Which HD video Web service is the best?

Around this time last year we put together a comparison of various video sites to determine which ones had the best overall quality and user experience. Since then, high-definition-capable digital cameras and camcorders have taken off, and several major video hosts have rolled out official support for wide-screen, super high-quality Flash video in response. So we think the time has come to take another look at what these sites are offering now and crown a new leader in the realm of HD video.

The six sites we're putting head to head are: YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, DailyMotion, SmugMug and Blip.tv.

What's being tested

Quality. For our tests, we looked at detail on two levels--both still and in motion. For the still, we used a shot of our corner Italian restaurant. From our test footage you should be able to read everything on the front awning.

For the motion element, there were plenty of cars and pedestrians outside our offices that would have made good test subjects. In this case, we went with a bicycle since it falls somewhere in between the two.

In last year's tests, we were able to do a neat mouseover trick to show you each site's original quality from the same part of a clip. We've done that again this time, but since the videos are too wide for this page, we're only doing it with a portion of the clip. While the player size on each service was different, we viewed each video at the maximum full-screen resolution (1280 pixels wide), in order to preserve the original quality.

Value. Some of these services aren't free. So what we wanted to find out is: for those that cost money, is the charge worth it?

What's NOT being tested

Unlike the last time we did this, we're not taking upload times into account, since everyone's connection is a little different. Likewise, we're not quantifying processing times, since the clip you're uploading at 4 a.m. on a Tuesday night will probably get processed faster than the same clip at 9 a.m. on a Monday morning. We have, however, noted the respective size limits at each site, which can be incredibly important. HD video files are big, even if you're talking about a relatively short clip.

All the services we used processed our videos within about 10 minutes. The one exception was Vimeo, which took nearly three hours from the time it finished uploading to show up live on the site. This could have just been a bad time to upload, and keep in mind that paying users of Vimeo's Plus service get their videos sent to the front of the queue.

About the test footage

Click to play the sample video

To get a decent test shot, we went with a consumer-friendly, pocket-sized capture device. In this case it's the recently released Flip Mino HD (CNET review). It captures really good-looking video in 1280x720 resolution at 30 frames per second. It doesn't shoot in 1900x1080, also known as "full HD," but we're assuming that most folks are going to be using devices that shoot 720p anyway.

The footage is just a hair over three minutes long, which is about the standard for Web video, and has not been changed from its original camera formatting. It encompasses fast motion (the cars whizzing by), fine detail (local restaurant signage), and plenty of ambient sound.

You can find each version of the video at each site: Blip, DailyMotion, Facebook, SmugMug, Vimeo and YouTube.

The results

Note: To compare these, just mouse over the name of each service above the picture.

Still test:

Source Blip.tv DailyMotion Facebook SmugMug Vimeo YouTube

Motion test:

Source Blip.tv DailyMotion Facebook SmugMug Vimeo YouTube

Blip.tv

Blip is a newcomer to this year's contest. Blip takes nearly anything you can throw at it, including HD videos. What makes Blip particularly neat is that it can play your content almost immediately, since it supports playback of the native file. You can also tweak the player to automatically play your video in a certain format. For instance, the H.264 clip I uploaded could be played back in a Flash player, or in a QuickTime player.

As for the results, Blip remained fairly sharp but a little washed out from the compression. Colors that popped in YouTube and SmugMug were just a little less vibrant. Some of the text from the awning was also a little choppier. This became much more apparent in the motion test, where Blip fared the worst of any of the services tested.

DailyMotion

DailyMotion was also not included in the original comparison. It launched its high-quality video service back in February of last year, the same month we did the first round of testing. As a user, you cannot actually upload anything that's HD or above 150MB in size before becoming a "MotionMaker," which is just a fancy way of saying you're promising to not upload a bunch of copyrighted material. It's an extra step on top of user registration, and your video must then undergo a quick review by DailyMotion staff before going live.

