DesignShak

YouTube vs. Vimeo

In all of our opportunities to work on clients websites I try to encourage including at least a little bit of video on their site. Especially if the client sells a product that can be demoed. I think it is a testament of America’s laziness in their unwillingness to read, they’d rather wait for the movie so to speak. Now, without getting too detailed I need to throw out a warning though for our SEO (Search Engine Optimization for Google, Yahoo, etc.) concerned brethren. I’ve seen some sites have text that matches the video or audio verbatim below the video. That is the best of both worlds,  but if you like simple and clean video alone is the way to go.

Now, YouTube is of course the standard for online video communities, but recently a new site has arrived on the scene. That of course is Vimeo. Vimeo is an awesome site that is more for serious video indy filmmakers to display their work stylishly. If you’re like me, when you see those old player skins that YouTube features it takes you back to the day when that was impressive. Not today, people expect more and quality for YouTube was always a problem. YouTube now offers HD quality stuff but it can be finicky. The problem with embedding Vimeo videos is that it is much better quality yes, but it is flash based and cannot be seen on the iPhone. I have an iPhone and of course a YouTube ap comes standard with the phone. If you are trying to watch an imbedded video with Vimeo your only going to see a blank box where the video is supposed to be. Another downfall, albeit on purpose, is the amount of time waiting for your video to be seen. Vimeo offers a subscription to not have to wait in line and get more needed upload space for those HD blockbusters. If you want to see the amazing quality of Vimeo check this link out! http://vimeo.com/4670828?hd=1 is a phenominal example of some of the best conceptual animation that I’ve seen.

Even though YouTube has an ap on the iPhone the quality is worse there than online for faster downloading but all in all I am in Vimeos camp even with the whole iPhone thing. I guess that Apple just has to figure out how to negotiate with Adobe to get flash working in sync with the iPhone. That’s all I got to say about that.