So I have a personal website with my short films, as well as videos on another page showcasing my best videography/DP work.

I've been hosting the files directly thus far. That is, they're files I encode myself (generally MOV), upload to the server, and link to with a "play" button created with an HTML snippet (site is made with Iweb '08). I proof 'em, I know they work, but it may not be the best way these days.

Someone in another thread mentioned using Vimeo Plus (I'm assuming. . .mentioned the $50 paid account, it's actually $60, but it must be plus, not pro, 'cause pro is $200/year) to host and embed the videos on one's site, since ISPs are not set up to stream HD video and can't compete with Youtube and Vimeo in that regard.

What do you guys think? I have no proof that people are giving up on my site for lack of ease of watching the videos, but for $60/year it couldn't hurt to do something that would be guaranteed to work, and furthermore (at least in theory) is friendly to smart phones, Ipads. etc. Sometimes I put up files that are not meant to be public (I just upload it to the proper sever directory without putting a link on the site, and then give out that file name/address to the parties intended to see it), with VPlus I guess I could just password protect these.

I did come across some blog post entitled "Why vimeo plus sucks" or something simliar, saying that you were not allowed to host videos "for commercial purposes" on the plus account. I don't know if either the short films or the videography demo samples count as "commercial" under the Vimeo TOS. I suppose the one actual commercial I have might, even though it's not an ad for my product.

Functionally, a Vimeo Plus account will do what you describe. There are other advantages to Vimeo beyond it's hosting such as it's social network. Your videos can be tagged and organized into Vimeo's groups and channels. So you may get viewers watching your video when they find it on Vimeo as well as those watching from your site.

Technically, Vimeo doesn't stream. Ditto YouTube. Real streaming uses the RTSP protocol and is designed to ensure end to end playback without pausing. Vimeo, YouTube etc use pseudo streaming which is done over HTTP. What you are getting is the content management web pages for uploading and all the other things for managing your content (password protection, embedding, CC licensing, thumbnails, etc), their Flash and HTML 5 players, mobile support, etc. The recent redesign of these pages is usually what people complain about in terms of their design.

I'm not a lawyer but I think the Commercial aspect would be more along the lines of they don't want you selling videos hosted on Vimeo (like a pay per view scheme or download....).

You may have to elaborate on the social network/groups/etc. aspect. I have quite a few things on there already and the same videos get a lot less traffic than they do on Youtube (not that they get much there either).

I was actually talking about keeping my website, but taking out the video links as they are, and putting in embedded vimeo links instead, rather than using vimeo itself as my video site (if that makes sense). So people will still go to different pages on joshbass.com, but instead of watching a video hosted on my server, they'll be watching one originating from Vimeo. Are you saying this doesn't work?

As for commercial purposes, heh heh, heh heh, well, the several places I've got my short films in ppv distribution NOW aren't making any money, heh heh, so I don't think that Vimeo has to worry, heh heh wheeze.

Sorry I was not clear. Yes. What you want to do is called (in Vimeo) "Embedding" (not to be confused with the HTML "embed" tag you are currently using). That's what happens here on DVinfo when you paste a Vimeo link into a post.

I used to do it the way you are doing it but then converted to use Vimeo. Vimeo Plus gives you some control over how much of the Vimeo Player controls and information is displayed on the embedded video (including color). Attached is a screen shot of an example where much of the default Vimeo player's clutter stuff is stripped away.

The Social network aspect of Vimeo is simply that beyond tagging, you can also put your videos in Vimeo Categories, Groups and Channels. For example, there's one for Documentary Films and another for Music Videos. Viewers can drill into these and view the collection sorted in a couple ways. I find it superior to YouTube. It is more intentional IMHO. YMMV. There also isn't a 10 minute limit and Vimeo gives you a dozen thumbnails and controls to replace it with whatever you want.

Somehow attachment got dropped.

That sounds very cool.

Maybe me being a moron and not organizing them that way on vimeo is why they have no views.

So would you say the "plus" is worth it over free/basic?

And to your knowledge, does this stuff automatically play nice with smart phones, etc.?

