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Share on Twitter
Now you can share your videos on Twitter! Just click the Share icon in a video to launch the Share module.
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Channel Notifications
Channel owners now have a new section in their channel settings to optionally receive emails for when someone posts a message to their shoutbox and for when someone subscribes to their channel. Adding moderators to your channel also now has an approval process, where both parties will receive emails when the request happens, and when the request is approved.
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People Subscribed To Me
There is now a new page within your My Contacts where you can see what users are subscribed to you and what they are subscribed to (likes, videos, and/or appearances).
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Featured videos for your group
Have any videos you want to show off in your group? You can easily add any 3 group videos to feature on your group homepage.
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Featured videos on your profile page
Have any videos you want to show off on your profile page? You can easily add any of your 3 public videos to feature on your profile page. Try it now.
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Removing Video Thumbnails
Everytime you upload a video, you get 12 thumbnails to choose from. Now, a month from the day you upload your video, we will automatically remove any unused thumbnails. But you will always be able to upload your own.
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Improved Searching
We've been waiting for this. The toolbar search is now much more accurate.
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Login and Join Vimeo Lightbox
Clicking on most login and join links will now trigger a lightbox overlay where you can quickly login or join Vimeo and stay on your current page.
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Better referrer statistics
Now we record every page that videos get embeded on, check it out in the stats section to the right of any video page.
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Share on MySpace
Everyone says they hate it, but everyone has a MySpace profile! We've added MySpace to the Sharing options.
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Badge additions
You can now add channels and albums to any Badge that you create. Yipeee!
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Daily Email Update
You can now receive a daily email full of what's happening in your Vimeo world. Sign up is located in your notifications settings.
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Converting time during transcoding
Ted and Casey added a nifty little feature that will display the time remaining to convert your video during uploads.
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New Hubnut Behavoir
From now on, the Hubnut will not auto-rotate when it is loaded on a page. This will only affect all newly created Hubnuts, not those that are currently used on other sites.
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Search Channels
Now you can FINALLY search for Channels. Use the 'Search' box in the top navigation bar, make sure its set on 'Channels', and search away!
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Posting to Flickr
It's back! You can once again post your videos to Flickr. You can also post albums. Do this by clicking on Share and navigating to the "Post this..." tab.
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Expanded Tag Browsing
Clicking a tag from a video will bring you to an improved tag browsing experience. Now you can browse videos with that tag in your videos, all videos, your contacts' videos and more. Vimeo members who use that tag most are also noted.
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New Avatar Feature
Clicking any "avatar" aka user portrait will bring up a menu of actions you can take regarding that user. Use this menu to add contacts, subscribe to videos, and send messages to users you see on Vimeo
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Spam Filters
We've recently rolled out some great new spam filters that we think will help keep spammers off of Vimeo. Of course its impossible to stop ALL spammers, so if you ever see any send an email to Help@vimeo.com and we'll take care of it.
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Add Multiple Email Addresses
Now you can add multiple email addresses to your account and then sign in with any of them using the same password. Just set one as your main address, verify it after we send you an email, and you're all set.
Staff Blog / New source file policy
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Hi everyone,
The staff here at Vimeo is committed to making this website stick around for a long time. We want your videos to live here for years and years, so that you can relive moments from your life and re-watch your creative achievements. In order to make that possible, we have to keep a close eye on the costs of running the site, and make sure that we're not being irresponsible with our resources.
Since the very beginning, Vimeo has retained the original video files that you upload, and allowed you to grant people permission to download those files. We always take these original files and convert them so that they will play online and in the Vimeo player. We kept the original files for download because we wanted you to be able to save your video exactly the way it looked when it left your hard drive. This aspect of the service was not a huge burden on us when the site was younger, but we've had to take another look at what we are realistically capable of offering for years to come, while making sure the site stays on budget. Original file storage of every file for every user is a massive cost, and we have noticed that only a very small set of users actually ever download their own files. We want to keep original file storage around as a feature for people who use it, but we can't continue to do it for everybody.
Starting August 1st, basic accounts' original source files will be stored for one week from the upload date, after which they will be removed. Of course the converted Vimeo video will always be there in the Vimeo player, ready to be watched again and again, anywhere you choose to embed or share it. We will also still provide a download link so people can save the converted file to their computer (in MP4 format).
This new one-week policy applies to all basic accounts' videos uploaded from this point onwards. For videos that were uploaded before this blog post, those original files will be available until August 1st, to give you some time to download them if you need to. After August 1st, those files will also be removed.
