I’m going to be up front about this: I love Vimeo a lot. They never did anything for me like make me breakfast in bed or anything, but I really have come to appreciate and love their service, so this may be a little biased.

Below are some things to consider about Vimeo and using an online video service in general as a DiY filmmaker.

Consider the Venue

Traditionally, the DiY filmmaking community seems to have gathered around YouTube, which is free and easy to use. There is nothing wrong with YouTube, but consider this: you’ve poured your heart and soul into a project, and you’ve spent hours making sure that every detail is the way you want it. Then you upload it to YouTube and it hangs out with gems like this:

And that’s some of the good stuff. Seriously.

Sure, put your cord wrapping tutorials up on YouTube, but for final products, I say go for something a little more pro.

Vimeo is Built for Filmmakers

While you can literally turn on a webcam and blather on to create a YouTube video, Vimeo is built specifically with people who make original creative works in mind.

In fact, they are kind of dickish about it in their lengthy guidelines:

You may not upload videos pertaining to Multi Level Marketing (MLM), get rich quick, cash gifting, work from home business, or any other dubious money making ventures.

Damn! I have plenty of dubious money making ventures.

These guys are good to go, however.

If you do qualify to use Vimeo, the interface is much cleaner and sleeker, and allows you to present your creation in a much classier environment instead of hanging your creation in the digital equivalent of a bathroom stall. Along with the class, the interface has much nicer looking ads (and much less of them) as well as nice little controls like allowing you to add Flickr stills and uploading your own thumbnail.

Also, the Vimeo community is generally much more respectful and helpful than YouTubes, which is generally considered to be the internet manifestation of pain and despair. That means you will get far less comments along the lines of “meh” and “lol ur fags”.

No comment.

Limitations and Vimeo Plus

Unlike YouTube which is completely free, Vimeo has a pay version as well as a free one, and they have some restrictions for the free versions. Basically, you get 500mb a week of upload space and 720p HD. You can’t embed in HD with the free service either.

Vimeo’s pay program, called Vimeo Plus, is a $59.95 (or $9.95/month) service that gives you 5GB of upload space a week, plus HD embedding, and even some cool controls like allowing you to control which domains can embed each video. You also get some great stuff like customization options for the video player, 2 pass encoding, and priority spaces in the upload and conversion queue. Neat!

One important thing to note is that the number of HD embeds. You get 25,000 free, but then you gotta pay for ‘em. $24.95 gets you 10,000 more. This is probably not really a problem for most content, but it is something to be aware of. HD views at the Vimeo page are unlimited.

Community

Another thing I really like about Vimeo is a hidden gem: their community forums which you can get some helpful advice and help from other content creators. Since the Vimeo community is made up of primarily very knowledgable and reliable content creators, the help and advice is top notch.

Vimeo is the heated toilet seat of online video options

There you have it – give your masterpiece the respect it deserves and put it on Vimeo. However, if you’re not ready for it yet, you know who you are.

"60 bucks???"