IMHO the plus is worth it over free but I think you should research it as it may have changed since I looked. Playing nice on smartphones is a key advantage over what you are doing now encoding them and hosting them yourself.

I'll take another look. I think it's $60 now, not $50.

As for smart phones, I actually got an ifolios version of my site a year or so ago. It's wordpress-based design that is necessarily simpler than my "real" site, but uses youtube embedding to play the videos and includes some code you put into your index to detect when the hit is coming from a mobile device. I guess I wouldn't mind that site being made obsolete though, since it is very limiting.

I was using plus and now Pro - all my video's are hosted on vimeo and I just link to them, much simpler than uploading & hosting yourself. I use the portfolio function on Vimeo and link to the entire page

Thanks. I'll take another look and start small, if at all, with Plus.

So, I was about to lay down some lettuce on a Vimeo Plus account, when I decided to read the FAQ. Came across this worrisome little nugget:


"Vimeo Plus is intended for individuals who want more features than a Basic (free) account, however Vimeo Plus users may not upload videos that are commercial in nature, or that are intended to sell or promote a product or service."

Isn't that exactly what I'd be doing by using it for my videography/camerawork samples?

Ok, never mind.

If anyone's interested, here's what they told me:

"Exceptions to the Commercial rule are made for independent production companies (such as yourself) to promote the work they have created."

So I guess it's all good. I'm'a get to plussin' it up later.

Josh, I think you will really like "plus". No waiting in line for processing, HD embedding and I think the encoding is better than the free version.

Ok homeslices, I be plussin' it up yo.


I guess I don't really understand the differences between channels, groups and albums. Can anyone assist?

Albums are collections of videos (yours or others) that you create so as to organize videos in ways that are meaningful to you (e.g you may have an album of music videos you like): https://vimeo.com/help/faq/albums
Groups are collections other people created that you can put your videos into (e.g. there is a group for Documentaries and another for Music Videos): https://vimeo.com/help/faq/groups
Channels are collections that you create that you can put your videos into and others can subscribe to (e.g. you may create a channel for all your demo reels): https://vimeo.com/help/faq/channels

Ah. Ok. Channels and albums are personal to you in their organization, groups are best served by putting YOUR stuff in something ALREADY EXISTENT so as to make it easier for others to stumble across.

So I should be looking for groups already out there to put my stuff in, shouldn't be creating my own groups unless it's something that someone wouldn't have created yet (videos of old women beating donkeys with rotten bananas).

I'm not a lawyer but I think the Commercial aspect would be more along the lines of they don't want you selling videos hosted on Vimeo (like a pay per view scheme or download....).

I think it would be more accurate to say they don't want you hosting promotional videos for products and services for purposes other than showing examples of your work. I've shot several videos for stuff ranging from oil pumps to self-help books to screen printing, and every client wants the video on their website. Hosting a video for the "EZ-Flow" on Vimeo and embedding it on the client's website would be a clear violation of the TOS.

However, YouTube's TOS does allow this type of use.

I don't know if you saw it, but I posted earlier that I'd written to vimeo and they responded back that things like what I'm doing are exceptions to their TOS so it is all good in da hood.

What is it that vimeo and youtube etc... is doing to get such high res videos to play back so fast? It seems like if I upload even a tiny file to my website it takes way longer to load. Is it something about their player, or do they just get to have faster websites than the rest of us for some reason?

For best streaming performance and user experience:
Content that is well shot and well lit, with a minimum of camera movement.
A good encode using the minimum bitrate needed for good representation of motion, compressed in the latest greatest codecs using the latest greatest methods/encoders.
A true streaming server, not a simple webserver.
A content delivery network (CDN) that brings the stream origination closer to the viewer.
Sniffers that can determine what stream provides the best performance for a particular viewer, then deliver that stream.

Services like YouTube and Vimeo employ people who work constantly to improve the performance of all these various elements.

What is it that vimeo and youtube etc... is doing to get such high res videos to play back so fast? It seems like if I upload even a tiny file to my website it takes way longer to load. Is it something about their player, or do they just get to have faster websites than the rest of us for some reason?

