Top Video Sharing Sites Reviewed

prostoalex writes "Digital Video Guru is running a comparison of 10 digital video sharing sites - EyeSpot Beta, Google Video Beta, Grouper Beta, Jumpcut Beta, OurMedia, Revver Beta, VideoEgg, Vimeo, vSocial and YouTube. Currently, based on traffic, YouTube is the leader of the pack (more heavily visited MSN Video does not support user-uploaded videos), but Digital Video Guru blog awards Vimeo for fastest uploads, JumpCut for editing, and YouTube for community features."

DMCA anyone?

MPAA to sue 10 recently-reviewed sites citing DMCA violations in 3, 2, 1. . .

Good pick.

The thing I like about YouTube is that they have their videos as standard shockwave files...I can't get most other sites to run on my browser/OS.

Missing

ThePirateBay [thepiratebay.org] is noticeably absent from that list.

Google video is not available in many countries

Most of Europe and China, if you try to access Google Video, you are told it's not available in your country yet. Why they have this restriction by unilaterally banning ALL videos from users of said countries is beyond me.

Is it legal (due to censorship policies)? Than why do the other sites not have this?

This is a major detractor of Google Video's usability in my opinion.

My disappointment came almost immediately

When Google announced Google Video, I naturally checked it out. I was impressed with a wide array of titles. But what dissappinted me most was the inability to adjust the brightness/contrast of the videos. Some titles are just too dark!

At first I thought it was my version of flash. But even after getting the latest, those videos are still too dark. To make matters worse, there does not seem to be an effort to sort this issue out. We need some common video controls on some these videos for sure.

On Kubuntu' Konqueror browser, the controls that at least appear on Windows2k with Firefox 1.5 do not appear at all!

check calibration+gamma settings

At first I thought it was my version of flash. But even after getting the latest, those videos are still too dark. To make matters worse, there does not seem to be an effort to sort this issue out. We need some common video controls on some these videos for sure.

If you're using Windows, you probably don't have the correct color profile selected for your display, or you're using the wrong gamma setting. Or you're using Linux, and don't have the gamma set properly (X does not default to a reasonable gamma- it defaults to 2.4 or something, when Windows is 2.2.) Note that you can't use "2.2" as a parameter- you have to give it something like "1.2" or similar. Google "linux gamma" etc.

Macs also sometimes default to goofy profiles, so check under "Color" in the Displays control panel.

I've never had a problem with video brightness on google video, but I am using a calibrated display on an OSX macbook (and Dell monitor- yes, both are calibrated.)

But they forgot one

I'm talking about blip.tv of course. Just put a video up on there today. Fast, easy, and up online immediately.

Don't get me wrong, I also have a youtube account. But blip.tv is quickly becoming my favorite.

Torrent

I haven't RTFA, but is there a place that lets you post a video, and it automatically offers a Torrent of the video for download? It seems like a good way for a popular video to get around quickly without causing any one server a huge bandwidth bill.

question for a sat night on /.

which site is the youtube of Pr0n?

YouTube will eventually die.

YouTube is great because it's ad free, and everything loads fast. That's why people like it. Too bad that YouTube doesn't have a revenue model yet. The only reason they stay afloat is because some company keeps GIVING them millions of dollars. Some estimates would suggest that YouTube costs $750,000+ per month. A company can only operate at a loss for so long.

Eventually their cash flow will stop and they'll start pilling on the ads. Adwords, pop-ups, those annoying flash "timer" ads where you have to sit at a screen for 30 seconds, and ads before you play each video. Sure, they'll probably add a "premium" section to the site where you pay $9.99 a month and get to view the site ad free, but how many people are going to pay for that?

I remember when Atom Films and iFilm where big. Once the ads start poppin', the people start droppin'. And as the Pringles commercial goes, "Once you pop, you just can't stop." That's pretty much the motto for all these "free" content/service sites. It's great while it's ad free and everything loads fast, but once that ends...the party is over.

Google Video at least has some staying power. At least with Google I can save some videos in .mp4 format. Personally, I hate any site that doesn't let me save the video to my HDD. Since YouTube doesn't sell ads, I'm not sure I understand the "point" of making you go to their site everytime you want to view a video. They might as well just let you download it, and save themselves the bandwidth cost.

Re:YouTube will eventually die.

Too bad that YouTube doesn't have a revenue model yet.

They do. It's just not online. All those weekly clip shows on E and VH1 pay YouTube for content.

What about downloading

This review isn't worth your time. It didn't even mention that http://video.google.com/ [google.com] allows you to download the videos in standard formats and youtude only allows you to play the videos with a flash player.

Basically, if you are using youtube and you come across a video you like, it's not possible to save it. That makes it almost worthless.

Re:What about downloading

Keepvid.com [keepvid.com] might help you there. It gives you the link for easy saving. You might need that viewer for the Flashvideo files depending on your setup.

Recompression

The one thing that annoys me terribly about these video sites is that they recompress video files available on other websites and present them in a low-bandwith Flash format. Sure Flash is crossplatform Mac/Win and runs almost everywhere, but it has the worst quality of any video codec. And recompressing video introduces significant artifacting.
I've seen dozens of recompressed videos on sites like iFilm and YouTube that are easily available in high quality on the original websites, it's like iFilm and YouTube are scraping the web looking for content to populate their sites. And of course they don't provide a link to the original site, so you have no way to know there's a better quality version available. This is dragging video down to the lowest common denominator. I run a video blog website, and I use non-downloadable streaming video precisely because I don't want some other site scraping my content and recompressing it to make it look like crap.

