Seems like free hosting of video clips is the "in" thing. With all these sites springing up, does anyone have advice as to which one to use? I'd like to share some of my clips but don't want kill my bandwidth.

From what I gather the only caveate is whom owns the copyright to the posted material. Some say it's a joint ownership until you remove it. Having a password would help to limit access (i.e. to viewers from this site, etc), and not forcing viewers to "sign in" or give info just to view would be another benefit.

Any experience you folks wish to share?

Thanks.

While I usually encode and post my own clips to my site, my sister likes to use ClipShack (www.clipshack.com). ClipShack doesn't appear to claim any ownership rights in the material posted. They do say you grant them "a worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free, irrevocable, non-exclusive, sublicensable right and license to use, copy, adapt, publish, transmit, distribute, perform, display, reference, index and cache...your Content and any materials you submit to ClipShack;" However, that is only "to provide the Site, Services, and Content to you and to perform our obligations under these Terms of Use."

ClipShack allows video sizes up to 100 MB, and gives 5 GB space total for clips and photos. They do convert video to the Flash format when you upload it, so if you don't like the Flash format you should be aware of this fact. I believe they do give you the ability to designate videos as private, so that you can share them only with selected people.

ClipShack is easy to use, pretty much click and upload. If you want more control, you could use Ourmedia (www.ourmedia.org). Basically, everything is left up to you. I don’t believe there is any size limit (all the videos are stored on archive.org’s servers), and you can apply any type of license you wish to your video. However, I'm not sure that you have the ability on Ourmedia to restrict access to your videos if you only wanted to share them with certain people.

Thanks Christopher, I will certainly check those places out. I have a list of others, youtube, google, and ifilm, etc. I'm just looking for any personal experience from folks on this forum is all.

The rights issue as you quoted is pretty much the deal with most sites. I think for goofy, viral and non-profit stuff it's not a big deal. In fact, it's a win-win in getting one's name out.

ClipShack doesn't appear to claim any ownership rights in the material posted. They do say you grant them "a worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free, irrevocable, non-exclusive, sublicensable right and license to use, copy, adapt, publish, transmit, distribute, perform, display, reference, index and cache...your Content and any materials you submit to ClipShack;

Am I reading this the wrong way? I sounds to me like you are signing your videos over to them to do whatever they want with them(without compensating you for it), and you are just taking it on good faith that they won't.

Or course not. It's for posting things that have little commercial value, but have potential to get your name out, or to help others in the community. Most folks whom post to these sites are amateurs sharing family events with family, or home-made gags to get widespread attention.

Very few of them know about covering up/hiding name brand products or getting releases for displaying the likeness and voices of others. It's not that kind of community.

Some of the stuff is just plain wierd:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3115213134814599261

I need to place to post camera test and silly stuff for the benefits of others.

Am I reading this the wrong way? I sounds to me like you are signing your videos over to them to do whatever they want with them(without compensating you for it), and you are just taking it on good faith that they won't.
I would have been concerned, except they limited their rights in the clause by the next part of the sentence, which I quoted. It basically stated the previous rights enumerated are only valid to the extent necessary to fulfill ClipShack's obligations to you under the Terms of Use. I don't see anything wrong with that.

If you want to see something you should be genuinely concerned about, however, take a gander at YouTube’s Terms of Use:

“For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your User Submissions. However, by submitting the User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube's (and its successor's) business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the YouTube Website (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels.”

As if that isn’t bad enough, just look at the next part. It gets even worse:

“You also hereby grant each user of the YouTube Website a non-exclusive license to access your User Submissions through the Website, and to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display and perform such User Submissions as permitted through the functionality of the Website and under these Terms of Service.”

To be fair, they do say that “The foregoing license granted by you terminates once you remove or delete a User Submission from the YouTube Website.”

Still, I’d have to be practically starving to trust my videos to YouTube.

The lesson in this is that before uploading video to a free media hosting site one needs to carefully read the Terms of Use. They are not all created equal.