New Flickr Video is Pretty Damn Cool

Apr 9, 2008 at 8:51 AM
17 comments

Just heard about the new feature for Flickr Pro members - the ability to upload video to your account and tag/organize it just as if it was a picture. Decided to test it out for myself to check out its capabilities, drawbacks, etc.

Pros:

The video quality is much better than YouTube, and by default is bigger than the default YouTube size. Also includes a full-screen option without any hacks!
You can organize/tag the videos just like you do your photos, including adding it to a set/collection.
You can embed the clip in a blog or webpage very easily through the "embed" option, which allows you to set parameters such as size of the clip.
Has the same public/private sharing options as your photos, so if you already have these set up for family members, they'll be able to access the videos the same way they do your photos.
Videos are uploaded the same way you upload photos, and can actually be uploaded in a batch along with photos.
No limit on number of videos you can store in your Pro Account.

Cons

Video size/duration is limited to 150 MB or 90 seconds (whichever is less). Not a big deal for little clips, but it would be nice if this got bumped up a bit for longer videos.
Video uploading is limited to Flickr Pro members. Free members can view publicly-shared videos, but cannot upload them to their accounts.
No Vox integration yet, so no tagging, linking, etc on Vox. You'll have to use the "embed" code to insert a video into a page, for now.

Even if Yahoo/Flickr isn't touting this as a YouTube killer, it's still a very nice application and one that I'll definitely be using in the future.

And a comparison test, for you to see for yourself:

Flickr Version

YouTube Version

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Comments

[this is good]

Wow! That's great resolution.

I would have to say that the Flickr one is better simply because it doesn't get blocked at work like the YouTube one does. :-)

Pretty impressive quality!
Now, I have to figure how to record with iSight without buying iLife... Or maybe that's the only way...

I'm torn between what to think of flickr video. I like flickr so much for the pictures but now to cross over to video. I guess I'd prefer they stick with pictures and leave the video to other sites.

Plus, this will probably get flickr blocked at work. 'Cause I bet they don't care what you have in your video, which really opens the flood gates.

[this is good]

Great quality! YouTube sucks. Too bad it's for just Pro users, 90 seconds and VOX doesn't support it. Of course they have to make some money some how. ;-)

Actually, they do care what you have in your video. Taken from their page about the new video feature:

Some ground rules to get started:

Only “safe” and “moderate” video content is permitted. Your “beautiful wife” should not be moving. (Read more about content filters.)Only upload videos you have created yourself.

If you go against either of these rules, we’ll send you a warning and the content will be removed.

that's good. but I still have mixed feelings about videos on flickr.

And i'm still worried about it getting blocked at work, especially because of the amount of data being moved.

[this is good]

I heard about this. The video quality is excellent.

[this is good]

Dang, that's some noticeable quality difference.

[this is good]

Thats really great resolution; even the load time is considerably quick! It doesn't seem to be surfable, e.g. when the video ends, youtube pops up related videos. Flickr doesn't do that...and when you combine the fact that only user-created content is allowed, its a bit of a damper for sharing clips outside of your own.

I'm still not confident in upgrading to pro :/

Ironically, one of the last two reasons you mentioned is yet another reason I PREFER flickr video over youtube - I really dislike that popup widget for related videos at the end of youtube. I can take or leave the user-created content restriction - I wouldn't be going out of my way to upload commercials or music videos anyway.

[this is good]

I see your point. I don't think its too annoying, personally, I really enjoy seeing related videos instead of that horrible search function on youtube now. It jumbles up the keywords in such a way, that any word matching it will appear in the search list; even unrelated videos.

How is the search function working with flickr video?

I haven't tried to use the search a whole lot yet, but a couple cursory examples showed pretty good results. I think people on flickr are typically more anal about the tagging of their photos/video, so I think if you're searching for specific tags, you'll get a good match. If you're searching on the full text (title/description), it'll obviously be less accurate, but you'll get a broader range of results.

Good to know! Thanks for the excellent post, as always.

[this is good]

well, that's the difference between paid and free service ...

Good point. And since it costs no extra to store video, it's yet another reason that a Flickr Pro account seems to be worth its yearly cost.

New Flickr Video is Pretty Damn Cool

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