A couple of weeks ago I started the discussion about which site(s) are best to do photo sharing and you guys responded loud and clear with your favorites and why they were your favorites, but in the end it was as I suspected that no single site had it all. The two favorites among you guys were Smugmug and Flickr. Well now it’s time to ask the same question, but this time about video sharing sites and I imagine that the answer is going to be the same. What’s “best” will greatly depend on what you’re looking for.
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What you might want in a video sharing site
I’m finding that I’m really enjoying shooting small clips and sharing them on the web with friends, family and colleagues. I used to cringe looking at YouTube clips because the quality was just so bad. I imagine that back when YouTube first started, they were encoding the video using lower quality settings to keep the file sizes down and therefore the bandwidth costs down. However, now that YouTube isn’t the only game in town, they’ve had to step up their game to stay competitive. I asked on Twitter which sites were people using and why and the four sites that kept coming up over and over again were YouTube, Vimeo, Smugmug and Blip.TV. So I decided to give them all a spin.
Here are some things you might want to consider when picking a video sharing site:
- Quality of the video playback
- Allowable length of the video
- Ability to make a video private or secure with a password
- Embeddable player
- Customizable Player
- Advertising
- Time it takes the video to start playback
- Tools and ease of use for uploading the video
- HD support
- Full Screen Options
- Ability to turn off embedding for others
- How easy can your video be found by others
- Upload video from your cellphone directly
- Ability to turn on/off video downloading by others
- Playable on an iPhone or iPod touch
In my testing I found that each of the sites had many of these options, but no one had it all. I tested all 4 sites by uploading the same HD video to them (my Wacom Intuos 4 video review). Then I embedded the video from each site onto the same page so that we could see a side-by-side comparison. Check out that page here and see for yourself. Also check the page on your iPhone/iPod touch.
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YouTube
Pros: very easy to get started. It’s free. Probably the largest of all the sites and therefore the most likely site to have your video found on. Support for embedding HD video at no additional cost. Videos can be played back on an iPhone or iPod touch even if they are embedded on your webpage using the Flash player.
Cons: Not as many options to make your video private. Videos are limited to 10 minutes/1GB each.
Final thoughts: For most of the videos I’ll be putting up I’m likely to use YouTube. Although they don’t have as many player options or privacy options as the other sites, YouTube seems to offer the best balance of features and playback options.
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Vimeo
Pros: Excellent video quality. Free to use the basic features. Great stats on your video plays. HD Support. You can password protect your video or simply mark it that only Contacts or people that you choose can watch it. You can turn on/off the ability for others to download the source video. You can also turn on/off commenting.
Cons: HD video requires that either upgrade to Vimeo Plus or your viewer will have to see it on the Vimeo website. Doesn’t playback on an iPhone/iPod touch. The free service is limited to 1 HD video/500MBs per week.
Final thoughts: I like the features of Vimeo, although I’m not as crazy about their player. They definitely have the nicest stats page. It’s a little thing, but I also love the fact that you can replace the video with a corrected one without losing your stats and comments. I’ve run into this on YouTube at least a couple of times where there was a minor change to the video and I could only delete the one that was posted and upload a new one. Vimeo Plus is $59.95/year and allows 5GB of uploads per week, unlimited number of HD videos, ability to Embed your HD videos, higher quality video, priority uploading, player custimization, advanced privacy options, and no banner ads.
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SmugMug
Pros: Probably the BEST video quality. Support of HD video up to 1080p.
Cons: No free options. In order to upload HD video you have to pay for the Pro service at $149.95/year. Even if you pay, you’re still limited to 10 minutes per movie. If you embed a higher quality video on your page, the playback could take several seconds before it starts. Limited embedding/player options.
Final thoughts: SmugMug would be the site I’d use if I were mostly concerned by the quality of the video. In other words If I were trying to impress you with gorgeous HD video, this is the site I’d use. This would be keeping in mind that the video is not playable on an iPhone/iPod touch and that highest quality settings may mean a delay before the video starts.
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Blip.TV
Pros: the most options for customizing the player! You can allow for advertising or not and if you do, they will pay you for it! Web, Mobile, FTP and Desktop Client for uploading.
Cons: Although there was an option to make the video iPhone/iPod touch compatible, it didn’t work in my testing. Have to upgrade to a Pro account ($8/month) to make your videos private.
Final thoughts: Blip.TV is awesome when you want to customize the look and feel of your player/video. Also it’s the only one that I’ve seen that is willing to share the revenue from the OPTIONAL advertising generated by your video.
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The Bottom Line
I’m finding myself producing fewer and fewer DVDs as a means of sharing video with friends and family. Sure there are some older members of my family that aren’t online and never will be, but that is a very small percentage of folks I know and share with. Shorter clips shared over the internet for free is the key. You can’t really go wrong with any of these sites and like I figured going into this, there is no one site that is significantly better than all the rest. Each one has something to offer depending upon your needs. For example, YouTube is great for the video reviews I do on my blog. However, if I wanted to post a family video and keep it kinda private, then I’d use Vimeo. If I were trying to put video on my website and match the look and feel perfectly, then I’d lean towards Blip.TV. Lastly if I were trying to impress a client with the highest quality HD video the first site that would come to my mind would be SmugMug.
There you have it!
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.
Prefer Viddler as do many other photographers. No limit to video in size or playback.
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.
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!
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.
@ 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?
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.
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!
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.