This page in German.

The use of videos and animated images in an intranet is the same as in the internet, but it is more complex to support than it seems. The video or image data is opened from the local computer, as with all other documents.

Unfortunately, supporting such data formats introduces the following problems that need to be solved:

• Special software programs may be needed to support proprietary data formats. One solution would be to install a Video-Player in HTML5 with a fallback to Flash.
• Video file sizes are large and must be downloaded. Poor or unstable internet connections require lower-quality and smaller video files. A solution would be to use "adaptive streaming" from your video server system.
• Different devices use different codecs for video data. But each video can only be encoded with one codec. A solution would be to use a transcoding service such as Telestream Cloud, client software such as Camtasia Studio or Screenflow, or provide a variety of encoded versions from your video server software (many commercial products offer this feature, see below.)
• Editing videos is computationally intensive and time consuming (with high hardware costs when your videos are hosted behind your firewall.)

YouTube is the de facto service on the internet, and it has set the standards for video hosting. The only notable competitor is Facebook. But neither Google, the owners of YouTube, nor Facebook are liked by German companies with a focus on security and privacy.

Easy solutions and workarounds

• Make the files available to download.
• Support the native display of video data

At the time of writing (September 2015), there is no video add-on in the Atlassian Marketplace, that enables the upload of videos into Confluence, as well as supporting transcoding and "adaptive streaming" to correctly serve a file with the right codec to the device that requested it.

Overview of video hosting and in-house video streaming services

This table is ordered by our impressions of the service for large businesses.

Name	Open Source?	Cost	Cost details	Company Location / Privacy	Behind Firewall?	Comments
jwplayer / flowplayer / flowplayer flash	COMMERCIAL	LOW	Between 0 und 300 Euro per year.			Upload the data to Confluence and display the file within the player.
Kaltura On-Prem or Community Edition / kaltura.org (Open source on GitHub)	HYBRID	LOW	No published price list, and no response to our questions.	USA, NY (Privacy)		If an open source model is appropriate, this is a very attractive option.
MediaDrop	OPEN SOURCE	LOW	Software is free, transcoding costs from US $0.02 per minute of transcoded video served.			Tutorial video showing how MediaDrop works with your workflow.
YouTube	FREE	LOW	Free.	USA (Privacy)		Unlisted videos are reachable only by a 'secret' link, but anyone can guess these links. There is no protection against unauthorized viewing or link sharing. All videos are public on YouTube.
ViMP	COMMERCIAL	MEDIUM	5000 Euro one-time cost for a lifetime license.	München, DE (Privacy)
vimeo Business	COMMERCIAL	LOW	600 Euro per year. Up to 5TB storage, unlimited views.	USA, NY (Privacy)		Some of our customers (DAX companies) use vimeo with their Linchpin-Confluence intranet. Security options include: limited access to specific IP address ranges, domains, VPN, password protected videos, not publicly listed on www.vimeo.com.
vzaar	COMMERCIAL	LOW	From 25 Euro per month.	UK (Privacy)
Ravnur	COMMERCIAL	MEDIUM	500 USD per month.	USA (Privacy)
Simplex Server (xtendx)	COMMERCIAL	HIGH	Base installation is about 15,000 Euro. A sample customer offer including support was quoted at 19,200 Euro.	CH (Privacy)
Screencast Pro	COMMERCIAL	LOW	9.95 USD per month.	USA (Privacy)
SproutVideo	COMMERCIAL	LOW	From 25 USD per month.	USA, NY (Privacy)
Viddler	COMMERCIAL		No published price list, and no response to our questions.	USA (Privacy)
iPlayerHD	COMMERCIAL	LOW	From 19 USD per month.	USA  (Privacy)
MediaGoblin	OPEN-SOURCE	LOW	Free.			During our test, mp4 files were not supported. We contacted support, but did not receive a reply.
Brightcove	COMMERCIAL	HIGH	1 Video Cloud Account, 300,000 streams (=views), 7TB delivery bandwidth, 1 TB managed content (monthly entitlement), 7 Users, Silver Support.(overview). Yearly cost: 11,000 Euro.	USA, Boston (Privacy)
MediaPlatform	COMMERCIAL	HIGH	15,000 - 20,000 USD per year. On premise installation with 12 VMs	USA (Privacy)
Vidizmo	COMMERCIAL	HIGH	15,000 - 25,000 USD per year.	USA (Privacy)
VBRICK Rev	COMMERCIAL	HIGH	About 30,000 USD per year.	USA (Privacy)
movingIMAGE24 Video Manager	COMMERCIAL	HIGH	Minimum of 3000 Euro per month.	D, Berlin (Privacy)		Our customer B.Braun Melsungen AG uses this with a Confluence based intranet
Qumu Enterprise	COMMERCIAL	HIGH	On premise installation: 85,000 Euro basic installation. Typical: 150,000 - 185,000 Euro. Cloud: 1,500 Euro per month (basic package). Enterprise: 42,000 EUR per year.	USA (Privacy)
ensemble video	COMMERCIAL		No published price list, and no response to our questions.	USA, NY (Privacy)
Facebook	FREE	LOW	Free.	USA (Privacy)		Only supports Facebook hosted videos (public). Otherwise, not recommended.
Wowza Streaming Engine	COMMERCIAL	LOW	65 USD per month.	USA, Colorado (Privacy)		Wowza is predominantly for live streaming. It is not a pure video-on-demand service.

Notes about video and security in organizations

• Videos are used mostly to expand an organization's reach or impact.
• Recordings and interviews are often stored in a (semi) public location.
• No corporate intranet in reality supports "confidential" videos.
• The strict requirements that apply to data in an intranet, may not apply to most videos in an organization, as the classification of videos is dependent on their content. German privacy laws covering identifiable personal information are particularly strict, especially information about religion, health and sexual orientation. Such information is not usually found in videos. Note that Germany has a law that can prevent companies from making videos containing people public (Recht am eigenen Bild).
• Trade secrets must also be protected as strongly as possible. As a rule, such "top secret" information should not be documented in videos, but in text form only.
• It must be stated that companies these days are unable to prevent 'data theft'. Even when computers are protected, someone can bring a smartphone and photograph or video the content, and easily forward that content to unauthorized people. None of the above mentioned video solutions can protect against this. Unfortunately, solutions that offer 'additional security measures, increase the cost, but don't usually increase the security of the data.

Our recommendations

• Large organizations should store video data internally. You should check how much video data you have. Most of the videos will not be 'secret' - check this carefully.
• If you have encountered the need for videos in Confluence for the first time, simply upload a video into Confluence and see if you can view it. In many cases, this will be good enough for a start. Of course, video data can be downloaded from with Confluence, saved to the local computer, and transferred between employees.
• The next step is to install and work with an embedded player such as Flowplayer or jwplayer. That means that the video data stays on the Confluence server and the player is loaded and run from the internet. There is almost no security risk with this solution.
• If you want to store more than 30 professional or confidential videos per year in a Confluence intranet, you should review the open source solutions, such as kaltura.org or MediaDrop. Services such as Telestream Cloud can help with production and transcoding.
• If you produce more than 180 videos per year and want to limit distribution to inside the organization, you should definitely consider a professional and established commercial product. Most vendors that we contacted responded immediately and often, but the price conditions were often complicated and unclear. A professional commercial solution for use behind a firewall is not cheap, and this fact won't change any time soon.