Local newspapers who want to stream more video on their websites are often restricted by prohibitive storage and hosting costs.

Some have gone down the route of establishing their own YouTube channels, but this takes traffic away from their sites and restricts their ability to monetise their own content.

Now the company behind the Newslink news and picture wire service has devised a new product designed to tackle the problem.

As well as providing storage for multimedia files, the service, called tradeclips.com, will also give regional papers access to a large archive of audio, video and stills footage.

It is also designed to facilitate easier content-sharing and syndication between news providers who subscribe to the service.

Registered users of the system will be able to upload and download files free of charge, paying only for storage of their material.

The service is part of the Wirefast group of companies, which includes Newslink.

"Tradeclips is designed to appeal to all parts of the media industry," said chief technical officer Paul White, who has overseen the development of the service.

"We began developing the service in response to the growing interest in, and demand for, video content on newspaper and broadcast websites.

"We also recognised that the vastly increased file sizes involved, compared to our traditional text and picture delivery service, meant that regional publishers, in particular, faced challenges in providing the necessary infrastructure.

"At the same time we identified that the PR industry was beginning to expand the type of content it was offering to the media industry and it needed the same type of managed delivery service which Newslink has provided."

Business development manager Iain Fleming, a former national newspaper reporter, said the service would "tick many boxes" for regional papers.

"What it is going to do is allow local papers already doing video to ramp up video without a large amount of extra expenditure," he said.

"One Scottish newsapaper recently got a video of Susan Boyle singing 20 years ago. There was so much traffic it nearly broke their servers and they had to put it on YouTube."

Added Iain: "If they had been able to use our service they would have been able to monetise that."