Slashdot Mirror
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."
MPAA to sue 10 recently-reviewed sites citing DMCA violations in 3, 2, 1. . .
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
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.
ThePirateBay is noticeably absent from that list.
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.
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
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.
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.
Oh You POS
which site is the youtube of Pr0n?
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.
.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.
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
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.)
Please help metamoderate.
This review isn't worth your time. It didn't even mention that http://video.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.
Rereading everything:
You seem to have some definition of the word "use" that is different from everyone elses, or maybe just how the clauses work together. Sending a threatening letter alluding to violations is using the DMCA. If that is enough to result in the site being shut down because the site owner can't afford a legal battle with the MPAA, then that is using the DMCA to shut down a site.
Also, I support the notion that it is funny (though not exaggerated sufficiently to work well) and will post my variation in another subthread.
What I had before:
Yeah, it'd be nice if every act of perjury got prosecuted, but they aren't and to the best of my knowledge the MPAA and RIAA are well aware of that fact and use it to their advantage.
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.
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/ ). 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/ ) which allows a maximum of 100MB and unlimited downloads. Though for anyone that's used RapidShare, you know about the wait times.
HD Trailers
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.
Why does yahoo do this