Vimeo: Free HD Video Sharing

Vimeo is a relatively new not so new video sharing site. One of its key features is that you can view and share true HD content (at up to 720p = 1280×720). Vimeo gives each user 500 MB per week to upload, which averages out to be an hour of decent-quality HD video (assuming 1 Mbps). Plus, it’s free, so you can’t beat the price.

In addition to HD content, Vimeo is trying to get in on the social networking market: it’s trying to put the “sharing” in “video sharing”. For example, you can subscribe to other people’s HD content, much like you might subscribe to people’s blogs on RSS. It imports your contact information to assist you in finding content you might like, and has various other community interaction options. If you want social abilities beyond other video sharing sites’ “Others are also viewing …” kind of features, check it out.

Putting back on my HD junkie hat: overall, the video quality on there is pretty great. I was getting download rates at 10 Mbps downloading from the site, which is probably due to the fact that they use Amazon S3 for their back-end.

However, I was a bit disappointed with their site’s responsiveness: moving from page to page was sluggish, and really dragged down my experience. With the fresh Web 2.0 interface, I typically expect snappiness and quick responses. This is a bit disappointing considering the high-quality video streaming. Another small gripe is that there never seemed to be more than a handful of videos on any page: looking for videos seemed to involve lots of browsing between pages. Normally, this wouldn’t be so bad, but the site being sluggish made this a bit much.

Overall, I think anyone who wants to share HD video on the Internet, or is interested in a more social video experience, should take a look at what Vimeo has to offer.