Most are unlikely to want this many hoops to jump through, but once you're a part of the program, uploading your videos is a cinch and the quality is great. Our only quibble is that it's the one service that sticks pre-roll ads in front of your videos. For some this might not be a big issue, but if you can get similar results elsewhere without them (and without the extra registration step) it's kind of a turn-off.

Facebook

Facebook rolled out HD video rather quietly in late 2008. It has some of the loosest requirements of any video service, letting videos go up to 20 minutes in length and up to 1GB in size. In comparison, YouTube only lets you have 10 minutes. HD video on Facebook is gorgeous when viewed in the service's built-in player, but it does not scale well at all when viewed in full screen. Many details are lost in this transition, including the outdoor signage in our clip, which bordered on becoming unreadable. Likewise, the sharpness seen in SmugMug , Dailymotion and YouTube for the bike test was lost when viewed in Facebook.

The big, big plus side of Facebook is that you can tag people who are in the video if they're Facebook users. This makes it a far more compelling place to upload something if you're intending to share it with friends.

SmugMug

SmugMug is the only service on this list that wasn't originally intended for video sharing. It's also one of the best we used. SmugMug added its video hosting in response to more cameras, both point and shoot, as well as DSLR cameras like Nikon's D90 and the Canon 5D Mark II shooting in HD. The one big thing that SmugMug does that the others don't is support 1080p video--the kind that comes out of the 5D Mark II and future high-end DSLRs.

Video on SmugMug was some of the best of the bunch. It was crystal clear, loaded fast, and had one of the slickest players. Our only caveat was that it's pricey. To upload and host HD video on SmugMug you have to pay $149 a year, which comes out to $12.50 a month. Of course if you're a semi-serious photographer you're not just paying for the video hosting. The service is, hands down, one of the best photo-hosting services around. It boasts an impressive slideshow tool and a built-in storefront that lets you price and sell each shot. If you're just thinking about shooting video however, Vimeo's Plus service is less than half the cost.

Vimeo
Vimeo won last year's competition (alongside Veoh) for standard definition. At that time it was already ready, willing, and able to host HD clips (though we only tested its standard-def features). Vimeo has tightened its belt a bit since last year, introducing a new premium "Plus" service that gives users unlimited uploads. At the same time, it limited how many HD videos you could upload to just one per week, as well as restricting how many HD views you can get when it's embedded elsewhere.

Vimeo did a great job both on both tests. What sets it apart from the other services being compared is that it lets you turn scaling on and off. This lets you watch videos in their native size as long as you're watching them in full-screen mode. That means if you've got a display that's as big or bigger than 1280x720 pixels, you can view the original video in a 1:1 pixel ratio.

YouTube
YouTube was the runt of the litter last year, and one of the main reasons we put together the initial comparison. Its video was some of the grainiest around. But that has since been remedied with both a higher-quality stream and the capability to display HD clips in a buttery-smooth 16:9 player.

Our test footage in YouTube came out gorgeous. Motion was clear, the sound was excellent, and it started playing right away. YouTube scored the highest marks--right up there with SmugMug and Dailymotion, in both the motion and still tests. Not a bad comeback compared to last year.

Stat sheet

The victor: YouTube
This time around, we feel really comfortable giving YouTube the quality crown. Its HD encoding is really nice, and you can't beat the price (free). One thing that really separates it from the others is that you can do so many things with your clip once it's up there. You can replace the music, as well as add subtitles and annotations. Community members can also respond to it, adding in-line video replies.

Runners up: Vimeo and SmugMug
Only one of these services will really cost you money (SmugMug), but both give you really great-looking HD Web video. A nod must be given to Vimeo for blazing the trail here. It's been doing HD video for a while now, and it is one of the most colorful and beautiful sites around. Likewise, SmugMug's player and interface are top notch, although it's not as social, and the $150 price tag might be a turn-off to casual users who don't intend to use its photo-hosting features.

Update: It was inevitable that we'd leave someone out of this by accident. In this case one of the first to let us know was Motionbox, which launched its HD support in early 2008. While it's too late to include it in the comparison, it's worth giving a plug here.

