Vimeo vs. Exposure Room

[Michael B. McGee]

i'm not quite sure if this is an appropriate spot to place this topic, but here goes it. does anyone have a preference to Vimeo or Exposure Room for having videos viewed on-line? and why? and is there any other sites streaming HD video?

thanks,
mike

[casey warren]

I prefer Vimeo. I love the way they have their site designed and also the videos display and play slightly more smoothly on Vimeo than they do on Exposure Room.

Vimeo is also much more simplistic and easier to navigate, etc.

But posting videos on both wouldn't hurt if you want to gain exposure, etc.

~C

[HuckLBerry]

just had a look at exposure room, first impressions are that I don't like the layout but it deffinitely seems more professionally geared. I uploaded a 500MB file and seemed much faster than vimeo.

I have uploaded the same file to vimeo so will do a comparrison when I can. vimeo did seem to have trouble compressing my HD 25p footage, it became very stuttery and I'm not sure why??

[Jason Wilson]

vimeo sucks... the videos play jittery and half the time when you upload an HD file it displays as distorted SD... or they have a failure converting it...

exposure room also takes flash and for me the videos play much smoother... and you don't have any upload limits like vimeo

[HuckLBerry]

Wow...just got to watch my HD file and it looks and plays perfectly on exposureroom. Just wish they had a password feature like vimeo for client sensitive uploads.

[Dethel]

I think they are working on the password feature for videos.

[philip bloom]

Vimeo is a suberp place to host videos and a great community for everyone.

Exposure room is geared as a one stop place for professionals. The site is still in BETA and yes the design isn't the best...yet, but it will get better.

Have a look on my site at their embeds. They are so good.

[andrew00]

The fact that XR lets you embed is what appeals to me. If I'm not mistaken Vimeo are working on that but it's gonna cost?

[BrenMyster]

When people are uploading to XR, what's the best export option to use, is it best to just upload the full res HD and let them do all he encoding, I usually use FCP or quicktime Pro to export, but like lots of people are not sure what the best encoding options are.

[MikeGunter]

When people are uploading to XR, what's the best export option to use, is it best to just upload the full res HD and let them do all he encoding, I usually use FCP or quicktime Pro to export, but like lots of people are not sure what the best encoding options are.

Hi,

That's where ER is a little shaky - in their recommendations to their users to uploading content.

I think that if you want to use HD, you'd get the best results making the resolution 1280x720 using the H.264 CODEC at 5000 kbs for the video and audio at 128kbs, 48KHhz stereo.

H.264 will give the highest quality at the lowest bitrate, packing more bits over the pipe to ER at least to let them do what they do.

[thxdave]

Here's the direct link to that info page:

http://exposureroom.com/help/view.aspx/89/

There's also another page linked at the bottom that might be of help.

dave

[xanbo]

^ Good to know.

I applied for an Exposure Room account yesterday but still haven't gotten the email with the passcode... did anybody else have to wait a while?

[basspig]

What's up with this site? When I attempt to play any video, it tells me I have to upgrade to the latest version of Flash. Only problem is, I just updated the Flash player yesterday and I don't think there is any newer version than yesterday's. What's up with that?

[philip bloom]

you talking about exposure room? you on a mac? i had that briefly one day. I reinstalled flash and it was fine.

they are pc based and that causes some mac compatibility issues

[basspig]

No, I'm on a PC. Anyway, I think I found the problem...

—it was a security setting that was not allowing your site to use certain active-x controls. I did not get any warning popup, just the odd behavior in which the site ‘thought’ I was running an old Flash version. Oddly, I had added your site to the ‘trusted sites’ list a week ago when I discovered it. I don’t know why it was necessary to add it twice, but evidentaly the second time did the trick.

[philip bloom]

anyone else getting exposure room up? Been like this for hours!

[ESTEBEVERDE]

A bunch of sites are down right now.

Could just be scheduled maintenance or maliciousness or just a common server breakdown.


Who knows?

Sucks though.

[philip bloom]

they host all my video. Hope it is nothing serious!

what other sites are down?

