It looks like every weddingvideographer is using Vimeo these days but I am experiencing issues with playback, I get buffering, sometimes switching to lower quality (it says it's 1080p but looks like 360p) and several of my clients have reported stuttering issues while playing back.

So I"m looking for alternatives, anyone who has positive experience with other providers? Not looking at YouTube, I want to have full control over my films as a owner.

It looks like every weddingvideographer is using Vimeo these days but I am experiencing issues with playback, I get buffering, sometimes switching to lower quality (it says it's 1080p but looks like 360p) and several of my clients have reported stuttering issues while playing back.

That is not due to Vimeo but due to a slow internet connection.

By the way, how do you not have full control over videos as an owner when using YouTube?

I have a very fast connection, youtube films play at 4k with no issue, it's vimeo only that gives me and my clients issues in playback.

To explain full controll a bit further, I would like to have the ability to show or hide, with or without password, any of my videos. I also don't want any advertisement in my films at all and I don't want the logo from the company hosting my films in the player.

Youtube's rights over my films is not so clear to me, what I found back online said the following: "while you retain ownership rights, YouTube retains the right to sublicense and distribute your content in any media format and in any media channel. YouTube's rights aren't restricted to just those needed just to run the service. If you upload video, it looks like YouTube has a non-exclusive right to monetize your content in any way that it sees fit."

Not sure if this is still the case but doesn't matter as they don't provide what I want.

To explain full controll a bit further, I would like to have the ability to show or hide, with or without password, any of my videos. I also don't want any advertisement in my films at all and I don't want the logo from the company hosting my films in the player.

Youtube's rights over my films is not so clear to me, what I found back online said the following: "while you retain ownership rights, YouTube retains the right to sublicense and distribute your content in any media format and in any media channel. YouTube's rights aren't restricted to just those needed just to run the service. If you upload video, it looks like YouTube has a non-exclusive right to monetize your content in any way that it sees fit."

Not sure if this is still the case but doesn't matter as they don't provide what I want.
I really do not see the problem. you as the rights holder decide if you want to show or hide a video, to make it public or provide a private link. You as a rights holder also decide if you want to monetize as well and YouTube does not display any logos unless you want to. Obviously, if you decide to monetize you need to give YouTube the rights to do as they see fit, i.e. targetted advertising.

I have a very fast connection, youtube films play at 4k with no issue, it's vimeo only that gives me and my clients issues in playback.
Then I would talk to your internet provider. Server resources are not a bottleneck, it is bandwidth.

I did talk to my provider and to vimeo, both don't know why I have these buffer issues and I am not the only one, all my clients have reported the same issue. My internetconnection is not the issue here, it's vimeo.

I had the same issue a while back with my sync.com account, very poor and unreliable downloadspeeds, same problem with my clients, then I switched to a paid onedrive account and it has been smooth sailing ever since, very fast download speeds and no complaints from my clients either.

I did talk to my provider and to vimeo, both don't know why I have these buffer issues and I am not the only one, all my clients have reported the same issue. My internetconnection is not the issue here, it's vimeo.

Just my opinion but I think it is rather libelous to make those accusations about Vimeo. I for one do not have problems with Vimeo.

What is the name of your Vimeo account?

It's my and my clients experience that Vimeo often has these buffer and playback issues, it's not always but often enough for me to consider to switch to another platform, I"m also not "accusing" vimeo of anything, I"m just stating a experience of different people that it doesn't work as expected.

What is the name of your Vimeo account?

Why? Will that make my vimeo films run better on my and my clients pc? What if it runs fine on your end, it won't change my experience with them. Just like with my sync.com account, where there are many satisfied users I got a very bad experience and every single client of mine complained that they had severe problems just getting my films downloaded, am I then also "accusing" Sync.com? Switching to onedrive solved my problems so there is more going on that has nothing to do with my internetspeed and has most likely to do with the country you live in and where the provider is located or where they have their servers.

Anyways, I"m looking for alternatives.

I left Vimeo for the same reasons, buffering playback and lower quality than it should be on my fast fibre connection, I sent many emails to Vimeo who gave me all sorts of reasons - then I read the Vimeo user forums and found a whole lot more people with the same problems and with no answers, when my subscription came up I didn't renew.

