use vimeo plus to host videos on website, give up hosting vids directly?

[Josh Bass]

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).

[Chris Davis]

Originally Posted by Les Wilson

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.

[Josh Bass]

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.

[Aric Mannion]

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?

[Seth Bloombaum]

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.

[Josh Chesarek]

Originally Posted by Aric Mannion

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.

[Josh Bass]

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

[Josh Chesarek]

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.

[Ryan Douthit]

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.

[Josh Bass]

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.

[Ryan Douthit]

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.

[Josh Chesarek]

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