[Dethel]

Philip,

The server just can't keep up with everyone watching your amazing footage :)


--Good day,

[basspig]

I thought it was my air show footage that created so much traffic that it brought the servers to their knees.. but no, it's been down all night. I hope they're not tied to Lehman Bros.! All these bank failures and then XR going offline makes one wonder! :)

[philip bloom]

gone down again. what is going on?! Tried emailing Shiv Kumar but very unlike him, no replies.

[basspig]

Same here. E-mailed him, but no reply. They must be growing so quickly that he can no longer count the customers on the fingers of one hand. :) Where he used to probably get 4-5 e-mails a day, maybe now he's getting 100-150 e-mails daily and finally gave up trying to answer all of them. Just a feeling I get lately.
Rebecca said they're doing some upgrades that took longer than expected. Let's hope that's it. But with all the financial meltdown that's going on in the US this week, it wouldn't surprise me if we start seeing some startup sites lose their capital/funding from scared investors. And you know what happens to high bandwidth web operations that lose funding. :(

[Mike Stewart Realtor]

I've been using Exposure Room for about 7-8 months and I love it (When the site doesn't go down!) and dabbling with Viddler.

Viddler is more reliable, but doesn't look as good.

I played with Vimeo, but kept getting accounts deleted because my stuff was too "commercial" and so recently paid for an upgraded account.

WHAT A WASTE OF MONEY!! My Vimeo HD vids take between 15-90 seconds to load when embedded on my blog. Vimeo is hype and nothing else.

Stick to Exposure Room or go with Viddler

[basspig]

ExposureRoom has a nice setup and atmosphere, but my videos get about 1/50th the traffic of the versions I put on YouTube. And YT hasn't been very good since about 15 months ago, when something changed, or membership reached critical mass and my videos were getting lost in the crowd suddenly. It used to be that I could put one up, and within an hour have 500 views. Now I'm lucky to get a hundred in a month, unless it's the rocket truck flipping over at 300mph...

[Michael B. McGee]

i personally like how you can watch a HD 720P clip on Vimeo full screen "letter-boxed" with scaling off. i don't like distractions when i watching films, videos, clips, etc. letterbox is nice for larger res monitors with scaling turned off.

[Essami]

In Youtube I get the most views on my videos. The user interface is ugly but still not too difficult to use. I use youtube actively.

Vimeo looks best and is easiest to navigate. I personally havent had have a problem with the limited filesizes and 1HD upload per week. But it could be a prob for some. I use Vimeo to embed video on my site. Not as much traffic as youtube but its getting better.

Exposure room uploads really well and streams smoothly and is nice quality but I find the user interface really cluttered and hard if not impossible to navigate. I dont use XR actively because of this.

[philip bloom]

Yes. XR is about as unintuitive as you can get.I have tried really hard and so have other, to get them to redesign but I don't think it is a priority. But underneath the messy exterior is a great asset.

[timbook2]

you can now hide your videos or make them password protected on exposureroom.

[Steve Shovlar]

Exposureroom is down again. Has been for the best part of a day. Whilst its a great site when it is up, I am finding the downtime totally unacceptable and have decided to move all my clips over to Vimeo, who are up nearly all the time.

A shame but reliabilty is paramount and Exposureroom isn't reliable enough.

[shaun1970]

I've never had a problem with exposure room as a few people have mentioned.
I used to use Vimeo but found the quality not quite as sweet. The upload time on XR is far superior as well ( I have a 20mb connection as well ) so its pretty easy to see where Vimeo maxes out in server speed.

[GuyB]

( I have a 20mb connection as well ) ...

You, well, you, !!!!!!!

I'm stuck at 512Kbps upload...

[Evro]

Bugger!! XR is really giving me the shits at the moment - I've tried to upload a 100MB clip twice since last night and both times it gets interrupted. Now I can't even browse the XR domain. Man things must be going haywire over there!

