Vimeo, the classy alternative.

I hate youtube almost as much as I love it. It's simply the best way to find almost any video ever made when you only have about five seconds. Adding support for HD makes it even more appealing. But let's face it, youtube has become the least common denominator, overrun by a million crappy cellphone videos of people behaving badly.

When I first realized youtube was supporting HD, I quickly uploaded a couple samples from my 5D Mark II. Uploading to youtube always seems more complicated than it should be, and when you add the fact that they don't give you any kind of progress bar, it can be frustrating waiting for a huge HD file to upload. Is it done? Did it crash? And then you find out that the upload failed for some reason, and you have to try again.

Next, you test your video. Youtube defaults to regular quality - - you have to select HD to view it. Maybe I've become spoiled in a very short amount of time, because anything less than HD now looks like complete ass. Were all youtube videos this bad before and I just didn't realized it until my eyes were opened to HD? I don't know. But it seems to me that the regular quality version of a youtube HD file should look a little better than it does. I would rather look at a small but good quality render than one that is big and crappy. But youtube thinks the masses want big and crappy. Go figure.

But what bothers me most about posting a video to youtube is the way your video seems to degrade over time. Am I the only one this has happened to? I upload an HD file. It looks pretty good. Wow, HD on youtube. Two weeks later the same file is all compressy and pixelated. What changed? I didn't change anything. So all of a sudden people think I make crappy videos.

The Canon 5D Mark II is all about glorious image quality for both stills and of course video. And I have finally come to the conclusion that youtube is NOT the place to showcase my prized captures. So I've decided to join the Vimeo community. As near as I can tell, it is geared more towards quality. It's easy to sign up, easy to upload, and seems to have consistent, high quality replay.

Here is my very first Vimeo offering:


Paper Dragon Illusion with Canon 5D Mark II from Bryan Nixon on Vimeo.


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