Good oportunity to post the video

"U.S. Physicists, ~1900 already, sign a petition expressing strong repudiation of the new US nuclear weapons policies, giving Bush the power to nuke without asking the congress and considers use on Iran. The UC San Diego Physicist and signatory to the petition Dr. Jeorge Hirsch warns about the consequences if U.S. deploys nukes through a 10' video." here [digg.com].

I wonder how long will it pass until this video is on all this video sharing services :-).

Multiply!

If you are just a regular person, like me, who takes video of your life, and you want to share it with more of the people you know (your friends and family, and the people they know too), then Multiply's social communications platform is second to none. You can share original-quality video, plus photos, blog entries and more -- all in one place.

Ups n downs of youtube

Ups:

Lots of fun copyrighted content. full episodes of the state, aeon flux, etc
Nice & searchable
subscriptions to keywords. I just wish it would default sort by most recently added
LOTS of obscure 80s content
LOTS of obscure 80s music videos
Nice user interaction tools
Groups!

Downs:
WAY too much anime crap on there - I swear 70% is anime footage.
Way too much 'crap' footage like teenagers lip syncing to some rap song. make it friends only
Searches for keyword stuff eventually lead to more anime crap
They are cracking down on copyrighted stuff - I got an email from "DCMA" when i posted a conan o'brien clip on there. It's now gone.
The speed of downloading videos is throttled to be less than realtime. You have to instantly hit pause when the page loads, then hit play when it's done
sometimes, even if you have ahead-buffer loaded, it stops for 5-10 seconds and resumes playing. Only happens on certain videos
No more videos allowed that are 12+ minutes.

Youtube is addicting, plain and smiple.

file size / compressopmg

Maybe not as big as a factor anymore, but filesize is and no compression are the 2 features I look for. Ability to edit online is fine and dandy, but I can already recompress, re-encode, and edit on my machine already. What I need is a service which will not decrease the quality after my upload to conserve bandwidth and allow a good max size, now that video quality is up to the HDTV era.

Google Video I believe doesn't have a max file size limit, but they do recompress your video to whatever codec they use.
Youtube (not sure about file size limit), but after re-enconding into FLV, the quality is pretty depressing.

I haven't tried the others listed on the site, but I currently use PutFile ( http://www.putfile.com/ [putfile.com] ). They have a limit of 25MB for videos and no longer allows direct downoading, but they're decent and actually play back the original file. For larger files, most people probably won't want to view it in the browser anyway, so I upload to RapidShare ( http://www.rapidshare.de/ [rapidshare.de] ) which allows a maximum of 100MB and unlimited downloads. Though for anyone that's used RapidShare, you know about the wait times.

I'm just glad I can play all these videos at home

because, wait for it, I still have my beta deck. late in the game, he shoots, and yes, mod's be, he scores!!

MSN Video?

Am I the only one who has never heard of "MSN Video" ?

Limited Availability

Looks like you guys didnt know that Google Video is not available in many parts of the world.

Here in India,Google Video simply gives a error Message- " Thanks for your interest,This service is unavailable for your region".

OTOH,Youtube works fine.

Funny you should mention...

Funny you should mention those video sites. I've been up all night playing with YouTubes API, but don't worry, the result is well worth it (check sig).

If anyone likes this script, please help yourself. I'd love to see a "best of 80's cheese" or "best old school sci fi" list if anyone else is as addicted as I am.

Oh thank you goodness, d/l complete. Time for more Ren & Stimpy...

Call me immature if you must, but IMO, this is what Sunday was made for.

phanfare.com

Dont understand why they didnt mention phanfare.com. Its pretty much best site ive found http://jmacdonald.phanfare.com/ [phanfare.com]

Two problems

Most of these sites have 2 issues as I see it. First they rely on pilfered content. Usually the biggest draw is from some copyrighted clip from Comedy Central or a cartoon or what have you. Look at the Natalie Portman rap that was getting so many hits and then got pulled. The second problem is that they do not reward content creators in any meaningful way. Sure, they get exposure, but that's just a means to the end of getting noticed by someone that will hire them usually. I think that if they were rewarded even for their small pieces they could and would tunr around and produce more. That's why I applaud the Revver model.

Re:Lame

I agree - it would be much nicer to not have to install any video playing software in order to watch videos online... why *can't* they play in my text-based browser, afterall?

Seriously, though it's superior to AOL video or video from CNN that require you to have WMV support in your browser - and despite Flip4mac, that's still not an easy feat in OSX. I'm a huge supporter of platform-independent video, and flash player is at least a decent alternative towards that end.

Re:Lame

Would you prefer 1 Flash plugin or 4 seperate video plugins?

Re:Lame

Much better than making you choose between wmv/quicktime/realplayer imo - I'm able to view these in our linux lab when I'm taking a break from whatever cs stuff I might be working on.

Re:Okay.. A bit off topic...

Have you checked the permissions on your sound device (probably /dev/dsp or something similar)? I've never run Ubuntu, but on Slackware the permissions are set to 700 by default and I believe Flash requires both read and write access. I just set mine 777 and haven't had any problems since.

Re:Lame

98% is the correct number - Flash player is the most installed plugin out there, so if you're deciding what to use to play videos, this seems like a clear choice. Here's a link to Macromedia's stat page:
http://www.macromedia.com/software/player_census/f lashplayer/ [macromedia.com].

Re:Dont Miss Videosift.com Either!

Thanks for the recommendation anonymous coward. I concur. ( :
www.videosift.com

Re:Looks like crap...

Hm ... try TorrentSpy or maybe Bitenova. That will probably improve your video quality if not your legal standing.