[Greg Voevodsky]

BEST QUALITY
Exposureroom - in both HD HQ SMALL - ALL LOOK GREAT. Great for imbeding in your webpages or for clients. Low Views - pro network mostly.
Vimeo - GOOD HD, but still stutters in playback. Great community for feedback, still low views. Semi-pro.
Youtube - great HD, lots of viewers, you can advertise and push product. A++... Non HD, look like crap.. but good sound.
Revver - stay away! Crappy sound, and now 30 sec Hollywood movie adds before your video... destoyed my website and ebay listings... I now use exposureroom for both - see wavesdvd.com. Compare that to my youtube - same files search "wavesdvdcom"

I use youtube to sell and market my DVDs. I use exposureroom to show the best quality on my websie and ebay sales listings. I use vimeo for fun, to get video lovers feedback... but they limit their HD to 500MB a week. Youtube and Exposureroom, you can upload all the HD that you want!

[Iudex]

In exposure room can you upload a 1920x1080 file and keep it that way?

[Michael B. McGee]

In exposure room can you upload a 1920x1080 file and keep it that way?

i thought you could only show/play 720P clips.

[Iudex]

Oh then it's YouTube, you can upload 720p but it is displayed at a lesser resolution right? Even when selecting HD.

[basspig]

Youtube only displays the full 720P if you choose Full Screen playback. Where the limitation lies is with color subsampling. It's rather blocky if you have intense colors with sharp edges, such as fire trucks, in the scene.
Also, FYI, americantowns will index your YouTube video if you put the name of the town, state and 'americantowns' in the key words.

[Kanjikid]

I shoot a lot of sports with pans and fast action. Vimeo seems shuddery when the action is moving. Is ExposureRoom smoother? If so, any negatives to ExposureRoom?

scott

[Lor]

Okay, I just found this thread. Here's the thread (http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?p=1703495#post1703495)I started regarding quality problem in ExposureRoom vs. Vimeo. For some reason, ExposureRoom tech support don't see what I see. I hoping I'm wrong here.

[Alex.Mitchell]

I haven't tried uploading anything to Vimeo yet, but I'm still really happy with Youtube's picture quality. If you've uploaded any HD clips recently they all look awesome, even when you watch the lower resolution versions. Here's my example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KALcMw-vGFw

I might go and throw some stuff up on Vimeo but Youtube works well enough for me that I'm not really considering switching or anything.

[Michael B. McGee]

Well, its been over a year since I started this thread and I was wondering if anyone has anything new to add. I've read Lor's thread amongst others and i've found some very helpful info. Since, i have absolutely NO experience with post work, ie: editing, color correcting, rendering, encoding, etc., i've hired a Colorist to grade some of my work and he's even offered to help me with posting these projects on sites like YouTube, Vimeo, and Exposure Room. I just need to let him know how he should encode them after we're done grading.

Thanks in advance,
Mike

[ddh]

Well, its been over a year since I started this thread and I was wondering if anyone has anything new to add. I've read Lor's thread amongst others and i've found some very helpful info. Since, i have absolutely NO experience with post work, ie: editing, color correcting, rendering, encoding, etc., i've hired a Colorist to grade some of my work and he's even offered to help me with posting these projects on sites like YouTube, Vimeo, and Exposure Room. I just need to let him know how he should encode them after we're done grading.

Thanks in advance,
Mike

Vimeo is very good but has a limit of 10 minutes for a video. I use ExposureRoom more because they allow videos larger than 10 minutes. This is one major point of difference.

[basspig]

I haven't posted anything on ER for about a year, because everything I post there gets hardly any traffic, compared with YouTube. Now that YT has HD quality, it's been pretty much the main outlet for my short docos. Longer stuff would have to go on ER though..

[Huy Vu]

Vimeo is very good but has a limit of 10 minutes for a video. I use ExposureRoom more because they allow videos larger than 10 minutes. This is one major point of difference.

Not true. There's no time limit on Vimeo; several of my films on there are 30 minutes long and one is 16 minutes. You're thinking of Youtube.

[Michael B. McGee]

thanks for your responses, but despite what the title of this thread states i'm now actually looking for hot tips on encoding settings. should i just use the individual websites' specs or have you had better look with your own settings?

[Steve Benjamin]

I would like to know why some shorts run without buffering and others buffer for ever before you can watch them (I have a fast connection) seems worse on exposure room than it does on vimeo. Zacuto and philip bloom shorts seem to run without buffering, is it the settings they are using for uploading?

