the pros and cons of each.

Right now I know there are sites like Vimeo where you can upload videos and link them to your website but this solution doesn't seem very customizable. You can also embed flash players into a website without the need to have a Vimeo account but I don't want to convert every video to flash and that would be a maintenance problem later. If I host the video on the server it will slow things down and potentially be a problem too. There are a lot of options and tradeoffs so I just wanted to get some feedback from people who have dealt with this sort of thing.

If you have implemented embedded video content in an ASP.NET page before, what solution did you choose and how did things turn out?

EDIT The videos aren't really a core part of the website and they won't need to be dynamically submitted or anything. I would have the videos during development and I'm just wondering what the best overall solution would be for any client that wants a simple video on their website.

Answer 1

I just happened to come across this while tinkering with the new ASP.Net MVC3 with the Razor view engine.

You can quickly embed videos using Razor's video helper method.

Syntax:

Flash:

@*Video.Flash(filename [, width, height])*@
@Video.Flash("test.swf", "100", "100")

Media Player:

@*Video.MediaPlayer(filename [, width, height])*@
@Video.MediaPlayer("test.wmv", "100", "100")

Silverlight video:

@*Video.Silverlight(filename, width, height)*@
@Video.Silverlight("test.xap", "100", "100")