Short films & websites

Rippie

Rippie

Veteran
I'm racking my brain here concerning something that a lot of you might find silly or a waste of effort.
I have a short film that I'm going to be releasing soon and I built a website to go along with it.

I messed around with embedding video directly on the site and it looks great.
At the same time I messed around with embedding a youtube version which makes the site not look quite as polished because of the clunky player.
Also the only resolution you can watch without going full screen is 360.

Pluses and negatives to both- pluses with embedding my own is I can put multiple resolutions right on the website, make it
easy to choose which resolution you want to watch, and I can make the player look more integrated . Negative is my video is now isolated from the world and I would have a separate
version on youtube so traffic is going to 2 different places.

Negatives to use youtube is the player doesnt look as good on the site, but the major plus is every one watches from the same source whether
they come to my site or get linked to youtube. This would keep all data and viewer numbers in 1 spot.

I know this might sound like a goofy question but since we are using this to attract investors for a feature length version
total number views is an important stat to be able to show. At the same time we want to make the entire package look as professional as possible
and that includes the website.

Since I'm sure a lot of you have done this in the past what did you find was the best way to present your film online and why?

Thanks for the opinions.
 
I'm not sure how vimeo does their view counts, but as far as aesthetics go, vimeo is probably the best option, especially if you sign up with a vimeo plus account. You have advanced statistics, super-customizable video player, and a bunch of other perks. at 60$ a year, its not too shabby.
 
I appreciate the vimeo suggestion and I definitely agree if I was looking for an outside provider because I couldnt host my own.

The reason I want to go with youtube is want to make this accessible to the masses (and gain as many hits as possible) and vimeo isn't quite there yet on their subscribers.

So the question is since I'm definitely going with youtube, I'm looking for more opinions on should I only put youtube on my site or
treat my website as a completely different entity and embed my own. Try to send traffic to both places or try to send traffic only to youtube or only to my site..etc

I'm sure others have had to make this kind of decision as to where to try to send people, where to concentrate efforts, things like that.
 
Rippie said:
I appreciate the vimeo suggestion and I definitely agree if I was looking for an outside provider because I couldnt host my own.

The reason I want to go with youtube is want to make this accessible to the masses (and gain as many hits as possible) and vimeo isn't quite there yet on their subscribers.
Click to expand...
Agreed. Same boat here. What if you post a high res grab and link it to the youtube video? I'm not sure what I'm going to do myself.

I think I will just iframe the youtube video because so many people watch these things on portable devices. That way everyone can view it.
But yeah, it doesn't look great.
 
Rippie said:
Also the only resolution you can watch without going full screen is 360.
Click to expand...

You have some hiccup going on, you should be able to get 480p and 720p in the drop down menu of an embed without going full screen. It works on my youtube embeds
 
J Davis said:
You have some hiccup going on, you should be able to get 480p and 720p in the drop down menu of an embed without going full screen. It works on my youtube embeds
Click to expand...
True. Mine go to 1080p. No need to go full screen either. Any way of setting the default higher than 360p? Or would you even want to because of portable devices?
 
personally I use the youtube link when I am promoting the video on facebook, twitter, etc... get my views that way. but on my film's official website, i use vimeo, for the quality. when a video is embedded on a website you don't see the view count ANYWAYS.

my opinion!
 
Youtube permits uploading of HD content which DOESN'T have to playback fullscreen, content which exceeds 2GB in size and/or 15 min. in length etc. So for example when you need something which isn't a vanilla default, like wanting to exceed 15 min. in length, enable your account for that capacity and you'll be all set. I don't use google that often so I just use google when I can't remember where a piece of documentation about YouTube is located.

YouTube-extras.jpg
 

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Rippie said:
The reason I want to go with youtube is want to make this accessible to the masses (and gain as many hits as possible) and vimeo isn't quite there yet on their subscribers.
Click to expand...

It might be more accessible, but that doesn't mean it'll get more view on YouTube in comparison to Vimeo. Generally, the community on YouTube is very different to the community on Vimeo. The Vimeo community is more open towards film.

Rippie said:
I'm looking for more opinions on should I only put youtube on my site or treat my website as a completely different entity and embed my own.
Click to expand...

If you do go the self-hosting-embedding option then make sure you have enough bandwidth on your hosting account. Videos eat...
 
Doesn't seem like it would be too hard to add the view counts from YouTube and whatever other sites you're putting your video on to get a total view count if you need that number for investors.

YouTube may have more visitors than Vimeo, but that doesn't mean more YouTube users will watch your video than Vimeo users would (were it on Vimeo).

If your goal is to get as many views as possible, then in addition to YouTube, you may want to consider also uploading it to Vimeo as well as any other video site that you can upload it to. You never know where your audience may be.

As for your own site, if aesthetics matter and YouTube isn't cutting it, I'd embed the Vimeo version. That way you don't have to worry about bandwidth.
 
Thanks everyone. All good advice and in the end I've decided to buy vimeo plus and embed that version on the website
and promote the actual website. The youtube version I will treat as a complete separate entity.
I appreciate the ideas.
 
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