Is Vimeo the Way?
 

I'm trying to determine the best place to post videos.

Vimeo seems to be the choice for many. Is there a reason for this? Is Vimeo Plus ($59.95/yr) sufficient and a good deal? What alternatives are worth considering?

Thanks!

I use vimeo most of the time as I like the community but I agree that exposure room is better quality and free.

Exposureroom plays well even on my slower computers. (after buffering of course)

I also use vimeo for more personal stuff.

Pro work I place in XR.

I've experimented with putting the exact same HD file (QT H.264) on Vimeo, Exposure Room and YouTube.

With my particular test YouTube HD plays it best, then Exposure Room and then Vimeo is generally the worst (I don't have a Plus account - maybe if I did they would encode it better? - not sure).

Furthermore, 2 times out of 3, uploading that file to Vimeo resulted in an error in that Vimeo only encoded it into normal definition, no HD variant was produced....very frustrating. I've had these kinds of upload problems more often than I'd like with Vimeo in the past too.

YouTube gets you to the widest audience, as long as it's under 10 minutes, but you're buried amongst all the dross.
Exposure Room site looks the best, most professional (in my opinion - once you've cut your way through all the wedding videos....).
Vimeo has a bit more of a community/Pro user type feel but can be a bit hit and miss on playback.

There are other choices around too but I don't use them so won't comment. Non are perfect but they are all available free - so who's to complain.

However, remember, anything critical (or that you or your clients want to keep copyright control of) put on you own website - as once it's on these others you've given that away. It's also the most professional looking approach - important in the kind of market I operate in (corporate/business stuff) - although some of my stuff ends up on these others, posted by me or them as required.

BTW, this thread in the WRONG section of the forum and will no doubt get moved to Distribution Centre/Flash & Web Delivery.

Suppose you want to charge for viewing your work, either a pay-per-view fee, or a time-limited (say, 60-days) service to view a collection of videos, who would you recommend?

I tried Exposureroom and Vimeo (not their "plus" version)
Exposureroom produces way better quality then Vimeo and since I"m comparing Exposureroom to the free version of Vimeo I think it's a fair comparison.
if you embed exposureroom video's on your site they still look like HD while Vimeo looks quite badly converted back to SD. No doubt they do it like this to make you pay for their plus version which allows embedding HD content but even then they have a limit on the number of times the videos are looked at with again paid extra's.
Taken the quality and the fact it's free into consideration, exposureroom is a very good alternative with hardly any limits. I do use it on my business site and eventhough I get a very small "xr" logo in the bottomright side it still looks professional.

I wish I could figure out if I'm doing something wrong, but to my eyes (and on two different systems) Vimeo looks way better than ExposureRoom. Now I'm partial to Vimeo since that what I use, but I looked at four different ER videos and all of them looked pretty weak in HD. Any idea what I might be doing wrong?

Vimeo vs ER vs YouTube (HD Video comparison)
 

Interesting. Phil, were these the same video on Vimeo and Exposure Room?

Maybe I can offer up a useful test here?

Here is a recent corporate short I did that is on all 3 sites mentioned earlier...i.e. I uploaded the exact same 144MB (.mov, as a H264) to all three to see exactly how each handles it. I have my own opinions judged from last time I watched all 3 versions (as mentioned earlier) but it would be interesting to see how these versions play for people around the world on various PCs/Macs. Video is about 3.5 mins long so it'll take about 11 minutes to complete the test (assuming you want to watch each the whole way through) and assuming you don't get buffer delays. Note the dolly shots early on in the film and the few places where I used cross fades - both can be very challenging for Flash! You can also see the dolly shots again at the end - without some masking of "retail park signage" outside.

And don't forget to let us all know which one you think plays best!


3M Ireland Showcase - Carrickmines Office (HD Video) By Andy Wilkinson On ExposureRoom

YouTube - 3M Ireland - New Carrickmines Office (HD Video)

This is all great advice... Thanks everyone.

I'm leaning towards Vimeo, but I need to take a hard look at Exposure Room, and won't make a decision until later in the week.

As my skills evolve, it appears that I may need more than one service provider. No one size appears to fit all, and more recommendations are welcomed!

Really have grown to love my Vimeo Plus membership. Personally, I think the $59.99 a year is worth it just for the priority uploading and unlimited HD uploads. Uploads always start converting pretty much instantaneously - not so with the regular subscription. When I'm trying to get a draft out to a client, I can render, upload, encode and password protect, all in a reasonable amount of time.

I guess what I'm saying here is that if you go with Vimeo, it's really worth it to upgrade to the Plus account. Oh, and nothing against Exposure Room, but it just kinda makes me sad when I go to the site to watch things. Too dark for my tastes. Kinda like how I prefer this forum to another choice internet destination...

As for quality, I think that it's really too small of a difference to care much about, especially for internet distribution. If you make a great video, it's going to look great on any of these sites. IMHO you'll only notice a difference putting them side to side and nitpicking the tiny details - most of which will not be nit-picked by a client/audience looking primarily for content.