Why I embed things using third party aplications

Just a few comments about uploading video to your websites :

1. As my visual language teacher said (pertaining to video) : "Garbage in, Garbage out." (Jane Marsching.)

If you're going to upload video to Youtube, DON'T compress it first - Youtube will do it for you, and the better quality Youtube gets in, the better quality it puts out.


I try NOT to host video on my website, and use Vimeo/Youtube because :



1. It just works.

I used to host video on my website by myself. I got tired of technological morons who didn't have Quicktime whining to me that my stuff didn't play. People very quickly stopped watching. I also had lots of trouble with cross-platform compatibility. Flash-based Youtube and Vimeo should work on just about any browser out there. People are also hesitant to download files they don't trust.



2.Quality and speed.

Good quality videos tend to be larger files. Preloading is nice, but it can really mess up people on dial-up - and a LOT of the US is still on dial-up. Youtube et al. load fast, and offer decent quality.

The way the videos play is also better - they embed well, and can be re-sized quite easily (because they're flash.)

Vimeo can also host things in full HD quality.



3.The future is flash.

Youtube, Vimeo, et. al all play videos from Flash files - why can't WE use flash to post our videos on our websites? (I've been meaning to learn how for a while. . . .)



4.Interconnectivity.

When there's a video on Youtube/Vimeo, it can easily be shared, posted, embedded, linked to, blogged, about, etc. Basically, if its on Youtube, other people can see it and share it, which I believe is a key part of the "new media" concept. If you're posting it online to be seen, then let is be seen in as many ways as possible. If it exists only on your website, its harder to share. (Just look at the number of other works I've embedded in other posts - if those were all on individual artists sites, it might just be a list of links, which looks worse visually, and makes it harder to actually see the video.)

If you don't want to being seen/blogged about outside of your webpage (you want some exclusitivity), you can turn off ratings, comments, and embedding to keep your videos as "yours."



On a final note, for my stuff, right now I'm using Vimeo.
(I don't dislike Youtube, and its nice b/c it ties right in with Blogger.)

I like Vimeo better then youtube because :

1. It's got HD support so I can post HD video.

2. It's embedded video system is better - you can change the size of the embedded video pixel by pixel, from a small 25x25 video, all the way up to embedding something up to 750x750. This means that I can size the embed to fit the design of the page I'm trying to embed it in. (Some of the Youtube videos are too wide to fit the Blogger themes. . . .) And it's not changing the size of the link - if you make it 25pixels wide, a little 25 pixel wide rendition of the video will play.

3. To me, the video conversion quality seems better - maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but I prefer it, so thats what I use.


Vimeo size difference : (Youtube can't do this)

50x34


How Not to Paralel Park (V. 2) from Mark Sylvester on Vimeo.



250x169. . and both play, with only one-click to change the size.


How Not to Paralel Park (V. 2) from Mark Sylvester on Vimeo.




Note to Self :
BEFORE THE 11- Written description of final project/proposal
2-3 paragraphs
scan storyboard
email examples of related studio work