Popular video hosting site Vimeo has announced that they will no longer allow videos of video games on the site. Specifically, they're going to be deleting "game walk-throughs, game strategy videos, depictions of player vs player battles, raids, fraps, or any other video gaming videos that simply depict individuals playing a video game." As of September 1st, all videos that fall under that description will be deleted.
The staff blog post on the subject lists some reasons for the decision, including the staff's feeling that these videos don't meet the standards of "creative expression" that the site tries to uphold. More importantly, though, video game vids tend to be some of the longest and most common videos on the site, slowing down transcoding times for the other content that Vimeo is apparently trying to encourage.
Debate has already fired up in the comments section of the Vimeo blog, as users wonder why the site would cut off a type of video that is evidently popular enough to take up significant system resources. There's also a fair share of relieved comments from folks who are glad to see this type of "unoriginal" content removed from the site. We can see the points that both sides are making, but what's your take?
While it's nice to think that anyone can create an awesome web page or desktop application just by typing a few lines of code into a computer, the truth is good design is good design, whether it's sketched out on a computer or on a piece of paper. Deeplinking has put together a pictorial showing some of the paper sketches that led to popular applications like Twitter, Vimeo's profile pages, Flickr's Places feature, and the AbiWord word processor port for the XO Laptop.
There are a few other paper prototypes to check out as well. In some cases the paper sketches look strikingly like the finished product. In other cases, they just look like a blur of lines and arrows.
Most of the images were found via Flickr. Odds are if you spend some time searching, you can find a few other gems. Let us know if you find anything good in the comments!
Pownce, the social network that's all about sharing with your friends, just made sharing a whole lot easier. Now you can grab an RSS feed of all your incoming Pownce messages, for more convenient reading. This is cool, but RSS is par for the course on social networks these days. It would be bigger news if Pownce still didn't have it.
What is actually quite unique about Pownce is the variety of video and photo hosting sites it now supports. If you post a video link to Pownce -- under the link tab, not as a regular post -- it will now display inline on your Pownce page. This goes for the big players in online video, like Vimeo, Viddler, YouTube and the new Flickr Video, as well as a smattering of other sites. CollegeHumor video support seems sort of arbitrary, but hey, we guess some people watch it.
Web video is hot and getting easier and easier to use. Grant and Christina talk to Vimeo's dalas verdugo about techniques to make web video look its best and garner attention.
The Squadcast's "The Five" takes a look at Download Squad's five favorite applications/web services for editing, exporting and uploading web video. Download this episode (mp4) (iPod, iPhone, Nano, AppleTV, Quicktime, VLC)
Online video site Vimeo has just launched a new "high definition" video player. Essentially, if you upload a video with a 1280x720 (also known as 720p) resolution, Vimeo will transcode that video and play it back at its native resolution.
Now, this doesn't mean you're seeing the same video quality you'd get from an HDTV signal or a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD disc. Vimeo's still compressing the heck out of your video in order to stream it across the internet. But the end result is a video that plays back at a much higher bitrate than anything you'll find on YouTube.
You can definitely tell the difference between Vimeo's HD videos and their standard definition videos. While you're watching any high definition video, you can click a button to turn HD off and you'll get a lower-resolution version. We'd have included an HD video in this post, but right now there's no way to embed an HD quality video, so you'll just have to check out Vimeo's HD site and browse through the small collection of user-submitted videos.
I have used (and still do) a bunch of video upload services, all the usuals, YouTube, Vimeo, Uncut, Google, and some unusual ones as well. I must say I can't get over how simple and elegant the simplicity of Netscape video is. Of course by now I'm sure you know that this blog, and Netscape are owned by AOL, so some of you are saying, "geez, what a cheap plug," but it's not. Netscape makes video easy, even easier than YouTube in my book. I am a quick and dirty application lover, and Netscape Video fits the bill. What is your favorite video service and why? Do you like YouTube's new "Quick Capture" feature, or is Google more your speed? Personally, I love Netscape Video. It is uncommonly uncomplicated.
YouTube is the de facto standard for video sharing on the web, but there are a lot of other options out there. But other features aside, which one offers the best video quality? While Life Goggles doesn't actually answer that question for you, it does gives you side-by-side comparisons of eight major video sharing sites' embedded players so you can judge for yourself. I've been squinting at them for five minutes and can't decide on a clear winner myself, but I will say that Vimeo's scrubber (i.e. seek bar) is by far the best. If you want to put your videos online and quality is an issue, you should definitely check it out. Life Goggles also has a couple handyguides on putting your videos online.
I found this really intriguing video via kottke's remaindered links of a photographer who took a pic of himself every day for six years, and then threw all the images together into a movie. But this post isn't about the cool video - it's about Vimeo's Flash player controller.
After pressing play, mouseover the video again and note the timeline controller that pops up. Now click anywhere in that controller to jump around the timeline (of video your player has downloaded, of course). For bonus points, click and drag to scrub back and forth a few seconds - awesome, isn't it? You're watching a Flash video that, as long as it's buffered enough, more or less has near-perfect performance in terms of navigating the timeline, selecting specific points and scrubbing footage. In Flash! Why does nearly everyone else's Flash player/controller suck? YouTube, MySpace - I'm looking at you. Embedded QuickTime and Windows Movie files have been able to do this forever.. why can't Flash master this fundamental function?
You can tell Vimeo's controller is custom - it's too 'web 2.0' and gloriously simple and intuitive; there's no way Macromedia-cum-Adobe built it. So what gives? Do you DLS readers have any idea as to why Flash, with Adobe's big video services push, doesn't seem to offer these basic necessities of producing a quality online video experience? Sound off, even if it's just an explanation to help sooth the pain.
For downloading videos from sites like YouTube and Google Video I'm pretty satisfied with KeepVid, but if you spend a lot of time on those sites you might find VideoDownloader handy. It's an extension for Firefox that makes downloading videos from more than 60 (!) web sites a painless two-click operation. It's mostly just a front-end for the web service of the same name, but you needed more icons in your status bar, right?
I've seen a number of sites that
let you directly download videos from sites like Google and YouTube, but KeepVid
beats the rest with its nice design, easy-to-remember URL, and its ability to download not only from the big guys but
also with about three dozen other video sites like iFilm, Vimeo, Putfile, Revver, and MySpace. It's also got a handy FAQ that offers some help in dealing with those pesky FLV files and streaming
(mms://) videos.
Popular video hosting site Vimeo has announced that they will no longer allow videos of video games on the site. Specifically, they're going to be deleting "game walk-throughs, game strategy videos, depictions of player vs player battles, raids, fraps, or any other video gaming videos that simply depict individuals playing a video game." As of September 1st, all videos that fall under that description will be deleted. 
