High Definition - What's up now! on Vimeo Staff Blog

by Jonathan Marcus
October 17th, 2007

Vimeo respects your videos and your right to decide who watches them. Vimeo stands for a higher level of quality — both in the site's content, and the platform itself. We pride ourselves on seeing the world a bit differently. Together, Vimeo and its users (you guys) have spent considerable time trying to construct a community around those values.

Some videos truly capture nature's beauty or the producer's creativity. Some videos should be viewed in their original high-quality format — in High Definition (HD).

And so, we are very pleased to announce that Vimeo is the first site to allow content creators to present their personal videos in native 720p (1280x720) resolution. Thanks to Canon and the Vimeo team, if you can shoot in HD, you can share in HD!

Supporting HD requires significant storage and bandwidth resources. Fortunately, Canon has graciously agreed to help subsidize the costs for the remainder of 2007.

We are also increasing the dimensions of non-HD videos from 460 to 506 pixels, and the bitrate from 400 kb/s to 500 kb/s (both of which will increase video playback quality).

We want everyone to be able to try HD. So, for the rest of the year, everyone's weekly upload quota will increase from 250 MB to 500 MB, which can be used for multiple videos, or just a big one — standard or high definition. The higher quota will probably require a subscription fee in 2008, but for now, it is free! No strings attached.

If you are curious about HD, consider reading the primer that Justin prepared:

http://vimeo.com/help/hd

We have also created an HD video showcase using our new Channels platform:

http://vimeo.com/hd

Enjoy. And, share some fantastically pristine videos with the Vimeo Community.

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- Clintus McGintus 4 years ago
  
  I was curious how you were doing HD. Makes sense though. Hopefully someone steps up for 08 and you can avoid the subscription thing. But either way I have to say you guys are doing great things and it seems like every time I log on theirs something new and exciting. Keep up the good work everyone.
- Jan 4 years ago
  
  However I found the embedded player a bit too small to really get the HD feeling while fullscreen Flash is unbearably slow with my 1920px screen even on my fast core2 duo.
  
  So I'm still downloading videos I want to enjoy in real HD as original file as I used to.. But that's just Adobe's fault.
- Justin Ouellette 4 years ago
  
  a core 2 duo should be plenty fast, did you try turning scaling off?
- Jan 4 years ago
  
  Yikes. Works great without scaling. Thanks!
  
  With scaling I'm at 92% cpu though.
- thphoto 4 years ago
  
  Hey this scaling button..do you mean the one that says full screen/small? I don't see a button above it. I am getting sketchy/jittery playback.
- Ben 4 years ago
  
  Wow, I was so surprised when I just logged on to see the upload boost! Thanks a lot, I'll use it wisely.
  
  There's probably some very obvious reason why that I'm just not seeinging, but, why can't you embed HD?
- Blake Whitman 4 years ago
  
  Bandwidth... it don't grow on trees!
- Andrew Pile 4 years ago
  
  Also, HD doesn't play well if its not exactly 1/4 or 1/2 scale, which most blogs don't fit. Many blogs also have other Flash objects on the page, which can cause stuttering. We don't want other websites making our HD looking bad.
  
  Hopefully in the coming months Flash will improve and be able to play smooth HD with less processing power.
- 3d60 4 years ago
  
  I think a fee would need to be backed up with more custamisable? user options. Channels is a start, that space to upload our image is cool...I want more space and options to Customize....just a thought.....
- Andrew Pile 4 years ago
  
  Nothing is set in stone but if we made a paid account it would offer more than just more space.
- Andrew Pile 4 years ago
  
  I don't think you should feel "weird and cheap" until you know what the price is.
- Pam Newman 4 years ago
  
  I would totally feel like I was disrespecting Vimeo if paid accounts were offered and I didn't buy one.
  
  Totally worth a subscription.
- Andrew Love 4 years ago
  
  i would totally pay, even if all i got was a video of the vimeo staff eating a giant cookie made out of money. i love vimeo.
  
  also, to those who say that they don't like the idea of tierd service, look at flickr. all it does is allows those who want more out of the site to help support that which they love/use so much.
- Blake Whitman 4 years ago
  
  i'll be making that video shortly...
- loonachic 4 years ago
  
  looks like i'm going to have to sell more booty afford it, but hell... i'm hot, and why not?
  
  ;-)
- Kai Chan Vong 4 years ago
  
  You guys are doing a fantastic job so I don't see why you don't consider making a profit from the bandwidth you're essentially giving away for free.
  
  My only fear is that with competition from the google and yahoo of this world: Flickr/Youtube... will you be able to keep paid subscribers?
  