[dazzdeadmeadow]

ER is the winner hands down!


The vids play much faster! Vimeo is hugely slow!

I also applied for a Vimeo Plus account. I wanted to embed some video on sites. For £40 a year you get 5000 embeds. However I had a huge row because Vimeo say you can't embed your stuff on websites other than Facebook or Myspace. Otherwise it's deemed commercial! They also said they can take down any videos promoting products or business.

Fair enough apart from the fact that they have "special relationships" with certain companies and allow them to post blatantly commercial material, probably because they pay Vimeo vast amounts for the privilege.

Vimeo has a lovely "community feel" until they start telling you where you can use your paid for embeds! Nice idea Vimeo, but it's a commercial world. Better get used to it or lose out!

[Michael B. McGee]

ER is the winner hands down!


The vids play much faster! Vimeo is hugely slow!

I also applied for a Vimeo Plus account. I wanted to embed some video on sites. For £40 a year you get 5000 embeds. However I had a huge row because Vimeo say you can't embed your stuff on websites other than Facebook or Myspace. Otherwise it's deemed commercial! They also said they can take down any videos promoting products or business.

Fair enough apart from the fact that they have "special relationships" with certain companies and allow them to post blatantly commercial material, probably because they pay Vimeo vast amounts for the privilege.

Vimeo has a lovely "community feel" until they start telling you where you can use your paid for embeds! Nice idea Vimeo, but it's a commercial world. Better get used to it or lose out!



you're kidding, right? you can only embed videos on Facebook and MySpace and you had to pay for this "great" service. have they issued you a refund yet?

[dazzdeadmeadow]

I didnt bother. I wont be re-newing!
I'll try to post the thread

[dazzdeadmeadow]

http://www.vimeo.com/forums/topic:10663#comment_1139876

Very interesting. I was Hangmanmedia (first comment). I almost got lynched!

[Michael B. McGee]

i didn't read all of the comments, but from what i read it doesn't sound like you got the answer you were looking for. did you ever take Dalas up on his offer?

dalas verdugo (http://www.vimeo.com/dalasv) http://bitcast.vimeo.com/vimeo/assets/images/staff.gif 9 months ago
If you feel like you can't figure it out, contact me for a refund and I can give you a recommendation for a good commercial video hosting site.

[dazzdeadmeadow]

No, I didn't bother. I don't really use Vimeo now. I just find it way too slow!

I love the idea of keeping it "pure" but for seemingly friendly site they get very nasty if you question their policies!

[Huy Vu]

I also applied for a Vimeo Plus account. I wanted to embed some video on sites. For £40 a year you get 5000 embeds. However I had a huge row because Vimeo say you can't embed your stuff on websites other than Facebook or Myspace. Otherwise it's deemed commercial! They also said they can take down any videos promoting products or business.



You can embed your video anywhere you like (i.e this forum) as long as you're not using it to actively selling a product or promoting a service (except yourself as the videographer). The words "for porfolio use only" pretty much sums it up. You can upload a commercial if the intention is to show case your work, but not if you're using the site the promote the product. DVXuser doesn't let you advertise either, but you're always free to post up an ad that you did; Vimeo is no different.

[dazzdeadmeadow]

Hey Huy,

In my book if you pay for something you own it. Therefore it's slightly ludicrous for Vimeo to tell people where and how they use their paid for embeds.

I get the feeling Vimeo was a lovely idea set up by some students who don't like to think of themselves as corporate until, that is, big companies offer them lots of money to to put up anything they like.

I'm not going to argue about it, but Vimeo need to be far clearer. If they were standing by their point of view so much then why is their talk of a commercial service?

[Michael B. McGee]

ok, i've finally uploaded some videos to both sites and before i make them public i'd like to clear up some issues first.

Vimeo: doesn't allow to arrange your videos in the order you'd like them to be displayed. for example you have to upload them in a certain order where the most recent video is listed first. apparently Vimeo users have been pleaing for years to have a choice in the order in which videos are displayed, but to no avail.

