Vimeo - The Maserati of Online Video
When you say “Online Video” the first thing most people think of is YouTube. However, if you’re looking for something a little sleeker, a little sexier, and with more options, you might want to check out Vimeo.com
There are several things that seperate Vimeo from other video services out there. Vimeo has all the standard features that come with most hosted video services; It’s free, embeddable players, and it has the ability to allow users to comment on your video. But, that’s where a lot of the similarities end.
First, there’s an HD video channel, dedicated strictly to videos in 1280×720. This offers a considerable quality improvement over the standard 400 odd pixel videos available on YouTube.
Second, there’s the interface design. Now, I could go into the details about UI design theory and uses of fonts, but I think the best way to demonstrate what I’m talking about is by their embeddable video players. As an example, I’ve embedded a video below in both the Youtube format and the Vimeo format. Right off the bat, you can see that Vimeo’s utilizes a “contextual interface” design to it’s player. The video controls are hidden while the video is playing, thus giving you a very clean and professional looking video to use on your sites. You can customize the size, the colors, and information visible on the player. Compare this to YouTube’s video in which you can do none of the above.
Lastly, you can see there’s a definite quality difference between the two videos. I used the exact same video source on both YouTube and Vimeo as well. As you can see, the Vimeo processor that compresses the video for online viewing is far superior than Youtube.
In Closing, Vimeo is a great site to use and a beautiful aternative to youtube. If you’re into viral videos, or high quality production, I highly recommend you add it.
UPDATE: We recieved an email from Vimeo shortly after this post went live. While they thanked us for the good review of the site, they informed me that Vimeo is NOT for business purposes, only personal use and our Demo video for Addoursearch.com would be removed within 24hrs. As a result, I’ve had to remove our demo video from this site.
Example of the Vimeo Video Player:
The Rock-afire Explosion Movie Trailer from The Rock-afire Explosion on Vimeo.
