Best YouTube alternative?

[James Collins]

I have a client who needs some video hosted online. But not through YouTube.

I've uploaded to both Blip.tv and my Pro Vimeo account and both create a bad stuttering playback at his end, so naturally he isn't satisfied.

Can anyone suggest another good playback platform? Preferably it needs to be as unbranded as possible and definitely must support HD. Free is also good!

Things like flowplayer go over my head, ideally I'd just like a simple 'upload and go' system where I can upload my .MOV file and embed the player onto his site.

Thanks.

[Andy Wilkinson]

Exposure Room?

[Tom Dickerson]

Exposure Room and Pro Vimeo are the best that I know of. I have noticed that High Def. on Vimeo will occasionally stutter like you mentioned, but I haven't had any problems with Standard Def.

Is it possible for you to upload the video to the clients website as an .flv? This would be one way to keep it unbranded.

Does it have to be in high definition or will standard definition suffice?

[Jonathan Palfrey]

Have you checked the video file your uploading because its a bit odd for it to be stuttering on two different video hosts.

As for which is the best, vimeo plus is probably the best for the least branding unless you upload it onto their site yourself or use flow player but I would imagine this would only cause more issues as normally the playback isn't as good as a dedicated web video host.

Also have you tried it on different computers? I know my laptop struggles to play HD on sites like vimeo and exposureroom but I have no issues when playing on my desktop.

[James Collins]

The video files are being created through FCP,

Exporting in 16:9 HD 1280x720
Compression: H.264
Key: Every 30 frames
Data Rate: restrict to 1800 kbits/sec

Deinterlace source video

Are these settings okay, or might they be affecting Vimeo's playback?

[Seth Bloombaum]

Originally Posted by James Collins

Can anyone suggest another good playback platform? Preferably it needs to be as unbranded as possible and definitely must support HD. Free is also good!

Things like flowplayer go over my head...

Well, you want it all, and you want it free! Nothing wrong with that, but sometimes hard to accomplish.

Somebody has to pay the bills, however, and "free" isn't really free, you'll be accepting someone else's branding and advertising.

The alternative is to go into the paid hosting services, but, as you note, this requires some html embed code to create players. If this remains over your head, maybe you or the client should find someone more experienced with creating custom solutions.

BTW, your encode specs look fine. The only question I'd have is the keyframe rate. Depending on the content, this setting can be rather counterintuitive, so, if you're open to doing some testing, you might try rates of 10 and 90 and see if there's any improvement.

Youtube, vimeo, exposure room - you're not in control of what happens to your video in several ways. If you or your client really need/want that control, you'll have to step out from those kinds of hosting services.

[Karel Bata]

Should have picked up on this thread months ago!

Check out my site Video Embed Tests which gives you side by side embedded comparisons.

It's about to undergo a revamp.

[Charles W. Hull]

Originally Posted by Karel Bata

It's about to undergo a revamp.

Good job Karel. Any update on HD would be appreciated, and possibly updates on 1080p capability. I'm starting to look at 1080p distribution for those who have capable monitors. So far my 1080p experience with SmugMug has not been very good as they switch to Quicktime at this resolution, which is not an especially good HD player. I am just starting to look at Vimeo's new 1080p service but don't have any experience yet.

Finally, I'm looking for a 1080p service that has a ROKU (or equivalent) interface to take the HD out to HDTV for display. So far I don't think Vimeo has this capability.