Exposure Room: I don't know if something wrong with the site, but HD videos take forever(not very specific i know) to start playing. the buffering takes too long for me and i even have 5 seconds of black at the head to compensate for this. Md (middle size) versions have the same issues as well.

[Michael B. McGee]

has anyone had an issue with embedding their videos, ie: plagiarism and disrespectful use of? also, i've noticed that these sites allow you(one) to download the original(source) video in order to bypass the site's compression(transcoding). are your clients really taking the time to download these videos in order to evaluate your work?

thanks in advance.

[Steve Shovlar]

I use Vimeo and Exposure Room, but the best one out there is
http://www.longtailvideo.com/players/jw-flv-player/

You can configure it to look almost exactly like Vimeo, but host the FLV files yourself so you have complete control of the quality, file size and length. And its free for non commercial use.

There's an example I made last night on the front page of http://www.adaptimax.com near the bottom right. Tis is a fairly low res clip because it is shown many times a day.

Cheers
Steve

[ATL Media Group]

I use Vimeo and Exposure Room, but the best one out there is
http://www.longtailvideo.com/players/jw-flv-player/

You can configure it to look almost exactly like Vimeo, but host the FLV files yourself so you have complete control of the quality, file size and length. And its free for non commercial use.

There's an example I made last night on the front page of http://www.adaptimax.com near the bottom right. Tis is a fairly low res clip because it is shown many times a day.

Cheers
Steve

I use it on my site... I asked and can't seem to configure it to download if paused like Vimeo/youtube. When on my wireless it stalls and won't allow you to pause to pre-buffer. Otherr than that I do like the player and skins. Oh, I like how you can vote too... kinda neat.

[Steve Shovlar]

I use it on my site... I asked and can't seem to configure it to download if paused like Vimeo/youtube. When on my wireless it stalls and won't allow you to pause to pre-buffer. Otherr than that I do like the player and skins. Oh, I like how you can vote too... kinda neat.

Use the wizard on it and you can configure it exactly as I have done on adaptimax.com.
Go to:
http://www.longtailvideo.com/support/jw-player-setup-wizard

then choose "flvplayer with overlay skin (vimeo style)" from the drop down menu. That way the movie is paused at start and exactly like Vimeo.

Copy and past the code into your page. Change the code to suit your image, etc. It took me a few minutes and was quite simple once I understood it all.

I couldn't make overlay text like Vimeo or Exposure room as I haven't discovered if it is possible ( it obviously is but I am not a great flash coding person) so I made the image in photoshop with text on top and made a jpg out of it.

Hope that helps.
Cheers
Steve Shovlar

[ATL Media Group]

Thanks Steve! I actually used the player with proplayer for Wordpress but this looks even better!

It's still jw player, but yours works just like I want!
Thx again!

[haditwithvimeo]

Interesting and timely thread; I've been very frustrated with Vimeo for several months. The forum discussion boards are filled with user complaints and surly staff responses.

I have been trying to decide if jumping to ExposureRoom or blip.tv or one of the other many sites would be better or just be frustrating in other ways. In the end I think I would rather be frustrated for free than pay $60 per year to Vimeo to be frustrated.

[xort]

I posted more than one video on vimeo and then embeded one video at another site, but vimeo wants to play all the videos on the embedded site. Did I miss something?

[Chamber005]

Exposure room rocks. Vimeo can suck it.

:D

[xort]

Exposure room rocks. Vimeo can suck it.

:D

Thanks for your thoughtful insight, very helpful. Glad you are a fine contributer to the communications business...Dude

[Michael B. McGee]

has anyone had an issue with embedding their videos, ie: plagiarism and disrespectful use of? also, i've noticed that these sites allow you(one) to download the original(source) video in order to bypass the site's compression(transcoding). are your clients really taking the time to download these videos in order to evaluate your work?

thanks in advance.


what i meant was; is anyone having problems with other people embedding and/or downloading their original videos? has anyone found that people have been stealing/plagiarizing their work. i see the point for allowing me to embed my own videos, but why would you allow others to embed? kinda of the same thing with downloading of original. i'm assuming someone can literally download and save our videos from these sites. right?

what are your thoughts on this subject?