Almost everyone I know who uses a pre-recorded video CDN for videos to be embedded in a website uses Vimeo Pro. I am talking about either public corporate videos, videos requiring client approval (password protected) or pay-per-view videos which shouldn’t be seen freely, but only behind a paywall. (This includes videos visible behind a paywall on a membership website, i.e. for courses.) Almost a year ago in January 2022, I published VideoPress vs Vimeo Pro/Vimeo Plus: a practical comparison for embedded video. Although VideoPress costs about half of Vimeo Pro, no one I know has switched from Vimeo Pro to VideoPress (other than my brief experiment for that review). However, I am certain that the 4 compelling features I am about to share with you will achieve that in the case of Bunny Stream. (I myself canceled my Vimeo Pro subscription after comparing) Only one of the 4 features is the pricing. Ahead, I’ll explain them.  SPOILER ALERT: One of the 4 features is a unique freedom with CC (closed captions) and their language listings.

In this article

• A brief description about Bunny Stream
• Feature 1: Granularity with encoding
• Feature 2: Granularity with the player, and the closed captions
• Feature 3: Granularity with the CDN
• Feature 4: Pricing
• Conclusions and suggestion to Bunny Stream

A brief explanation about Bunny Stream

In common with Vimeo Pro, Bunny Stream is a website and service where you go to upload videos for later embedding into a website where you have enough control to post videos, either as embed code or as a link. Like Vimeo Pro, Bunny Stream does the following:

• You upload a video at the largest size/quality you’d like to be able to embed on a website, i.e. perhaps 4K DCI, 4K UHD, 1080p or 720p, depending upon what is the largest one you have. Then Bunny Stream creates the smaller sizes for you (as does Vimeo Pro), but with an important difference covered ahead.
• You can select a thumbnail.
• You can allow a video (or Video Library) to be embedded anywhere or on those domains you decide to whitelist, to thwart piracy.
• You can upload one or more caption files (.SRT or .VTT) so your viewers can optionally activate CC (closed captions) in one or more than one different languages you uploaded, but with an important difference covered ahead.
• You can optionally have a watermark on your videos.

Unlike Vimeo Pro or YouTube, Bunny Stream is not a website for the public to browse videos. It’s for embedding the videos in your websites or your clients’ websites, or to link from an email message.

Feature 1: Granularity with encoding

Instead of forcing every uploaded video to create many different smaller resolutions (as happens with Vimeo Pro and consumes extra time), with Bunny Stream you can pick the sizes you want in advance for a particular Video Library, i.e. for a particular client or project. For example, in the case of uploading a 4K UHD video, instead of having it create smaller sizes/resolutions for 1080p, 720p, 480p, 360p and 240p versions, you can choose in advance to create a smaller list. For example, you can have it make only 1080, 720p and 480p  if you know that your audience will always be able to play 480p minimum. By reducing the number of sizes, the processing time is decreased dramatically.

I created a Video Library for ProVideo Coalition where I set that particular Video Library to include only 1080p, 720, and 480p resolutions, as seen in the screenshot below.

Feature 2: Granularity with the player, and the closed captions

The above screenshot shows some of the player controls which Bunny Stream allows us to activate or deactivate.

Both Vimeo Pro and Bunny Stream allow you to set colors, watermark and to include or exclude certain buttons. (I haven’t tested the watermark feature so far with Bunny Stream.) One of those buttons can be the CC button to activate closed captions. However, only Bunny Stream allows you to name those language names however you want. For example, if you are going to include closed captions in the Castilian language (the most widespread of all Spanish languages), you can list it as castellano instead of being forced to list it as español, or “Spanish”, a practice which foments the coverup surrounding the linguicide (linguistic genocide) attempt I covered in my book The Castilian Conspiracy (or the original version, La conspiraciòn del castellano). Similarly, if you are going to include closed captions in the primary language spoken in Finland, you can list it as suomi, suomen kieli or however you prefer to write it. You may also do this with the English language, in case you want to specify the regional variant, for example, English-US, English-UK, English-CA or English-AU. Unlike with Vimeo Pro, YouTube or other platforms, Bunny Stream has given us content producers the freedom to write the language names however we choose, and then they will appear that way in the viewer’s menu, as you can tell if you select the language after clicking on the gear icon in the video below. Thank you Bunny Stream for this freedom!

Above is a screenshot of the embedded video i would like to share with you. The embedded code from Bunny Stream works with WordPress video sites that I manage, but not here on ProVideo Coalition (where I am not an administrator and don’t have access to override the extra security used here). That’s why, when you click on the above screenshot, you will open the CrímenesVerdaderos.tv page (in a different tab) where I embedded without any issue. The CrímenesVerdaderos.tv page is hosted on my TecnoTur service, home of CombinedHosting.com.

I uploaded the above 1080p video to Bunny Stream in ProRes 422 (HQ) at exactly 24 fps. (The reason tu upload ProRes 422 (HQ) is to reduce generation loss, knowing that the CDN (Bunny Stream, Vimeo Pro or YouTube) will be reencoding it later to different sizes using a much more lossy códec. I personally have proven that all of those three platforms indeed allow uploading ProRes422 (HQ), even though they may not mention it publicly.) As indicated earlier, I set the ProVideo Coalition to include 1080p, 720p and 480p. Feel free to play the video and set the resolution as desired. When testing the CC (closed captions) note that the dialog begins starting at about 30 seconds from the beginning of this clip, so you won’t see any captions until that point. To choose a different language for the captions, click on the gear symbol.

The above scene has been shared courtesy of the producer of CRÍMENES VERDADEROS (TRUE CRIME), which I covered recently in this article: Online series CRÍMENES VERDADEROS planned to be on Amazon soon.

Feature 3: Granularity with the CDN

With Bunny Stream you can tell it which geographical areas are critical to have the best playback speed. If your clients or viewers are in a particular state or country for a particular project, it is silly to have the videos optimized for worldwide playback.

Feature 4: Pricing

Bunny Stream’s current pricing is as follows:

• Encoding and transcoding are free.
• Storage is from U$0.01 per GB (gigabyte)
• The CDN traffic cost is from U$0.005 per GB (gigabyte). You can optionally pay a few cents extra to optimize the CDN for specific areas by adding more replication points.
• You pay a minimum of U$12 per year to cover the above.
• There is a free trial
• There is an easy calculator with three sliders to estimate fees. The sliders can be changed to display GB (gigabytes) or TB (terabytes). See the screenshot below:

The above is only a fixed screenshot. Please visit the Bunny Stream website to do your own calculations.

Conclusions and suggestion to Bunny Stream

I love all of the four features mentioned above: more granularity with encoding, more freedom when listing languages for closed captions, more geographic granularity in the CDN and the pricing. The only change I would like to recommend to Bunny Stream would be on the front end, for the viewers to switch languages: Please move the language setting from the general controls button to the CC button.

For more information, visit Bunny Stream.

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FTC disclosure

Bunny Stream is not paying for this review. Some of the manufacturers listed above have contracted Tépper and/or TecnoTur LLC to carry out consulting and/or translations/localizations/transcreations. So far, none of the manufacturers listed above is/are sponsors of the TecnoTur, BeyondPodcasting, CapicúaFM or TuSaludSecreta programs, although they are welcome to do so, and some are, may be (or may have been) sponsors of ProVideo Coalition magazine. Some links to third parties listed in this article and/or on this web page may indirectly benefit TecnoTur LLC via affiliate programs. Allan Tépper’s opinions are his own. Allan Tépper is not liable for misuse or misunderstanding of information he shares.