When it plays back it is decent but I have run into periods were the playback is very choppy - think the servers get overwhelmed quite a bit of the time.
They encode 720p at 2500 Mbps, compared to YouTube's 2000 Mbps. From what I recall they use the x264 codec. It does look really good but for some reason they always encode my audio at half speed so I took my videos off there and decided just to have them on YouTube where the audience is bigger, the audio is correct and I earn a little partner ad-share income. My audio was uploaded using MeGui as Nero-AAC in an MP4 container with x264 video. No idea why the audio gets slowed to half speed but there's a gremlin in their works somewhere.
There's an interesting interview with the chief developer of the Facebook video app. He takes some time before they get into the video stuff from what I remember:
For me my HD videos on facebook look a lot better than my HD videos on vimeo. I'M sure it has to do with the fact i shoot my HD in interlaced not progressive, never the less facebook video in HD had been flawless. Not choppy like vimeo.
http://vimeo.com/3389845 Not sure how to share the facebook video in HD, But if someone knows the secret on how to make my video look as good as it does on facebook, please do tell.
Vimeo converts everything to 24p. As I shoot either 50i or 25p I simple retime to 24p using Vegas to avoid the problem of Vimeo apparently just dropping frames.
Are folks using Vimeo plus seeing an improvement in quality over the normal version? I haven't noticed dropped frames on there but may not be looking hard enough. Didn't realize it would be better with 24p, haven't seen that as an advised output until now.
Image quality will not improve, judder might.
It;s been a while since I read the fine print at Vimeo but last time I did they did say that unpaid service means everything gets converted to 24p. Paid service gives you the choice of 24p and 25p.
Vimeo runs on the Bit Gravity content delivery network (CDN) which is supposed to be the dogs nuts for video delivery but certainly not cheap according to a quote had.
Since Stage6 ceased to be, and then Brightcove started charging $$$ (in both cases wasting a lot of my time), I'm wary of investing much time and effort in a site like Vimeo.
By the way Bob, how do you slow 25fps footage to exactly 24fps so that the frames line up precisely for minimal quality loss (I'm interested re Blu-ray rather than Vimeo but it's still relevant)?
"By the way Bob, how do you slow 25fps footage to exactly 24fps"
Change ruler to absolute frames. Note number of frames at end of video.
Change project to 24fps. Ctl + Drag video to make video same number of frames long as previously noted.
Note you still may have to wrangle the audio pitch shift. Generally I find the way Vegas does it good enough. I'm hoping Sound Forge 10 will give me a better way to do it.
SF10's new Zplane élastique Pro timestretch plugin (included) should be the bee's knees:
Use the élastique timestretch and pitch shift DirectX® plug-in for pristine audio quality. Choose from various stretching methods that are tailored to your source audio including Pro, Soloist, and Efficient modes. Monitor and adjust settings while previewing. Includes full formant-shift controls to adjust the audio's fundamental harmonic frequency range.
Thanks Golfer, yea, I'm really happy with Vimeo so far and I think the quality between them and Facebook is negligible and like I said, Vimeo seems to be a little smoother playback overall. And Facebook is pretty no frills, not a whole lotta options. Most of the time I throw my stuff up on Vimeo first, embed it to my site, and then whenever I get around to it toss it up on YouTube and Facebook.