Self-hosted is a first-class deployment shape for sovereign-cloud, regulated, or scale-economic video workloads. These pieces cover when self-hosted actually beats managed services, the build-vs-buy decision framework, the K8s + KEDA topology that makes it operable, and the cost math that makes flat-fee licensing converge to your hardware bill instead of growing per-minute. For teams whose compliance, sovereignty, or scale arithmetic forces the move off managed.