It is up to you, go ahead and avoid and put down YouTube and Vimeo, I am just trying to help!

I think Vimeo is just about the best option to share professional videos! I just would not bite the hand that feeds you.


I and suppose I have to apologize for asking your Vimeo account, I would be glad to give my account to anyone who asks for it.

I left Vimeo for the same reasons, buffering playback and lower quality than it should be on my fast fibre connection, I sent many emails to Vimeo who gave me all sorts of reasons - then I read the Vimeo user forums and found a whole lot more people with the same problems and with no answers, when my subscription came up I didn't renew.

Yes, I also have seen more users complaining about playback issues, it's not a general thing but certainly not isolated cases either, can I ask what you eventually switched to?

Hi Noa

Surely Vimeo uses mirror servers in each country? If it does then it could be simply your location doesn't come up to speed like it does for USA clients?

To be honest I have found that vimeo in Australia is also a bit slow especially that we are isolated in the West here however I have no issues with Livestream servers (owned by Vimeo) from clients worldwide!

Can you not do a path trace from where you are to where the nearest server is? That might show you where the holdup is??

I really do not see the problem. you as the rights holder decide if you want to show or hide a video, to make it public or provide a private link. You as a rights holder also decide if you want to monetize as well and YouTube does not display any logos unless you want to. Obviously, if you decide to monetize you need to give YouTube the rights to do as they see fit, i.e. targetted advertising.
It's been a few years since I last looked there were lots of reasons why Vimeo was preferable to YouTube. Vimeo allows you to embed an unbranded "white box" player (or even one with your own logo) on your website whereas the YouTube embedded player was always clearly YouTube. There are other issues with YouTube too like when it thinks that you are illegally using some copyrighted music & blocks playing or adds adverts.

If bother Noa & his clients are seeing the same issues then I suspect that the issue is with Vimeo in Belgium. For a paid for service I always found Vimeo support frustratingly difficult to interact act with not least because your only access to support is via their forums.

Can you not do a path trace from where you are to where the nearest server is? That might show you where the holdup is??

If neither my provider not vimeo can tell me what the issue can be then I won't either, it's not like I have a problem all the time but I often get feedback from my clients that the video stalls or stutters, I see that too sometimes or like yesterday the playbackquality looked quite poor, when I went to YouTube to play a 4k video that played fine.

There don't seem to be so many alternatives, I have seen videographers use wistia but they are very expensive at 99dollar per month.

You're absolutely right about that,Noa.
Vimeo is slow...all the time.
And I'm in Canada.
But unfortunately we have no alternatives.
And by the way all my friends are complaining about Vimeo,also.

Left Vimeo years ago, ditching my subscription.

Aside from the player/deliverability issues, the telling sign for me is that they can'r even keep up with taking down videos clearly in breach of their guidelines (and they've been notified of them for a few months). It's as if internally they have given up. Hearing about their forum only support mechanism doesn't surprise me.

Andrew

I've never noticed any playback issues on Vimeo - but right now I'm more concerned about the complete account take downs that have been going on for music violations etc with no warning.

Is this for films that are private with password or films that are publicly viewable?

Where did you hear about this?

Saw this article a couple weeks ago and was thinking about posting here, but figured you guys already knew about it.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2018/07/28/tech-101-dont-use-hit-music-ed-sheeran-and-others-your-videos-its-not-cool/848216002/

"My friend David Medill got the shock of his life this week when he was banned from the Vimeo video service for copyright violation. His sin: He makes wedding videos, and he sets them to the tunes of Ed Sheeran, Marvin Gaye and Father John Misty."

All my music that I use online in my short highlights to promote my business has music in it from artlist.io and I have a yearly subscription to use their music. Those videographers who think they can use Ed sheeran songs in their online videos without paying for a license know what the riscs are, if their account gets deleted it's their fault and they should consider themselves Lucky that this is the only thing that is done. I"d say it's about time Vimeo takes action, if getting rid of all videos that have no licensed music would mean my films would play better then I gladly would stay with them. :)

I agree with Noah. I pay for a music license or use an Attribution Noncommercial license if allowed by the owner. It is the right thing to do. A couple of years ago I had a Vimeo and Youtube user steal 24 video clips of mine. I filed DMCA complaints with both services for each clip stolen. It was a tedious process. When the user wouldn't pay for use of my videos I notified Vimeo and Youtube that the complaints were not resolved and his time ran out. They deleted over a 100 user videos and closed both his account. Then the belly-aching by the user really began but to late for him.