For Plus users nothing will change: we're going to continue hosting your original video source files for both your existing videos and any new videos you upload. We appreciate your support, and we want to continue improving the Plus service, not limit it. If you choose not to renew your Plus service, we'll keep your original videos for one month past the end of your subscription to give you time to download your videos or decide if you want to renew. Additionally, if a basic user upgrades to Plus within the one week window after they upload a video, that original file will be kept as long as they are a Plus member.
Please understand that this is not a devious scheme to force you to upgrade to Plus. This was a hard decision to make, but we make these changes to ensure Vimeo's longevity so that you *can* use it for free. By making this choice, we keep ourselves in good shape to stick around and provide you with the absolute best video sharing experience in the universe!Showing 100 of 723 comments. Want to see the rest?This conversation is missing your voice. Take five seconds to join Vimeo or log in.
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An ever-changing catalog of Vimeo's great content and active communities.
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Share your videos with communities of people who have similar interests.
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Channels
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very understandable
Any video you have uploaded will have their source files removed on August 1st. Any video you upload from this point on will be have its source file removed after 1 week. However we will still hold onto our MP4 version for you to download.
I can't imagine that this ploy will actually get your server costs down to where your bosses must want them.
What are you going to cut next for free accounts?
Vimeo offers such great content, better than other social networking video sites that may or may not rhyme with ShmooFloob. Keep up the great work!
I guess Vimeo could be smarter on what could be done with these uncompressed videos. (Top of my head; how about editing options? mixing? local theater screenings? Media-company workflow service, etc..). I think, if Vimeo is going to be just a cool-looking Youtube, yes there is no need to serve anything different. If Vimeo is going to make difference, other ways can be considered/brainstormed too. Just my 2 cents from the dark-side. :)
I think it will, since most people lack the basic understanding on how to compress a file without destroying it. So they just don't compress them :-)
Besides it would be a bummer if the compression was as bad as youtube's, but it is really good.
Keep Up the good Work!
I love that aspect of Vimeo. Though I don't allow downloads full time I do enable it for clients or other select reasons and would hate to loose that. And it's a huge comfort knowing I've got a version out there that I can always go back to God forbid I ever loose the originals.
Thanks guys.
- Ray
Vimeo has always boasted a loyal, friendly community... which is true. But Vimeo's management now shows its true colors: they can't face the heat of the competition and lack the skill of generating income through advertisement... In the past couple of weeks, Vimeo started advertising Scientology on their non-plus accounts, which is in many countries considered a sect, or worse, a criminal organisation. I wonder what you'll be adversiting next. Guns? Drugs? The Republican Party?
Remember, you're not paying anything for the service. Vimeo is FREE. You get what you pay for. Frankly, as a paying member, I could care less if they deleted my original files and just kept the .mp4 versions. I don't use Vimeo for storage. I (and I'm sure most others) use it because it's a wonderful place to share your work. Really, if keeping the original format is that important to you, you should be backing it up offsite.
PS, I'm a Republican and a (multiple... and legal) gun owner... attacking people with different politics than you isn't going to sway anyone to your side... especially when the argument has nothing to do with politics. Besides, this isn't the place for it.
Deleting existing files is like putting a gun against the head of a non-plus user. This is HIJACKING, something I 'd never expect from the 'friendly' staff.
Even though I have a Plus account, the MP4 conversion of my file is not really useful to me, esp. for the clips from XDCam. I love H264 as I think it's awesome for internet usage, but the Vimeo conversion gives quite a bit of motion compensation and weird posterization. For HD, this is still fine compared to Sorenson or whatever it is that YouTube uses, but my only hope for Plus users is that we will be able to upload a codec somewhat better than H264 or at least a full 1080p framesize...Videopress now offers it so you guys should start trying, too!
Otherwise Vimeo still kicks everything else's ass and the complaining should cease...
Tschau.
I think its perfectly reasonable for vimeo not to act as a free hosting service, which is actually some thing I have used it for to give people video files.
This isn't hijacking. You can't hijack something you own. And you can't have something hijacked from you if you never owned it or paid for it.
Anyhow, the point is: Vimeo is victim of its own success. There are simply too many users, which results in incredibly slow performance, and Vimeo's management failed to do the necessary hardware upgrading, nor did they anticipate any sound financial scheme nor attracted healthy investors. Vimeo is a globally know product. So how difficult can it be to get some investors finance hardware/storage? Read my lips: this new 'source file policy' is just the tip of the iceberg. There is much more going on, but they just don't want to let us in on it.
