Compare & Contrast the YouTube Alternatives
It's a running complaint from our clients. They love the ease and popularity of YouTube, but the video quality ain't great. So, I thought I'd find a few alternatives, upload a single high-quality video to each one - and see how they turn out.
Here's what I found. (I'd suggest hitting mute - and then playing all of 'em simultaneously.)
First, YouTube itself:
Second, MotionBox:
Third, vSocial:
Fourth, Blip.tv:
A few thoughts: It seems that the MotionBox video quality is roughly the same as YouTube's - plenty of compression artifacts and blurriness. The vSocial quality is great, but like MotionBox, there's lots of extra stuff in the player widget. Blip.tv has an excellent and uncluttered player widget - and when it's over, the screen just goes black.
It's worth noting that the original video file was 320x240, and only Blip.tv rendered its video in that size -- while the others all converted to their default larger size. Blip.tv has some relatively unique underlying HTML (based on javascript, rather than an EMBED tag) which might make it difficult to upload to some blogs or CMS's.
(Incidentally, you can download or view the original QuickTime file here for comparison purposes.)
Are there others that I've missed? I'm happy to try 'em out.
Kari Chisholm | July 2, 2007 | Comments (9) |
Your Name: Your Personal Note: | Your Email: Friends' Emails*: |
Comments
Is there an expected quality increase on YouTube when they get everything H.264-encoded? (That is, Apple is having them re-encode everything for compatibility with AppleTV and iPhone.)
I'm not clear on whether the benefits of that codec will trickle out to the Flash client, or only apply to videos viewed through those Apple devices.
Posted by: Josh Berezin | Jul 2, 2007 10:21:42 AM
One's I've seen used:
1) Google video
2) Brightcove (not actually sure if it's free, I couldn't figure it out from their site)
Posted by: Andrew | Jul 2, 2007 4:59:47 PM
There are other pretty cool video sharing sites as well such as Uncutvideo, Jumpcut and Motiono.
Posted by: Motiono.Com | Jul 8, 2007 8:41:00 PM
Jumpcut and Motiono are specially pretty high quality and simple just like Youtube.
Posted by: Motiono | Jul 8, 2007 8:41:51 PM
It seems a little like a moving target, too. YouTube is already changing as Google trots out the features--could be that the res will improve soon. Even doubling the capacity of file to load would help out. I also love the new feature that follows after the video has shown, where a menu of related clips pops up. You can do that when you have the kind of catalogue YouTube is amassing.
The quality is very low, though, and I look forward to the time, 2-3 years hence--when we're watching far better video on our computers.
One other thing that would be handy to know is what the interface is like for loading the videos. Google video is very slow and unwieldy, though you can put up big files. YouTube's is a snap. What are these others like?
Posted by: Jeff Alworth | Jul 17, 2007 1:47:22 PM
I'm curious as to why you chose these providers from among the dozens out there. I honestly don't know much about the features offered by each one. What about uploadit.org? A techie friend of mine uses that one, and I've asked him why. It's off the radar as far as I can tell, and this friend seems to be ahead of the curve on a lot of things. If I get a good answer, I'll post it.
Posted by: js | Jul 17, 2007 2:34:00 PM
oops.
no wonder the site I mentioned was off the rader. the url is actually:
http://www.uploadingit.com/
Posted by: js | Jul 17, 2007 2:37:25 PM
You might also check out Veoh. At first glance, the quality looks decent: http://www.veoh.com/
Posted by: Rick Ray | Jul 17, 2007 10:50:37 PM
Hi Kari: Thanks for this comparison. I love Stage 6 by DivX (stage6.divx.com). Amazing quality. Of course, it has to be DivX formatted. More and more DVD players can play DivX natively, though, so it seems to be growing in popularity.
Also, for something very cool out of China, check out Mojiti.
http://mojiti.com/kan/298/314
Allows you to add comments, subtitles, etc. to any video on any video site.
Posted by: Steve | Jul 18, 2007 11:03:00 PM
