Sharepoint online - displaying videos

[Thomas Capacci]

I have setup a SharePoint Team Site for a colleague and enabled external sharing.

He is working with an external consultant who is authenticating with a Windows account (no O365 license).

They mostly use Libraries to share files and videos, the consultant is uploading a lot of video files.

The problem with videos is that as soon as you want to see it, it downloads the file...I was wondering if in this scenario there would be a way to have the video displayed "embedded" in SharePoint instead of having to download files every time.

Thank you.

[#2 · Accepted solution]

In what type of library are the videos being stored? When stored in an "Asset library" (instead of a normal Document Library) accessing the videos from there, they'll open in an HTML5-based video player.

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/set-up-an-asset-library-to-store-image-audio-or-video-files...

Alternatively you can create pages anywhere in your SharePoint site and embed video's there using a Media WebPart (classic pages) or Embed or Video Web Part (modern site pages)

[#3]

Stream is the recommended software for watching/sharing videos. It provides much more functionality than SharePoint. 

A better approach would be to create an Office Group and use it contain the accounts for the people that need to view the videos in a Stream channel and the docs in a SPO doc library. You can add the Stream web part to the SPO site to provide an integrated experience

[#4]

Agree with Dean here...SPO can store videos, but the visualization experience is not optimized and that's why it's recommended to use stream instead

[#5]

This is exactly what I was after, thanks for the tip!

[#6]

Thanks Dean, can you grant access to Stream to external users?

[#7]

External users cannot be added to Stream for viewing or uploading but this is a highly voted feature on user voice. Even if the Stream is attached to an O365 group that includes external users it still doesn't let them use it.

[#8]

Ok thanks for the heads up!

[#9]

@Dean_Gross  

Hi Dean

I already have a document library on Sharepoint Online in its own site collection with huge amounts of videos. The problem is my videographers when asked by a client for a particular old video, they cannot preview it on sharepoint (and it's too slow) and need to download the file, which is sometimes the wrong file thus wasting time. 

Is there a way I can import all these videos (already in the document library) to a Microsoft Stream channel I created and give permissions to the Officegroup? Additionally because they are huge files, where can I see the storage metrics of the Stream channel? Can I change its location to point to another site collection? 

[#10]

@paulpaschaHi Paul,

Is it possible to play the video with HTML5-based video player without opening a seperate explorer window, ideally embedded on the page?

[#11]

@george_71239 Hi, do not move your stuff to stream,   Stream is on its way out and being replaced by SharePoint and OneDrive,   see the changes that have been made to Teams where all new recordings of meetings will no longer be saved to Stream but to SharePoint/OD.

O365 implemented lots of new streaming capabilties to the SharePoint platform so these files are streamed and not just FireHosed down to your users.

More changes are to come with Stream, 
The new version of Microsoft Stream - Microsoft Stream | Microsoft Docs

[#12]

How can one play/preview videos with sharepoint online from a mac? The files are large ( 1- 4GB) mts files.

Thank you.