Investors are irrelevant, as Vimeo is already an operating business of InterActiveCorp. That doesn't mean we can be irresponsible with our budget.
We're being completely transparent here with the thinking behind this decision. I understand that having the source files helped you decide on what camera to purchase, but I'm quite sure that's not a common use of Vimeo at all, and we can't host millions of files just to make that possible.
You are correct in saying that our success and growth has led us to this point where we realize it's not fiscally responsible to continue to offer hosting of source files for the Basic account. We explained that up front.
@Paco: I'm not being offensive to any person. I'm critisizing a corporate decission. I actually sympahtize with the staff.
@Paco again: you mention censorship at YouTube. Well, I fully support their decision to delete commercial music. From day one at Vimeo, I've been amazed that Vimeo has no restrictions about copyrighted music being used here illegally. It is a sword of Damocles above their head, legally, at least in my country, but more importantly, it is an insult to the musicians who created the original music. I know US law is lax when it comes to this, but in my view, it is a matter of principle.
Vimeo is a business, not a charity dude.
Besides, even if they do take away the free membership, it's free! And you can't complain. If you want, you can go find some other company to host your videos for free.
On another note, you can't be sure that you aren't offending anyone, especially if someone suggests that you were. It might be better to apologize instead.
In the past couple of months, I was in the process of deciding what new camera to buy. I did lot's of research, and for this, Vimeo was of great help:
1) I could download raw video files and check whether my pc/NLE could easily edit them.
2) I downloaded many original files in order to take a closer look at noise levels, compression artifacts etc, while this is very hard to do with a heavily compressed MP4.
3) In don't use vimeo as storage for my video files myself. My biggest frustration, I repeat, is that the measure works 'retroactively': in my book, such a measure is unfair and unwise.
4) I joined Vimeo in October 2007, when Vimeo was still very young and buggy. Since then I have seen Vimeo grow and improve a bit, thanks to the input of many free users. I have learned a lot about video thanks to a limited number of my favourite contacts. You see, I'm no heavy user, I mostly create homemovies, and in my household, I'd rather spend $60 on something real and substantial rather than 'virtual'.
Since I have posted my apparently 'subversive' point of view, I've been called 'lamenting, whining, obnoixious' by other users while I have been very careful about using rational arguments and neutral terms. At least the staff has remained respectful and neutral...
My remark about the unrestricted use of copyrighted music illegally, is really a CONCERN. I live in Europe, where laws are much stricter, and my concern is that somewhere in the future, Vimeo will be made inaccessible until it straightens out this issue.
Also, the very nature of Vimeo is a lot about filmmaking, and people want to download and archive good quality versions of artistic videos they like. Having a "like" database per user is not enough for most of us.
I personally have a 5 GB database of original files downloaded by videos I like here, and I watch on my HDTV via my PS3 and XBoX360. Downloading now 2 mbps HD or 600 kbps SD videos, will look TERRIBLE on my HDTV.
You see guys, you don't only downgrade the service for the non-plus users, but you downgrade the experience of PLUS users too by doing this, because they aren't able to download high quality versions anymore.
I understand that you'd like to download and archive good quality versions of videos that you like, but if the video's creator chooses not to make their source files publically available, that isn't Vimeo's problem.
If the video's creator does want to offer a high quality source file, they will get a PLUS account.
If you really desperately want a source file from a FREE user, just ask really nicely :) if they say no, they probably don't want you to have it anyway.
I have to agree with many here. It's hard to justify your argument when it is a free service. The annual cost for plus is low and there are loads of people, plus members, who host original files for you to test. Also, all you need to do is go to DVinfo.net or DVXuser and there are always stacks of native files available there. I have never uploaded native files to vimeo, they have always been compressed versions. It's very rare for people to upload their "uncompressed" versions as they are generally huge and mostly unable to be converted by Vimeo.
Vimeo is a video sharing site, a place to see other people's work, which it does better than anyone else and the free service is terrific. Yes, there are more restrictions now on the free service since plus came in but there is no big plot to make everyone sign up to plus.
Talking of plus, for pros like me it has become utterly indispensable.
Best,
Phil
You are missing the point completely. The point is this:
BEFORE: A PLUS user can download other people's original files if they are offered for downloading.
AFTER: A PLUS user can only download the original files from other PLUS users. Not from any user that wouldn't mind sharing his original files.
