Drupal as a video hosting and processing platform
Drupal can be configured to work as a fully functional YouTube or Google Video clone, by combining video processing modules, such as Video (http://drupal.org/project/video) or Media Mover (http://drupal.org/project/media_mover) and other modules, such as Views. Setting up the environment to serve video requires some familiarity with setting up Linux-based servers and an open source video conversion utility called FFmpeg. The advantage of building your own video-processing site is that it gives you full control over all aspects of your material with none of the privacy concerns, or concerns over inappropriate content that you may have with YouTube or Google Video.
Additionally, if your academic program needs to support the hosting of large amount of video, using either Video or Media Mover, will have performance benefits. As noted earlier, using Video or Media Mover requires a more robust server environment, but the benefits of hosting your...