my partners and I outsource video projects for our clients to a list of providers that we recommend or have worked with in the past. This arrangement has always worked out well for both us and our clients. With this being the case, we rarely host video content for our clients, instead we just embed content from these video sharing sites, as is the case with most development firms that I know of today. This is just standard practice anymore.
Disadvantages to Vimeo
There are a couple of disadvantages I guess for going with Vimeo over YouTube, exposure probably being the biggest one. YouTube naturally gets more traffic than Vimeo, it’s just a given. But with the growing popularity of Vimeo, and the ability to use Facebook Connect to post and comment on videos, it’s probably just a matter of time before Vimeo catches up with YouTube. Another disadvantage to Vimeo is the fact that you can’t play video content from inside Vimeo on the iPhone because there isn’t an app available yet. This is of course a concern in the Vimeo community and there are some interested parties looking to release such an app in the very near future, see the Vimeo future request forum post. You can also find some good quality comparisons on Vimeo’s community forum between Vimeo and YouTube.
Advantages to Vimeo
Earlier I cited the quality and clean appearance of Vimeo as the main reasons I like their service over YouTube, but in one comparison I read, they cited the following:
- support for high resolution (HD) content
- stereo audio without fuss
- option to download the source (non-transcoded) original video file
- option for content owners to replace an existing video file, while preserving likes, comments,
- real-time status updates as video is uploading and converting
- advanced privacy options, like password protected videos
- post-conversion alerts (they’ll email you when your video is ready)
- video information (title, description) can be added while the video is uploading, not before
- more advanced and customizable embedding options
Which to Recommend…
So, at the end of the day who do you recommend to your client for video sharing? My thoughts are both! It only takes a little bit of time to upload videos to both YouTube and Vimeo, so why not create both? You can get the most exposure inside of YouTube for your content and utilize Vimeo’s customizable embed options to display the video on your website. I don’t see a real problem with handling video content this way, and I have a few clients doing this right now. Granted, it’s a little bit more work, but at the end of the day they realize that they have a lot invested in their videos and usually don’t mind an extra process or two if it means it’s going to give them more bang for their buck.
Don’t take my word for it, there are also some other opinions on this topic:
- http://www.designshak.com/blog/youtube-vs-vimeo
- http://greyscalegorilla.com/blog/2008/04/02/vimeo-vs-youtube-quality/
- http://martinpaling.com/2009/07/08/vimeo-vs-youtube/
- http://www.edsocialmedia.com/2009/02/youtube-vimeo-or-both/
- http://www.kevindhendricks.com/2007/03/13/vimeo-vs-youtube/
Very good advice.
Very cool. Since I wrote this post Vimeo has added a lot of new features. Enjoy!
I recently uploaded my first video to Vimeo to dodge YouTube’s very tight copyright detection system; I just wanted to share a really cool mashup http://daghead.blogspot.com/2011/03/drop-it-like-ageispolis.html. I was extremely impressed and surprised that it provided a download link, and that I could update the video several times. GREAT!
I will be uploading to both YT and Vimeo from now on because as mentioned, YouTube gets more traffic and I post stuff in hope of feedback.