Motionbox's $30 a year service lets you upload files of any size and length. Founder Chris O'Brien also wanted to note that his team has been trying to get all versions of the AVCHD format (found on most hand-held camcorders) working. You can see a demo of how the video looks here.

Think we got it wrong? Sound off in the comments.

[dascha1]

I don't think you got it wrong. I just believe the history of HD is driving where folks reading this are going. That is to say, WHO came up with the HD standard? Not the US, right? So, add to your list about a million... no make that a billion other little known web pioneers and that should be suffice.

Good report, thanks.

[ctdennis85]

I would agree that Youtube had an incredibly sharp picture, but the problem is the player makes the video choppy and causes it to stutter a lot. I'm running a gateway T series laptop with 4 gb's of ram and an intel core 2 duo processor at 2ghz, and for some reason the different websites (youtube especially) had better overall playback.

Facebook's video was quick and ran smoothly as far as motion, but the video quality wasn't that great in full screen. I found that Smug Mug was actually the best one in terms of how good the video looked, and how well the video actually played back. It was silky smooth on my machine, and it's something to consider for people uploading video's. Definitely find out which website has a video player that seems to work well for a broad base of users. You don't want to spend the time shooting beautiful HD video to find out nobody can actually play it without the video skipping and stuttering every 2 seconds.

[Josh.Lowensohn]

That's an interesting metric we didn't test. I was doing these tests from two different computers with hardware from within the last three years and didn't run into any of the problems you've described. Maybe next time we'll pull out some older machines and keep an eye on CPU + RAM usage.

[basraw]

Vimeo has had some small problems. A lot of people don't like the 24 fps and would prefer 30 fps. the frame loss is too much from the conversion.

they turned on 30 fps a while ago for a test. Videos smoothed out nicely. but then all you people with slow machines had problems.

Stage6.net was probably the best though!!! I just wish they were still around.

[TedAvery]

YouTube has great quality, but I always have to wait ages for videos to buffer, so I never enjoy the HD experience there. It also depends what kind of videos you are uploading. I find a 10 minute limit on YouTube pretty restricting.

As long as you do all your own editing, I think Vimeo and blip are much better choices personally as a video host and for their optimized players.

[aj37viggen]

"Video on SmugMug was some of the best of the bunch. It was crystal clear, loaded fast, and had one of the slickest players. Its one pitfall may be that you cannot embed it off of SmugMug's site..."

You can't? Maybe I'm misunderstanding what Josh meant, but I've embedded lots of SmugMug-hosted videos. There's a "Share" button that triggers a drop-down menu from which you can choose "Get a link"; that takes you to a page with ready-to-paste embed code.

Of course it doesn't work if the content's owner has turned off the "Easy Sharing" option, and I admit that I don't know if it works with HD video as I presently don't have any way to generate HD content.

[davezatz]

Still shots seems kind of irrelevant when talking video. But another good measure might be to test different source HD formats and see how these sites do reencoding them. Upload limits are an important consideration. But possibly most important, to me anyway, when choosing a video site is trying to figure out who's still going to be around in a year or 5 years. Cloud storage and sharing is great, as long as the company doesn't shut their doors and take our content with them. Or pull some silly crap like Yahoo killing their original photo sharing site. Lastly, YouTube has become a pawn - takedown notices come in, your video is removed (or the audio track, or ads are embedded), and [e-mail] won't provide the contact details of the claimant so you can determine what exactly infringes.

[Josh.Lowensohn]

That's a fantastic idea actually. Would be a good one for next time. We used .MP4 since it's what most HD-capable digital cameras (both the D90 + 5DMarkII & point and shoots) are spitting out. AVCHD would be a whole different beast, but important to test. I know Motionbox can handle that.

[basraw]

I believe also internet connection can alter video quality on Vimeo. Congested network = reduced quality.

[KarelBata]

Very nice and informative page here, but

1) A still from a video can be misleading. Virb (which you don't include) would have looked good here, but they only wncode at 12fps! Likewise it gives no indication of any buffering time needed etc..

