29th
Choosing a Video Publishing Platform
I’ve found that getting video published on the web for clients of Liquid Design Media becomes more and more a part of my daily routine. It also seems like there is a new YouTube popping up every time I turn around. So I took some time this weekend and just did a quick evaluation of the pros and cons of the services out there.
YouTube.com, of course is the most used of the services out there right now so it works great if your primary concern is to make your video available to as many searchers as possible. However, I think it lacks a little in the ability to integrate multiple videos into an existing web site.
BrightCove.com is my favorite of the services that I looked at. It’s got good uploading and editing tools and it has a great system for publishing your video content back on your own web site. A good example of a BrightCove mashup site is bodyarchitect.com . I think BrightCove has taken it to a new level.
ZippyVideos.com, Dropshots.com, Voeh.com, and Vimeo.com all have similar features with just slight variations. They are all worth checking out but none really stand out. Yahoo! and Google both have video services that I think fall into this category.
Revver.com has a unique advertising model that allows creators and sharers to share in advertising revenue. They also have an API that will allow you to integrate the system with your own site but it’s a little bit cumbersome for a weekend project.
VideoEgg.com seems like another YouTube Clone at first glance but they offer special development to add their system to your web site. I know dogster uses them and there are few others. I was a little disappointed when I found out they don’t support mpeg2 uploads, though.
Last but not least, Blip.TV offers the ability to publish your video in multiple streams with one upload. So you can upload one high quality video and it then subscribers can get it in iTunes, on the site, embedded, etc.
