If you already have it on a CDN place, you can just past in the nostr note the full FQDN path to the mp4 file. That's it.

Tbh, it's all trade offs. With Twitter/FB etc, you'll get "free" storage, uploads, shares etc. To get that you pay by surrendering control and being profiled. The risk is, one wrong move and years of work and effort are gone, forever. On the flip side, you use your VPS to install haven, pay for your domain etc, it costs, time and effort. But on the upside, you're in full control of your content, you're not being profiled (yet) and you're not going to be censored for wrongthink. Having set up my own relay, I get why people don't, however.

As a film maker, I suppose you already have that file on your local NAS storage, where you edit it and keep it in various versions. That NAS can be easily facing the internet through a web interface, that is just 2 clicks to configure. Then just copy/paste the full web path to that mp4 file from your NAS and share it on nostr. NO NEED to upload anything or pay anything.

I was interested in doing something like this for my photography. Unfortunately I don't have access to the router that my PC would be connected to and I can't leave it on all the time, but assuming those two conditions were met, is it really that easy to entirely self host?

I need to look closer at this, I'm now wondering if it'd help with Chronicle - stuck between UPnP or third party to establish links between accounts atm, wondering if this'd be easier than expecting people to mess with their routers.