Top Video Sharing Sites Reviewed 146
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."
check calibration+gamma settings (Score:4, Informative)
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.)
Re:What about downloading (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What about downloading (Score:0, Informative)
Get a fucking clue before you post.
Re:What about downloading (Score:2, Informative)
Recompression (Score:5, Informative)
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.
file size / compressopmg (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:YouTube will eventually die. (Score:4, Informative)
They do. It's just not online. All those weekly clip shows on E and VH1 pay YouTube for content.
Limited Availability (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Good pick. (Score:3, Informative)