There are lots of ways to upload a video and of them are lacking basic functionality that people expect, they are all a compromise in various ways and having multuple ways makes it confusing to know which way is best. Both the authoring experience and the viewing experience is poor in various ways for all of the current core options.

There is a large number of 3rd party video plugins in the moodle plugin directory but almost of them are tied to a 3rd party service and don't help when it comes to simple videos inside Moodle.

A non exhaustive list of all of cons of each scenario:

1) create a label and drag in the the video

Pros:

• easy drag and drop
• can add extra intro text, either above or below the video

Cons:

• Can't have a transcript or other video features
• Doesn't have a proper title either in the course view or the index
• Video is inline on the course page which is often not what is desired
• no completion on video watched
• video isn't as large as possible
• Because it relies on the filter to work you don't get 'roundtrip' editing, ie you don't see the video when you edit it

2) create a label and insert the video using editor video button{}

Pros:

• can add extra intro text, either above or below the video
• Can have a transcript but its tedious to manage

Cons:

• Doesn't have a proper title either in the course view or the index
• Video is inline on the course page which is often not what is desired
• no completion on video watched
• video isn't as large as possible
• Exposes the author to all the media tag complexities in the editor

3) create a page and embed the video

Pros:

• Is a dedicated page
• Can have a transcript but its tedious to manage
• can add extra intro text, either above or below the video

Cons:

• doesn't work with drag and drop of files
• video isn't as large as possible
• no completion on video watched

4) create a mod_file instance

Pros:

• Works with drag and drop

Cons:

• No ability to upload a transcript
• No ability to add text under the video

Most video platforms in the wild have co evolved into a set of standard features that everyone expects and that people miss.

So proposing there should be a single proper video activity that by default does most of these basic things out of the box:

• Is a dedicated video page, like mod_page or mod_file
• Have the video page use a large page layout and use as much screen as possible by default and still allow full screen
• Proper responsive layout because the module know everything that is on screen rather than just generic content regions
• Use the normal Moodle video player api for consistent playing
• Accepts files from drag and drop but intercepts them and prompts to create a mod_video instance by default
• Has completion support built in based on the video actually being watched, you can still optionally allow completion manually. Have a simple js event for this so its easy to implement support in various video players.
• Have a description under the video rather than above which is the defacto layout for most video platforms
• Have transcript support and other advanced settings built into the activity settings rather than buried in the atto or tinymce settings
• Because it is a dedicated module type you get nicer stats and auditing at various levels, at the moment videos are just randomly buried in other content. ie if you visit /mod/video/index.php you get a list of all course videos the same as other activity types
• Much reduced surface area for course authors to get things wrong or mess up a video tag in the html editor
• Themers can consistently improve the video experience across the board rather than pushing this burden onto course authors
• Because Moodle hosts and controls everything we avoid all the licensing, cost, data sovereignty issues etc with a 3rd party video service

More advanced things which could be added later:

• Has a smaller nice preview of the video as a static image in the course index
• If you have a transcript uploaded have a transcript mode which is kept in sync with the video
• If you have a large amount of content under the video and scroll down while it is playing move the video to a picture in picture format
• There could be subplugin support for different video platforms so you get a consistent Moodle video experience even when mixing and matching videos from different sources
• Typical voting and commenting on videos (optional as a setting) and these could also support groups and groupings