That is not due to Vimeo but due to a slow internet connection.

By the way, how do you not have full control over videos as an owner when using YouTube?

YouTube has been down right draconian lately in banning people off YouTube, and demonetizing and even outright hiding many of those who remain.

David is right. We need to have backup / alternative sources of video hosting should the need arrive.

Andrew

YouTube has been down right draconian lately in banning people off YouTube, and demonetizing and even outright hiding many of those who remain.

This is what worries me, it’s not the first time I have heared from a weddingvideographer that their video was flagged for copyright violation eventhough they had payed for a license to use the song, youtube doesn’t ask 3 times before acting like vimeo does, they just mute your video, place adds on it or remove the video. Then it’s up to you to prove them wrong which can take a while before your videos are up and running again, something I cannot have as a business.

This at least has been the general impression I got from youtube based on many reactions I read over the past years in facebook groups, I was also a bit surprised when Cary claimed I do have full controll over my films but it looks like not everyone agrees :)

YouTube has been down right draconian lately in banning people off YouTube, and demonetizing and even outright hiding many of those who remain.

This is what worries me, it’s not the first time I have heared from a weddingvideographer that their video was flagged for copyright violation eventhough they had payed for a license to use the song, youtube doesn’t ask 3 times before acting like vimeo does, they just mute your video, place adds on it or remove the video. Then it’s up to you to prove them wrong which can take a while before your videos are up and running again, something I cannot have as a business.

This at least has been the general impression I got from youtube based on many reactions I read over the past years in facebook groups, I was also a bit surprised when Cary claimed I do have full controll over my films but it looks like not everyone agrees :)
If you dispute a Content ID claim the video and audio are restored immediately (it used to be that it was restored only after the dispute ended), while during the dispute possible monetization monies are "in escrow" by YouTube until it is determined who has the rights.

If you have a license, dispute the Content ID and provide license information immediately. It is not up to YouTube to accept it but it is up to the rights holder, if it takes a while it is the rights holder who is to blame for the delay, not YouTube. Also if you license music many of the rights holders have a secondary way to notify them if your content gets flagged like AdRev for Rights Holder.

YouTube obviously does not know if you have licensed music, and rights holders who license music obviously still want YouTube to content ID their footage.
I think YouTube's current model is a win-win situation, I really do not understand the criticism. If you have a license you have full control, and if you have not then in most cases the rights holder still allows you to post your video witch the catch that they want to be paid advertising revenue, a more than fair proposition if you ask me.

There is only one way to find out and that’s to upload one of my videos to youtube and embed on my website, my portfolio is vimeo only for now but I can make seperate posts on my website that are only accesible if you know the link so it won’t affect my website if something would not go as planned.

If you dispute a Content ID claim the video and audio are restored immediately (it used to be that it was restored only after the dispute ended), while during the dispute possible monetization monies are "in escrow" by YouTube until it is determined who has the rights.

Does that mean youtube will place ads on the video during the dispute? If so, that would alleady be unacceptable for me, I would expect to be notified first with a deadline for providing the licencing info so that my films remain untouched while I provide proof. But that I guess is one of the disadvantages of a free service like youtube.

Does that mean youtube will place ads on the video during the dispute? If so, that would alleady be unacceptable for me, I would expect to be notified first with a deadline for providing the licencing info so that my films remain untouched while I provide proof. But that I guess is one of the disadvantages of a free service like youtube.
That would depend on the rights holder. It's the rights holder that enables content id, and it is the rights holder that enables ads. If you use music and get a license from a rights holder I would ask 3 questions:

1. Do you enable content id for your footage on YouTube?
2. If so, what is the process for me to indicate I have a license and how quickly do you respond?
3. During the dispute process do you monetize the video?

