--- In [email protected], David Jones <david.jo...@...> wrote: ... > If you host your videos on Youtube (and probably others) then there is > no penalty for moving to HD, you won't lose anyone. > Youtube default to displaying the low res 360p version of the video > for everyone. So it's HD only if the user chooses 720p in the option > box. .... Good point in what has been a very helpful thread that David initiated. I am a fan of the new YouTube and really like its quality and general performance. (Disclosure: I am a partner.) Not only does it provide various bitrates, but it is not limited to Flash playback -- mobile users, particularly those on Apples, can play newer videos. Both YouTube and Vimeo have user-system detection.
There is one caution that I would like to point out for those using YouTube and/or Vimeo. While the quality of the playback is excellent and the embed players work really well, once they start their download, they do not stop on either Pause or Stop in the player controls. That's not a problem if you have only one player on a page, but if you have several and you want to allow the viewer to go to a different video on the same page it is not long before there will be issues of stutter while two or more files are downloaded at the same time. Enric Teller's vPIP, which many of us bloggers use, forces a true close and stops the file from downloading when another one is playing. I hope that someone will point me to a work-around on this issue, but I have found it very frustrating and it has forced me to host my own videos so that they can interact with other media and each other on the same page. So for a "show" with one video, YouTube and Vimeo are terrific. But for a web site that has several videos on one page, there is another problem: latency. I have found that it takes longer for a video to find itself to the user's computer from YouTube and Vimeo than, for example, from DreamHost. You can see some examples of this issue on http://PinePlainsViews.com where I intermix video and text in the same story. Most of the stories are rich media except for the first one which is a parade. I'm pleased that David started the ball rolling. Stan Stan Hirson http://PinePlainsViews.com http://hestakaup.com http://ThinkingGlobalActingLocal.com
