Host your HD videos on Vimeo for free
I’ve been looking into alternatives to Youtube for hosting videos to embed in web sites. A couple big players that immediately jump out are MetaCafe and Revver if only for their revenue sharing programs. Both allow you to make money from the videos, but then you have to deal with ads popping up over your videos. I had what I felt was a reasonable wishlist. I wanted
- High quality video
- an unobtrusive player
- a player that easily allows moving back and forth through the video
- No ads!
Well, it turns out, I can get all those things and more from a great video hosting site called Vimeo. Some of the other great features of Vimeo include
- Different aspect ratios/sizes for videos
- HD, yes, HD
- The player is gorgeous, when you aren’t hovering, it has no frame or controls
- Commenting is built in to the player so you get this functionality even when using it for embedded videos
Definitely check them out as a better alternative to Youtube.
I was trying to find out a little more about them but their about page contains the following hard to believe statistics.
“We currently have over 7 billion users who have uploaded over 950 trillion videos”
So, unless every human being on the planet (and then some) is a Vimeo user with an average of over 135,000 videos, there are only two possibilities. Either, this is a Vimeo joke or they have really failed in the fight against spammers.
Also, while on the topic of alternative video sharing sites, I’d like to put a plug in for another great niche video site called Video Jug. The idea here is to focus on howto videos. Although, I think many people still go to Youtube first for a video howto, there is a lot of good content there worth checking out.