If you absolutely do not want the client to see ads publish the video unlisted first, resolve the possible content id dispute (should be no longer than one or two days for reputable rights holders who license music on YouTube, and once the dispute is resolved, make the video available to your client,

There is an issue though, mostly with single instrument classical music, if the content id is wrong and you dispute you may have to wait up to 30 days to get a response, and sometimes rights holders simply disagree (often out of laziness) and you have to appeal, after that they will look carefully at the footage because they would be required to issue a DMCA takedown and this could open the rights holder to litigation if the takedown is not warranted.

I just added my first film to my YouTube account, the very first thing I noticed was when the film was shared publicly on YouTube, so that it was embedded on my website and playable on YouTube, my embedded film on the website returned to a photo that I uploaded at the end of the film so that was good, on YouTube however at the end a film from a competitor was shown and started to load. That's I guess is the price you pay for a free account, since YouTube videos score better in search results compared to vimeo videos if you want to be found on YouTube you have to accept competitors videos might autostart after yours.

Going to leave the film publicly availaible for a while to see if it gets flagged as it contains several songs that where licensed through artlist.io

on YouTube however at the end a film from a competitor was shown and started to load. That's I guess is the price you pay for a free account,

You can turn that off:

Under the video you want to embed select > Share > Embed. Then click > Show More to see additional options. Uncheck the box that says 'Show suggested videos when the video finishes'

All mine revert back to the first 'poster frame' of the video. I have found YT don't make it easy to find some features!

I've not been totally happy with either Vimeo or YouTube for a variety of reasons over the years.

Seriously I've found Sony's Media Cloud Service to be pretty efficient and extremely flexible range of options. I signed on to this back in 2103 around the time it started. It's still there and rock solid. You have a choice of various plans, Individual, Team and Enterprise. For individuals you have everything from a free account with 5GB per month to a 25GB month plan for $10.00 to a 100GB month plan for $25. You can go way more flexible with team and enterprise accounts if you want. I've still got material up there going way back to 2013.

You can allow clients to view, download, comment etc. I've only ever had a small amount of material up there with copyright music and it has not been a problem so far. Have a look at this page and watch the video for an overview of SonyCI.

https://www.sonymcs.com/

and here if you just want to check out their pricing.

https://www.sonymcs.com/pricing/

For mass storage and client download but no play ability I use SendSpace. Used it for years and only had it offline for less than an hour. I use their Pro Base account for $9.00 month which gives me lifetime storage. Still have GBs of material stored up there as backups since 2013.

https://www.sendspace.com/premium_upgrade.html

If you use Sendspace I find the best way to work with it is via their SendSpace Wizard which is a free download. The GUI is just like having a second PC you are working to and from. Folders, sub folders etc, etc.

https://www.sendspace.com/download_tools.html

These two options have made life so much easier getting material up for clients to view and feedback on plus the storage options that they offer have have been well and truly used.

Touch wood not one security, upload or download issue with either one in five years. As previously mentioned only one very short outage with SendSpace while they were doing server upgrades. A big plus NO ADS to annoy clients, customers.

Chris Young

An alternative that would give you complete control over your videos is to host the videos yourself & use JW Player or similar embedded in your web page. You can host the video files in the Cloud or on a VPS.

Removed, wrong comment

Seriously I've found Sony's Media Cloud Service to be pretty efficient

I have checked it out and made a free account and eventough it looked promising I couldn't find a way to embed videos on my site, is there a possibility to do that?

For mass storage and client download but no play ability I use SendSpace

I just recently switched to a payed microsoft onedrive account to store films for clients to download, main reason was that it included 365office software at a very low price point, upload and download speeds are also great.

You can turn that off:I have found YT don't make it easy to find some features!

Thx for the tip, I have tried that but on YouTube still other videos start to play but not on the embedded videos on my website, am I missing something here?


I also noticed that on my windows mobile Phone the embedded YouTube video on my website doesn't automatically load when I hit play, I need to press play a second time. The YouTube logo on the film on my Phone is also very big before you hit play, doesn't look very nice.

An alternative that would give you complete control over your videos is to host the videos yourself & use JW Player or similar embedded in your web page. You can host the video files in the Cloud or on a VPS.

No idea how to accomplish that, my website is from wordpress and currently I just add the vimeo link in a post, does that work the same way with videos that are stored in the cloud?

.... but on YouTube still other videos start to play but not on the embedded videos on my website, am I missing something here?

