Video Sharing Sites Go High-Def…See the Head-To-Head Comparision

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If you host your own videos, maintaining your video quality is not a problem because you control everything from start to finish.

However, if you use video sharing sites to host your videos, it’s a different story.  Essentially, you upload your video and then give up total control over what the final product is going to look like.  Traditionally, video sharing sites will “dumb down” the quality of your video to save on bandwidth costs (after all, YouTube spends an estimated 1 million dollars a day on bandwidth).  Thankfully, things are changing.

Due to ever-improving software code, video sharing sites are now able to host your videos in high quality formats.  Sites like Vimeo and Blip.TV are leading the way.

Now, the Internet’s largest independent video sharing site, DailyMotion, is joining the mix too.  You see, they’ve just released a new high quality video player.

But the only reason I mention this is because they’ve put up a video that shows, head to head, the difference between the “standard” web video formats and the new “high quality” formats.  In fact, it’s the best video I’ve seen so far that illustrates the difference.

It’s worth a look and goes a long way in explaining (far better than I can do with words) what these new video formats actually look like.

You can watch the video here

5 comments

  • Dave, just so we’re clear we are not talking about HD here, we’re talking about HQ…if one is shooting video in standard def on Mini DV and then encodes with the stuff you taught us in the Web Video University Course. Then uploading a video encoded with the H.264 codec, 20+ frame rate per second, etc. setting should produce an HQ output on a site like daily motion.
    Right?
    P.S. You should get the plug in “subscribe to comments” so that I don’t have to check back here to see if you answered my question.

  • Yes, producing a video using the H.264 codec (whether it be a .mov, .mp4, .mp4v, etc. file) will give you the highest quality on sharing sites.

    Keep in mind that all video sharing sites convert these videos differently…and display videos at different sizes…so they all have their little nuances.

    But if you’re using someplace like TubeMogul, the best “one-size-fits-all” format is a 640×480 video, H.264 at a 1200-1500 bitrate, with a .MP4 extension.

    Here is the same video produced with those settings across different sites:

    http://www.howcast.com/videos/60037-All-About-QuickTime-Video

    http://uncutvideo.aol.com/videos/7ce0ffb3e9f8368486b4b5df8a66637b

    http://www.graspr.com/videos/All-About-QuickTime-Video-1

    But like I said, this is a general “one-size-fits-all” format. If you do this on Google or Blip for example, they display the videos larger so they don’t look as sharp.

    On the upside though, the specs listed above do work (generally) with iTunes. That means the same video can be used for a feed into iTunes where people can download the video to their iPod/iPhone.

  • I set up a PAYING account on vimeo and they shut
    me down because of “commercial access”. Bascially they
    do not want paying small business customers!!!!!!

    If you are using them for your business you are at risk
    of having all of your videos shut down.

    Dave, you should warn your people about this.