2) There's no indication of how well any of these sites embed videos elswhere. This can lead to major issues.

3) You've left out ExposureRoom! It really does have the best technical quality available from all the free services.

4) I've put together a web page VIDEO EMBEDDING HOSTS COMPARISON TESTS at http://kareltests.co.uk which shows how well the best of the sites embed videos elswhere. This is currently hosted on a Virb page, but I'll be moving it soon to a page on an independant server, as well as adding a lot of advice for users who want to embed their videos on a page they design - particularly those who want to put a showreel on-line.

http://kareltests.co.uk

[Josh.Lowensohn]

Hey Karel,

Thanks for the good comment. All the services we looked at do at least 20 fps, and in many cases do 25 and above. We probably should have included that on the chart. As for embeds, we're assuming most people are going to see these videos in their place of origin. Good ideas nonetheless--will use them for next time.

[basraw]

vimeo can embed in hd. you have a lot of control over your objects.

I even figured out how to embed in Orkut. Was pretty easy.

[Waam]

Sorry, the only true HD experience you can truly have is on Blu-ray. huh? thats what streaming is supposed to kill.

[Don_MacAskill]

Hi there,

I'm the co-founder, CEO and Chief Geek at SmugMug. Thanks so much for including us in this review, and especially for giving us the runner-up nod. :)

Just a small correction: You can easily embed our videos, in a variety of sizes, with our slick player, just about anywhere you'd like. See: http://blogs.smugmug.com/don/2008/11/30/first-1080p-video-from-canons-new-5d-mkii-amazing/

It's simple to do - just click the "Share" button when you're viewing a video on the site.

Thanks again!

[Josh.Lowensohn]

Hey Don,

I had trouble finding it earlier, but I see it now. I've made the correction--thanks much.

[cavemandude]

Info taken from my Facebook video upload page today:

Please upload a file only if:

The video is under 100 MB and under 2 minutes.
The video was made by you or your friends.
You or one of your friends appears in the video.

So where did you get that Facebook allows 20 minute videos with a 1GB limit?

[basraw]

I agree.

[TedAvery]

This is actually something to do with your account and it's verified status, at least in my experience. My sister has Facebook and is told that she needs to confirm a mobile number before she can upload larger videos, she currently sees the same limits as you. I had a Facebook account early on and am confirmed with my school e-mail address, and my limit shows 1024 MB and under 20 minutes.

[08Rabbit]

The Youtube time limit goes away if you choose your account type as director..which is free.

[clbyrdny]

I heard setting the account type was done away with and that was only for the first people who signed up when youtube first began. I looked on my account and I do not see where to do that. Can you tell me where I can find the settings for that? Thank you. Charlie

[PersistentSoul]

This is only for people who have old accounts with YouTUBE. According to YouTUBE's help documentation, new users are always limited to 10 minutes (despite switching your account type to "director."
see http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=71673

[basraw]

Hi. I don't think Vimeo Plus is 20 gigs. It just changed from 2 gigs to 5 gigs a week upload.. (Just changed a couple weeks ago). Not sure where 20 gig came from?

Vimeo embeds about any where. Works great on Myspace and Orkut and Facebook.

You can even have great control on which sites can embed your videos (so they don't get played through other places trying to make a $ from advertising). Can limit who can download the original source and even password protect your videos.

[dalasv]

He did the math "per month," so it is correct.

[basraw]

thanks. my bad! didn't catch that!

[dalasv]

For those who are interested: At Vimeo, we are currently experimenting with switching to h.264 from our current vp6 Flash videos. This should improve image quality and playback smoothness. We will re-claim this title next year ;)

dalas verdugo
Community Director - Vimeo.com

[basraw]

SWEET!

[pretenderkc]

Dalas -- any chance we can test the h.264 too?
i'm currently have the PLUS account only to find out the HD stuff is way too choppy.
i searched your forums and seems like people are having the same problems.
interestingly, some of the HD video on Vimeo has smooth playback and excellent clarity.
i followed the instruction as in your forum to export and encode for HD but doesn't seem to help in term of smoothness playback.

btw, the same video clip hosted on my own server playback smoothly.

