Thoughts :

Split the thread into a new one where members can put ideas about this.

Purpose of AAm video section : To provide high quality video with English subtitles.

Why youtube was not used earlier?
This is because they didn't provide high quality videos and some other limitations.

Advantages of using youtube for the site now:
1. You can provide HD videos now.

2. It would be free. Replacement of video section would mean that cost will reduce significantly. If I'm not wrong, then video streaming contribute most to the server bills. AAm comes early in google search results for "Alizée" and description of site says "High quality videos.....". Many people are attracted to that and they like to view videos here. I'm talking about the guest users. This is much better than putting ads to the sites, which makes them look bad.

3. Wider reach. With AAm videos section, only those people can see the videos who somehow want to know about her and stumble upon this site. By using youtube more people can watch the video and they can know about Alizée and AAm. That would help the site. In that case more anonymous users can discover her and the site.

4. Youtube has decided to increase the video duration limit to 15 minutes. Earlier when youtube was started they had no limit. Later they realized that no limit results are leading to uploads of movies and TV shows which was giving legal problems to them, even more after Google took over youtube. Now they have "Content ID" system, which can identify all the copyrighted material. So, now they have decided to increase the limit.

If you go to the video section of AAm, you would notice some videos which are long. Though some are longer than 15 minutes. Brad mentioned that he didn't want to split the video. http://alizeeamerica.com/play/?v=30

5. Videos would be playable on phones and other devices also. This is one limitation of AAm videos which can be overcome by using youtube. This once again leads to wider reach.

Limitations :

You can't all videos. Some videos will be blocked. Some will be available in selected countries.

What to do?

It's a good idea to reduce the site, but I would like to see the video section with the site.

Divide the video section in two parts. One AAm videos and other AAm youtube videos.

For AAm videos, prepare a list of must watch videos. One example of such a list : http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/show...7&postcount=24 This list would contain those videos which will be must watch ones and suffer various limitations of the youtube.

At present there are 126 videos on AAm. The new list would have upto 20-25 videos which would still reduce the cost significantly. Also the new additions to this list won't be many.

AAm youtube channel : Add as many videos as possible to this channel.
There will be two ways to manage all videos.
1. Create a page for AAm youtube videos. Add the link just next to Twitter, facebook links at the top. In that page keep everything similar to the original video section of AAm. I mean the only difference would be that you would be watching embedded youtube videos just like you do in threads. Rest would be same on that page, small description, English lyrics, translation and link for discussing the video. This would certainly reduce effort for searching her all videos and finding more about them. This would certainly lead to better organization of contents and details on the forum. This is the part which will be managed mostly by Ben. If he thinks that it is time taking and he finds it difficult to take out time for this, then he can certainly ask some of members here who can help in designing such pages. He can either ask anyone to design all pages or he can design one page and ask someone to do similar pages for all videos.

2. Managing the youtube account. Ben has already mentioned that it would be a sharable one. My suggestion would be to give this account to a team of 2 people who will do all the thing. First part is growing this into a full fledged video channels. Someone who has good internet and time to upload all the videos can do this task. After that there comes the managing part which includes frequents edits and updates.
There would be different playlist on the channel which would helpful in categorizing the videos. Playlist could be similar to the ones which are in the video section like Music videos, interviews, etc.

Invite people to suggest more and contribute to this.


P.S.
I hardly use youtube for watching videos so I don't know much. I might have missed many things related to youtube, but I don't have any better ideas.