I like to make videos and often I embed them on my websites. I always make sure to post to YouTube if I want to ensure that I will reach as many people as possible. For a long time I’ve been playing around with different hosts, from Vimeo and YouTube, to my current favorite, self-hosting. Let me break down some of the pros and cons of each and give you a lay of the land from my personal experience.
How do I embed video? This is super easy in general. What you have to do is copy and paste some html code into your web page. YouTube makes embedding a relatively simple task – currently, if you click on “Share” you will see the possibility of grabbing embed code, which can be customized. Vimeo has a similar process but you just click the “embed” link that floats atop the video when you hover. The only caveat is that some features of embedding are only available if you pay fees for “plus” or “pro” accounts (more related to this later).
YouTube - By far the daddy of them all, YouTube part of Google, and as I mentioned, no self-respecting video creator will not post here, if they want to reach as wide an audience as they can. Upload as large a resolution as possible, at a high bitrate quality and YouTube will then recode your video to suit smaller formats as needed (for slow connections, mobile etc). YouTube has its drawbacks, including ad serving, and a plethora of low quality content. But it’s the go to site for music and a lot of genres – it’s very reliable and has an aura of “everything is there.” YouTube has some amazingly sophisticated features. Concerned about accessibility? Want to reach people that might be unable to turn on their speakers or use screen readers? Try adding closed captions. One video I uploaded is Alan Rickman reading Goran Simic’ “Sarajevo Spring” poem: http://youtu.be/afvvVAhqq7U (my original aim was to clean up the audio another user had created for this same video, but later I used it for my captions demo). One serious deficiency for the regular aka “non partner” user is in inability to upload a poster image or choose a thumbnail from anywhere in the image to display when the video player appears. You are limited to choosing from only 3 screenshots! That is lame. It’s one of the few serious issues I have with YouTube.
Vimeo - I am not going to turn this post into a rant, but I am not a big fan, on a practical level, of Vimeo. It has great things going for it – it tends to be the province of video makers with an artistic sense: photographers, motion graphics people, documentary filmmakers etc. In general we’re talking a sensitive thoughtful group. Unlike YouTube, if you trolled randomly, or entered from an outside link, you’ll be treated to some fine quality artful video expression. One drawback is that Vimeo seems to suffer from very sever tech problems. I have observed that video streams quicker from YouTube. Recently I found that my Android smartphone will not play Vimeo videos! A discussion on a Vimeo forum has comments about problems with iPhone users as well! The staff are apologetic but can offer no solutions to any of the complaints!. A difficult service to recommend.
JW Player (self-hosted): If you are like me, you manage a few sites and have found different solutions for getting video on to your pages. One of the items that is crucial is to embed video that can appear in both Flash and HTML5 formats. All major browsers now support this new html flavor and if you want to serve video to an iPhone you had better be able to offer an MP4 via a Javascript (JS) player. You can also include a direct download link which will allow iOS users access to your content. My recent fave is the JW Player which claims to be able to embed video that can reach all visitors, regardless of platform or device. And why worry about Flash support? Well, some folks surfing on older browsers will not be able to see the HTML5 video – so the browser defaults or “falls back” to Flash. The JW Player basically does what YouTube does – allows video to reach all devices (a claim Vimeo just can’t manage right now).
One more note for WordPress users. Various plugins enhance the usability of video on your WP blog/site. I’d personally stay away from the WordPress video solution and go with something like the JW player plugin. My second choice is to embed using a Flash player and offer an mp4 download link (many browsers and devices will actually just instantly stream this content which is a bonus).
My recommendation? Depending on the site and your audience I’d choose to either embed YouTube videos or host your own player (like a licensed version of JW Player for example). There was a time just a few years ago when I considered embedding YouTube videos to be non-professional (especially for a corporate site), but in actual practise this is often a good decision (YouTube has sharing and is social media after all). The non-branded player is the slickest solution but is not always the best choice.
If you have other suggestions I’d be happy to hear them. Please post a comment (moderation is on) or send me a note via the “Contact” form.
Links:
Add captions to YouTube:
http://www.google.com/support/
Easy transcript files for YouTube captions:
http://www.google.com/support/
Vimeo has an amazing number of quality vids – explore them through their categories page at http://vimeo.com/categories
My favorite video at Vimeo is a touching doc called “Last Minutes with Oden” (6 min)
http://vimeo.com/8191217
JW Player - Check out their site and see the video players in action!
http://www.longtailvideo.com/players
It seems Toronto streets have had some fresh new postal boxes appearing in the last few months. I spotted a couple on Carlton and King and took these quick snaps with my cellphone. I let out a big “Wow!” and had to stop and investigate when I realized the new colorful all-over wrap design with postal codes was meant to discourage taggers and other vandals. I don’t know if it will stop people from postering the boxes but I bet it will deter the marker taggers quite a bit. An impressive design that adds a little flair and color to the streets – and ironically/interestingly is a concept directly influenced by graffiti.
