"Baradanikto" wrote:
Does it make more sense to not host the videos myself and point the meta data to where the video actually exists.
Sure - if you can get away with it

For example, I pulled a public domain video from Vimeo and loaded it to my "test" site. Rather than doing that, can I change the meta data to point to the video on Vimeo?
Abso<censored>lutely!
There is no technical obstacle to doing that. The question is more of legal nature, e.g. is it okay with the video host that you access the video by means of your design vs what they usually offer? I have heard that YouTube ToS for example forbids playing videos with an app that is not of their (YT) design. You may say "yeah but the video is public domain" - so are books like "Dracula", "Frankenstein Monster", "Alice of Wonderland" or the Sherlock Holmes stories - but does not mean you can pick up a
paper copy at Barnes&Noble and walk out w/o paying

There are also legalistic wrangling like say
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright ... nd_framing - which i have neighter read nor looking forward to read.