If you are using h264 in an mp4 container (what most people use these days) I am willing to bet it is a few things: One you did not use what is called "hinted streaming" or "Pseudostreaming". This means that the moov atom is at the end of the video. This piece of data is required for playback. If it is at the end that means you have to download the full video before it will start playing back. That could mean you are waiting a while. Some browsers such as Chrome and Firefox will fix this on the fly with range requests but that is when you directly request the video in the browser. If you put a flash player around it like flowpalyer or JW FLV Player then you are stuck downloading the whole file before playback. To fix this check your encoder for a setting that implies preparing it for "streaming". Apple used "Hinted Streaming" last time I looked. A third option is using qt-faststart which is a free utility you can get with ffmpeg or any number of websites. This is useful if you already have a large library of rendered files. It will fix the files without having to re-render which could save you hours depending on your library.

This could all be moot if though if you are hosting on a service which is just so slow you cant sustain a megabit or two to stream your videos. Most hosts (including godaddy, 1and1, and hostgator) will be able to handle that so you should be able to stream HD video to your viewers if you are not talking about hundreds of viewers all at once. If you are you may want to look for a hosted solution, CDN or otherwise.

The thing to keep in mind is for anyone who is doing less than say a TB a month is really paying for connivence (and protection) of a few things:

- Not having to setup encoding profiles that look good but are light on the bitrate (really a one time setup unless you need to add a new segment)

- Any features they have that you don't want to build such as device detection, live chat, comments etc

- The ability to handle sudden massive spikes in service (Hey Someone posted my short to reddit.com and now 2 million people are trying to watch my video)

- Potential viewing community

The first two items are addressed if you are some what tech savvy and spend some time on google.

The third and fourth however is only answered with more power and good SEO. I have seen some people handle a large spike in traffic by simply changing the video to only have SD for the duration of the surge to help lower the load as well as utilizing youtube/vimeo. Secondly you need to make sure that your site is setup to be search friendly with video content. This way keyword searches will still bring up your video. A lot of wordpress themes have SEO built in these days so its easy to make sure your content gets picked up by google and is displayed for relavant searches.

It really is possible to provide a good viewing experience using only Apache (web server) if you do not have a huge geographically diverse (outside the country your server is located in). You will have to put in a little time to learn the setup. You can use the same Pseudostreaming that the Youtubes use so the flash clients can seek to any part of the video without waiting for the full video to download. The mobile devices will do range requests and give you the same ability out of the box. This is all with out using streaming protocols like RTMP/RTSP/MMS/HLS/HDS etc. Those protocols have their place but us little guys can work around them fairly easily.

I didnt know what hinted streaming was thanks. Should i check that setting when encoding videos or does the youtube/vimeo conversion do that for you?

Also, i believe one benefit to these sites is how the videos come up in regular web search results! I think the post above mentioned that too.

Btw if i didnt say it above i got vimeo plus and now all my videos are embedded from vimeo

They will do it for you as they are re-encoding the videos. If you do your website correctly you can get your videos to show up in the video section. Google documents how to make this video content accessible to them so they can properly return your video for the right search results.

Vimeo plus is a great tool and price and it basically handles the above things for you. For some busy people the time saved is worth every single penny. I opted to do this stuff on my own so I could be the one charging a premium to clients who want the video I produce placed online directly on their site without Advertisements etc.

I use Vimeo Pro to power member videos on my sites subiesport.tv and drivingsports.com, plus provide review micro sites and screener sites for broadcast clients. The granular control over who can see the video plus the fast playback and ease of configuration make it a no-brainer versus hosting your own streaming files (I've built a lot sites that did this over the years.) I have very little interest in the community side of Vimeo.

Best video tool I've purchased for $200. Highly recommended.

I wonder if the techniques to make videos searchable work with iweb, which is how i build my site. As for the other, i dont really do that type of work so not applicable. Always hand finished vids off to clients and their web guys.

If you wanted to make something searchable, it would make more sense to build it in Wordpress and use embeds in posts. There are tons of free and paid themes that do this easily.

Yep,

The wordpress themes I use take care of most of this along with some plugins. You can get plugins that build sitemaps for google and include the video as well:

About video content in Sitemaps - Webmaster Tools Help (http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=80471#creating)