  I think you're ahead of Youtube in so many ways. But it's only a matter of time before competition heats up for everything online.
- josephsmtih 4 years ago
  
  wood it be great if Bandwidth wood grow on trees....
- Andrew Love 4 years ago
  
  i see what you did there
- Lobosonico 4 years ago
  
  thats really great, tanks for 250 extra Mb
- Steve Orchard [Vj JuDDeRman] 4 years ago
  
  I realy like the embedable player, better than the rest (utube etc) and the quality seems so much better too. Shame about all the promo stuff at the end of the movie though. Any way around that?
  Great site though guys. Lovin it :)
- Pam Newman 4 years ago
  
  OMFG 500 MEGS?!?!!
  
  I have to change my video now!!!
  
  THANKS YA'LL!
- Dobbsie 4 years ago
  
  The best site just got better, thanks :)
- Forrest O. 4 years ago
  
  I blogged about this and posted a (no) comparison with youtube here: newfangled.com/vimeoisyoutubex12
- Jonathan Marcus 4 years ago
  
  Cool blog post!
- jchap (Jeremy Chapman) 4 years ago
  
  from the comments beneath that post:
  
  Able said:
  I think it's time for the world to switch to Vimeo...
  October 19, 2007 11:07 AM
- Raziel Panic 4 years ago
  
  so much for these 1/2 HD res clips i've been doing! Now i'm going to have to get a 720 camera instead of cheating with letterboxed SD. Thanks!
- IK 4 years ago
  
  love! just what I was waiting for.
- Marko 4 years ago
  
  Nice.
- Karen Marcus 4 years ago
  
  count me in!
- paranoidkiwie 4 years ago
  
  No craigslist and finding 500 girls named meg?
- Jonathan Marcus 4 years ago
  
  You are aging yourself paranoidkiwie :)
- Pulkit Sachdeva 4 years ago
  
  Man! I just finished a HD vid a coupla nights back. Even did the music score. But I don't think I'll be able to upload the 135 MB tease! :(
  
  But it's great to see vimeo get up higher! All the best to the v-team! :D
- On Being 4 years ago
  
  We'd be glad to pay a subscription fee so that our public radio program could upload more material. The cap per week can be really limiting b/c of how we work. We started using Flickr's free subscription, but quickly upgraded and have found it well worth the expense.
- djotaku 4 years ago
  
  this video (vimeo.com/245611) is in HD. Will it be re-encoded to Vimeo HD?
- Iain Brew 4 years ago
  
  I tried to upload some pure HD 1080 content, but my upload is around 340MB, dies after 280 every time :(
- Jonathan Marcus 4 years ago
  
  Hey LCF:
  
  Unfortunately, there are a couple of upload issue posts in the forum. Please will you join the conversation there so that we can best isolate the problem.
- Justin Ouellette 4 years ago
  
  1080p or 1080i? If you're shooting 1080i, I highly recommend deinterlacing and resizing to 1280x720. When you deinterlace 1080i to 1080p you're effectively doubling every line, which is a lot of wasted space.
- Justin Ouellette 4 years ago
  
  alvyray.com/DigitalTV/Naming_Proposal.htm
- The Central Coast 4 years ago
  
  All I can say is "Thank You" I purchased a Casio which can record video using H.264 recently. I'll definitely be using Vimeo instead of the Tube. I have a Flickr Pro account and would definitely purchase a Vimeo Pro account. Please no monthly fee though. Just a yearly fee would be cool.
- Jonathan Marcus 4 years ago
  
  I am curious: If the monthly subscription fee were roughly equal to the yearly fee, why would you prefer the yearly fee? Is it just a psychological difference?
- EricRyan 4 years ago
  
  i was beginning to lose faith in vimeo. I started using this site over a year ago, and I was perfectly fine with it until version 5 came out. I kept having consistent problems through firefox on my mac ever since then. it annoyed the shit out of me, but the recent updates fixed my problems.
  
  now with this hd plan is coming in at just the perfect time. I'm gonna get to borrow an hvx-200 from my school and get some helicopter footage next month.
- itsyournature 4 years ago
  
  The HD is great. I'll keep using vimeo over any other video site for now on. I promise. Cross my heart.
- itsyournature 4 years ago
  
  I'd also pay a small fee for better perks, as long as I can't get them for free elsewhere. Keep up the good work.
- willc2 4 years ago
  
  the 'tube is OK for watching TV clips, but for original content that doesn't get compressed all to hell, Vimeo has jumped to the forefront!!
  
  The flickr Pro model is a good one. I paid there and I would pay here under similar terms.
- apitel 4 years ago
  
  Do we have to re-upload our old videos to take advantage of the higher bitrate? Or will the videos be gradually re-encoded from our souce files over time?
- djotaku 4 years ago
  
  yeah, I LOVE an answer to this!
- iain 4 years ago
  
  "We are also increasing the dimensions of non-HD videos from 460 to 506 pixels" - is that horizontal or vertical? Also - what's the best size to upload standard definition? 640x480? Also if I blow up DV PAL (768x569) to HD and upload it, this is going to look better than SD, right?
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