Comments on: Which video sharing site is best?

By: russell

russell — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 21:05:01 +0000

viddler seems the way to go, all the others have issues. i spent a day learning this the hard way simply trying to upload a family video and keep it private. jeez what a pain. youtube stinks since you can’t just send a friend a link, and the others are problematic, either pay or slow (vimeo). and metacafe is phenomenally incompetent, given their size, they appear to have no privacy capability, and their help search is weak. flickr, is severely limited.
thanks to BRR for his insightful comment.

By: Greg

Greg — Thu, 28 May 2009 16:59:36 +0000

this is a good review if you want to ‘share’ your work.

what if you want to monetize it? there seems to be a dearth of sites dedicated to a pay-per-view, with the Apple Store being limited to major movie producers…

would be interested in a post on your thoughts there…

new reader here — keep up the great work Terry!

By: JCotton

JCotton — Tue, 26 May 2009 03:05:40 +0000

Here is a rundown comparison regarding the terms of use for many popular video sharing sites. Blip.tv does quite well. http://bit.ly/82Wlr

Copyright isn’t just about big media clamping down on consumer use (and fair use). As an artist and a creator, you may want to release your works under a flexible license. All rights reserved does not allow a remix culture. Creative Commons gives you more freedom in the way you distribute your creation. Worth considering when choosing a video sharing service.

By: MacBoyRules

MacBoyRules — Fri, 22 May 2009 22:45:43 +0000

@ Jim Poor,

I totally disagree with your comment about breaking the law. Using a song on a personal video for no profit has not been proven in a court of law to be illegal. It has only been interpreted as such by the copyright holders themselves, and non of the media companies want to go against them because of the costs involved. The RIAA spends literally millions of dollars fighting for thousands of dollars of royalties, and forces anyone fighting them to do the same.

I just don’t understand where the music industry gets off thinking that their artform is any different than other artform, and have some kind of clandestine rights.

If I were to shoot a video of myself in front of a sculpture, and post it, am I breaking the law? If I pass by a record company which is blasting one of its artists outside its building, but I record me walking on the sidewalk with the music in the background, and post it, is that breaking the law? If I am doing a podcast in front of my computer screen, and I happen to have one of Terry’s awesome Southern Utah photos on my screen at that moment, am I breaking the law?

I am a firm believer that copyright holders should have protections and their works should be paid for. Which they are. Amply. Pirating music online is one thing, the wrong thing, but using a song for a video while you kids does a stupid dance to that song so and posting it so Grandma in Florida can chuckle is something complete different. When did common sense leave our society?

By: Keith

Keith — Fri, 22 May 2009 13:47:58 +0000

I agree the music issue is an issue and I can see both sides. What I don’t understand is in this youtube world why haven’t (cause of the record labels) the likes of you tube or someone else developed a micropayment option for personal use of a song for doing just such a thing. If I want to add music to a short video, unless I know someone in the biz who will let me use their song, my option is sing my self (uh NO) or break the law. The prob is 99% of the time the artist wont care as long as your not making money or they aren’t losing money but that 1% of the time when your putting their music on some questionable video or making money in some indirect way, like blog site hits, its a big issue.

I’d say thats my 2 cents but I think it was more like a nickle.

By: Jim Poor

Jim Poor — Thu, 21 May 2009 11:36:12 +0000

So far, my personal choice has been Vimeo, but I don’t do a lot of video. It is good to see many of these sites compared side by side.

@Seth,

If you’re uploading videos for public display using copyrighted music, you are breaking the law whether or not you are making any money. The fact that “everyone” does it doesn’t make it OK either. I say Bravo to YouTube!

By: Eduard

Eduard — Thu, 21 May 2009 08:22:59 +0000

Thank you for this review, it’s great to have a short compare like this.
Normally I use YouTube but that is out of habit for me, many people use YouTube because they don’t know about the existing of the others I think. (at least in Europe)
I love to ‘play’ with my AppleTV en watch the content on YouTube, but sometimes the quality is just … on the big screen.

Gr. Eduard van Amstel, The Netherlands.

By: BRR

BRR — Thu, 21 May 2009 06:20:18 +0000

Prefer Viddler as do many other photographers. No limit to video in size or playback.

By: Seth

Seth — Wed, 20 May 2009 19:58:14 +0000

Good assessment of the different options. I agree with most of what you said above although I’d like to add that YouTube is so big that sometimes it works against you. Let me explain. I edit lots of harmless videos of my 2 year old daughter. I often ad copyrighted music to the video. I ALWAYS put a disclaimer in the notes section saying that I do not own the song and I am not making any money off the song, etc. Within the last year I have had 4 videos fully removed from YouTube by their copyright dept and I have had 6 videos that they disabled all audio. Twice, the audio was disabled upon upload to YouTube which means to me that they are doing it before they even get a claim from the record company. This is infuriating as I am not making money or showing harmful images. I now use YouTube and Vimeo. Vimeo has much less viewership and I think that works in my favor sometimes as I am yet to have any videos booted by them.