Most designers need to host videos online at some point, whether this is annual showcases of your work, tutorials you have made, or video edits for a client. There are so many video hosting services to choose from now a days, but Vimeo outshines all of them when it comes to hosting for designers.
Of course there are pros and cons of each video hosting service online, but if you take what designers need, Vimeo comes pretty much close to perfect. You may want to check out the Adobe Vimeo Channel, for many adobe product tutorials, the PSD Tuts Channel that has many awesome design tutorials and if your a flash junkie, theres a Flash Tutorials channel.
There are many designers on Vimeo such as Eden Soto, David Airey and Jacob Cass, plus there are many groups and channels. Worth having a look around if your a designer.
Video Quality
Vimeo allows users to upload videos is High Definition. This feature had been available on Vimeo way before Youtube adopted High Definition video uploads. Here is a quote from the Vimeo F.A.Q.
Vimeo presents HD in the 720p format, exactly the same resolution (1280×720) used by major broadcast networks like ABC, FOX, and many cable & satellite providers.
Content
When you search for something, say on Youtube, there are a million videos of more a less exactly the same thing. Vimeo monitors its content carefully, so when you search for something, you always get outstanding results. An example of something to search for would be Motion Design. This generates over 1000 videos tagged with motion design.
User Interface
The look and feel of the Vimeo website beats every other video hosting website. Its easy to use, colorful, customizable, and overall clean. If you are a designer, and browsing other sites, you often think why did they do that, or this layout sucks. With Vimeo the design is near on perfect.
The Vimeo player has a really great design too! There is a HD switch, you can like videos and there is an embeddable button right within each video. If you hover your mouse over each video it toggles the options, and the length of each video / how much you have watched.
Vimeo Community
The community is very big and very friendly. There are many groups and channels dedicated to design. One of my favorites is the Kinetic Typography Channel. Also if you browse around Vimeo, you will find many great designers such as Eden Soto
Awesome URL’s
With Vimeo, you can have custom url’s. So my profile could me vimeo.com/andyjohnson and when I upload videos, i can also have custom url’s for them too! Channels and groups also have custom url’s, so its all search engine friendly. Much better than watch?v=UpppqUBlzP7
Restrictions & Limits
Many other video hosting websites limit the length of the video, no matter how small in size it is. Vimeo adopts a 500mb weekly principal. You can upload as many videos as you like, and they can be any length, but you get a cap of 500mb weekly video space. Remember this is on the free account, and you can upload HD videos!
Video Statistics
Vimeo provides free daily stats on each video. The basic stats shows you how many plays, likes and comments the video has had for each day, and also a total of plays, likes and comments. If you have Vimeo Plus, there is a much more in depth stats review for each of your videos, and your whole account.
Settings & Integration
With Vimeo, there are many different settings you can play around with. You can integrate your Facebook account with Vimeo using Facebook connect. When embedding your videos on other websites, you can customize the exact pixels you want the video to be (unlike many other services), and this is perfect for web designers if they want to squeeze a video in to an exact space. They don’t have to design the layout around the video size. All co lours can be customized aswell, and options including text and avatars.
Cost & Pricing
Vimeo is free to everyone! But they also have whats called a plus membership, which is only $59.95 per year! If you are a designer and say you want people to be able to play your HD showreel on your website, plus allows you to do this. Plus gives you 5GB upload space per week, full control of video customization, and much more.
Help For When You Get Stuck
Vimeo provides a great community for any questions you have about the service, or any features you want to suggest to Vimeo. They have a forum in which you can do this, or you can email them for rapid support.
If you want to show us your Vimeo Page, feel free to drop us a comment!
Vimeo rox! Thanks a lot for this post.
I’m actually going to sign up for a plus account just because of this 😀
Vimeo is a respectful community of creative people who are passionate about sharing the videos they make. We provide the best tools and highest quality
Vimeo video looks great but the download and delivery has got real bad, with the progressive download taking forever before the videos play, and when they do start they more often than not stutter.
My computer CPU is fast, same with my net speed, and others like YouTube and pretty much everyone else plays fine. It’s got to the stage if I see a Vimeo video on a page I dont bother watching it. Shame.
Vimeo is really cool, but its videos download very slow here in Australia. If they can boost speed outside the US and Canada they’ll take over the world!
I’ve only used youtube but Vimeo looks much better and more user friendly. I will have to check it out and think about using it in the future. Thanks for the information.
Wow, I am going to start using Vimeo
sounds great! i think i should start using vimeo finally
Thanks =D
Well yeah, Vimeo is cool and it has got great features. I’ll surely use it in future.
I like Vimeo’s style
Another great benefit is the password protect option. You can set it up so a video as private with a password. Then you can just give the password to clients, etc. Much better than YouTube’s friend method where the other person has to have a YouTube account.
I second this. Amazing feature, can’t believe i missed that out.
I’ve just started to use Vimeo for HD screencasts and what can I say, it is brilliant. It makes YouTube look pants.
Hats of too them.