This, this is a RESTRICTION to the PLUS users. What I am telling you here is that there is a META-result from this decision, which DOWNGRADES the service for *PLUS* users. It's not about the other user becoming Plus or not, it's about _existing_ Plus users getting LESS out of Vimeo than they could before.
So don't give me all that about "it's not Vimeo's fault". Of course it is, they took this decision.
I agree that this online library of source videos you once had access to as a PLUS user will now be a lot smaller.
However what I am saying is not Vimeo's fault, is the fact that you chose to use their service in a way they didn't intend (i.e., as a large online library of source videos).
I love how people complain about FREE, if you REALLY care then put up some money, if not then go find another website that will offer what you want. If you can't find one, then why don't you go start up your own that will do what you want it to do.
Hey Ivan, I'm a gun owning registered Republican so are you going to call me a right wing cult loving extremist? I think you need to choose your words more carefully on a public forum.
I feel more comfortable in thinking about Vimeo as a more serious and reliable long term solution for my videos. I won't even consider that you run out of business (and I lose years of uploads/description/tagging/etc...!!!)
I would love to see on vimeo more evolved features and high quality targeted to people interested in uploading quality content and paying a fair price for the service. I don't expect that much from advertising...
That being said... I'm a Plus user so I guess it doesn't really effect me at all. :-P
Vimeo just does video sharing.
SkyDrive and Vimeo are completely different services. You might as well compare Vimeo to the cost of a 16GB flash drive. Just cause something can store files doesn't mean it can do what Vimeo does (share videos online).
You can't compare the two.
My point is that deleting up to 500MB of source video after only one week for free users then, for example, only allowing the download of an inferior quality SD MP4 conversion (PLUS users get a superior ~20% higher bit rate conversion of SD files) has got be a slap in the face for free users.
The imposed restrictions of one HD file upload per week, long conversion times, one group, one channel, the number of source file downloads etc. etc. for free users and now this...
Allow 2GB of storage, which is the max. over four weeks for free users, before automatically deleting. Better still would be to allow free users to decide which source files they want deleted and allow a limit of 2GB for the duration of their membership. Vimeo is not Microsoft nor Adobe but surely 2GB is possible?
If free users really want to offer their source files without paying a cent, there are plenty of other places to do it.
If they do want to keep it at Vimeo, they can pay.
But as a PLUS user I like to download free users' source files and an interesting video may not come to my notice within a week of it being uploaded. What do I do now: ask that user to pay for a PLUS account or request that the file be shared with me by another means?
Any chance of you encoding Basic members' SD files to the same quality as SD Plus encodings? This would be a small, yet valuable concession by Vimeo for those who feel unhappy about the new source file policy.
All the best, 4M2.
The change seems to be perfectly understandable. The original files may not be that important for non-professionals and they most probably use up a lot of Vimeo storage space. However, all the comments coming from the disappointed non-Plus Vimeo users are also understandable, aren't they?
It has always been us who created the community and the unique atmosphere available nowhere else in video-cyberspace. Still, for a few months now we have been witnessing features taken away from us, one after another. Life's tough, nothing comes free. But, what I'm getting at is that maybe, just maybe, you, the Staff, could give us something BACK? Something that isn't so bandwidth costly and doesn't require so much storage space. The possibility of creating more groups? Channels? Better video quality? (if one cannot download originals than maybe that would be a good move?)
You would still have a lot of savings and non-plus vimeans wouldn't feel second-class members.
With all the love one can have for (still) the best community site around,
Piotr
We'll definitely keep your feedback in mind. We appreciate all of the contributions everyone has made to the site, whether they are Plus or Basic account members. You guys are the best!
Is it that bandwidth-intensive to allow unlimited groups?
Is Vimeo considering files to be converted to 30 frames per second instead of just 24? I've stopped using the service because I don't yet have any software that can encode at 24 fps. I upload files that are 30 frames per sec and 6 frames per sec are cut out of my video, which makes for a horrible choppy viewing experience. I only have windows movie maker and a Roxio program, and they can't do 24.
Is this issue being addressed? I understand there are plenty others with this same frustration. I'd rather use Vimeo than youtube, but youtube converts in 30 frames per second from what I understand.
concerning giving something else to users, while taking something away, I think this would be a good option. Am I correct on this?
This way Vimeo won't have to increase the number of ads or reduce some other really important feature to keep it free.
Vimeo Plus members are 'paying', so ofcourse they cannot be harmed.
I totally understand this decision and commend it. Other free users like me, please understand the need for doing so...
Thanks.