For non-embedded videos you can't, you can only turn it off on a logged in user by user basis by disabling 'Autoplay'.

I can't answer the Windows phone question, I've never used one (all iPhones here!)

As for self-hosting take a look at Amazon S3 - free for a year (with some data limits) then on per use/play basis, I paid around $2 per month when I had a few self-hosted videos on there.

my website is from wordpress and currently I just add the vimeo link in a post, does that work the same way with videos that are stored in the cloud?I thi

I have a couple wordpress sites, but don't use either for video. But I have JetPack premium on one of those sites, which costs $100/year and includes 13gb (IIRC) of video hosting on their CDN. They also have other plans with more capacity. No idea how well this works, but it would be one way to "roll your own"

https://jetpack.com/features/design/video-hosting/

One of my sites from a small hosting company has unlimited storage/bandwidth and costs about $100/yr for hosting and registration. Like I said, I dont use video on that site, but there are a lot of Wordpress plugins that could provide a user interface.

I did get this sent as a marketing email a few days ago, maybe worth a look: https://appsumo.com/vooplayer/

I just recently switched to a payed microsoft onedrive account to store films for clients to download, main reason was that it included 365office software at a very low price point.

I also just got Office 365 personal (got tired of fighting with my old copy of Office 2008, haha). It's $60/year and includes 1TB of OneDrive storage plus the office app for my Mac, iPad and iPhone. Seems like an unusually good deal for Microsoft.

also just got Office 365 personal
I got the same, for just a bit more; 99euro you can get 5TB and office365 which was a surprise as I would expect this price for either the hosting or the software but not as a combination, this was a no-brainer for me as 1TB allready is plenty for my needs.

No idea how to accomplish that, my website is from wordpress and currently I just add the vimeo link in a post, does that work the same way with videos that are stored in the cloud?
There is of course a Wordpress plugin that will do this for you. In fact there is lots of info & documentation available on how to do this. LMGTFY (http://bfy.tw/JS6c)

I got the same, for just a bit more; 99euro you can get 5TB and office365 which was a surprise as I would expect this price for either the hosting or the software but not as a combination, this was a no-brainer for me as 1TB allready is plenty for my needs.

The best deal for storage is to sign up for G Suite for Business which gives you unlimited storage on Google Drive for $10/€8/£6.60 per month (the alleged 1TB limit for less than five users is not part of T&Cs & has never been enforced). I currently have over 20TB on Google Drive for £79.20.

I got the same, for just a bit more; 99euro you can get 5TB and office365 which was a surprise as I would expect this price for either the hosting or the software but not as a combination, this was a no-brainer for me as 1TB allready is plenty for my needs.

This sounds like the Office 365 Home subscription that I have for £79.99/year which gives all the software for up to 5 PCs/Macs, 5 tablets and 5 phones plus up to 1TB storage each for up to five users. It's a great deal for family use.

I have checked it out and made a free account and eventough it looked promising I couldn't find a way to embed videos on my site, is there a possibility to do that?

Noa sorry I don't have an answer to that question as I've never had the need to embed anything. I mostly work for TV or the corporate world. For corporate clients I just upload and their web people download and do the embedding into their own sites.

Chris Young

For the record, I live in Indonesia and you cannot even access Vimeo here unless you use a VPN. So really, for me to post on Vimeo here means a majority of people I know here are blocked from seeing posted videos on Vimeo. Moral to the story...things could be worse.

When I started doing video commercially about ten years ago I discovered Smugmug who are predominantly a site for hosting still photos but were then the only site where you could host 1080p video & then embed them on your own website. We used Smugmug to host our videos for several years before switching to Vimeo basically because the player can be nicely customised & uploading & management of videos was easier. There was nothing wrong with Smugmug just that Vimeo was a bit nicer.

Smugmug still offers video hosting along with still photo galleries but has never expanded the video option much & hosting is limited to 3GB or 20 minutes (whichever is larger).

Smugmug might be worth a look for those suffering Vimeo & YouTube problems. They offer a 14-day free trial. & the Basic plan is under $50/year.

I don't thing Smugmug hosts their own videos anymore? I just checked and the only embedded videos I could find on their website where all from YouTube?