[dalasv]

Currently HD maxes out at 25fps, which could cause choppiness if your vid is 30fps. Hopefully the h.264 will resolve this issue, but we do not have a "beta" program. We'll launch it as soon as it's ready.

[sisunen]

Hi All,

why not to try HDshare.tv and the offline Upload service Media2Net? Just have a look at last Press Release: http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/090127/aqtu061.html?.v=74

bye

[RideMan]

So when do sharing sites finally break free of FLASH? Flash is a lousy format for video files, especially H.264 video running on MacOS. I'd much prefer to use QuickTme. which plays H.264 more efficiently than Flash (at least on MacOS). Even better, the files ought to be presented to the browser as MP4 files so that the end user can choose whichever player happens to work best on his hardware and Internet connection.

[BigGuns149]

I agree. Even on some Windows machines Flash takes up a lot more CPU cycles than it should. A lot of modern operating systems include media players that will support H.264. I think that the only caveat is that a lot of users want embedded playback in the browser. Furthermore, some content providers like the content protection that Flash provides, albeit there are some tools that will foil many of the copy protection schemes in flash files. Considering that most newer video sites are using H.264 embedded into a Flash container I wonder why some people don't simply bypass the container file that causes more overhead for users.

[2badd]

Thanks for doing the test. I'd love to see testing on video sending / video chat options like oovoo. Although oovoo bills itself as free you soon find out the you need to pay $10 a month to use the 6 person option as well as other "perks". Still at $10 a month it is a good option for some. We're going to be trying several other options as we find them.

[tomlaut]

You forgot to mention some HD services. I can also recommend www.exposureroom.com , you can also host your Photos and music there.

Then there is http://www.hdshare.tv/ .
as well as http://crackle.com/ , which is run by Sony.
last but not least there is http://www.archive.org/index.php there they dont compress your videos at all and they dont have a file size limitation and you can upload your videos via ftp.

[tomlaut]

sorry for double post could find edit button :)

also http://www.shareview.us/ and http://www.mytoons.com/ got HD , but mytoons is only for animations

[subsider34]

DailyMotion's HD video won't work on my PC. I Have a Gateway GT5435E Desktop Computer with 4GB RAM, AMD Atholon X2 4600+, nVidia GeForce 8500 512 MB DRAM. Oh, and by the way, I just reformated my hard drive so I have a clean install of Windows. What happens to me is that I get a message saying that my computer is "too slow".

[cheboncruz]

I uploaded alot of videos in hd but still youtube doesn't encode them in hd.

[naaabi]

I'm on the scout for a new service.. I would agree that blip is by far the best out of the survey but thanks to the commenters for the alternatives which I aim to check out..
I don't really know why I'm looking for another service. blip is very good. My experience so far has been with gootube , vimeo and blip with a minor flirtation with veoh. Blip is a bit bland and the gootube similarity of related videos make me feel like an alien although you can view on your own channel with none of that.
I won't go into gootube in too much depth but I did substitute music from the audio library which was subsequently removed and left soundless. It was one of my most popular videos featuring Wilson Picket's Don't Let The Green Grass Fool You. Any music that did remain had a link to itunes (I'm mindful of the no profanity terms of use)..
Next was Vimeo which I really loved. It seemed to play back HD video really well.Some of the featured HD videos were astounding but that was also part of the reason I got fed up of it in the end. I felt like a fish out of water because it was like National Geographic HD . They never stop pestering you to get Vimeo Plus which makes you feel distinctly like a second class citizen more and more. You're only allowed 1 HD video per week which gets to be really irritating. As a non paying member you see just one ad for tshirts which isn't too invasive to begin with but gradually wears you down.
I can't really think why I'm looking for an alternative to blip now. You are allowed to have multiple acounts at blip too . Vimeo does not. blip does not allow you to make any videos private which doesn't bother me too much but would be useful sometimes . It's nice to have the option of switching videos off from the public sometimes and back on when you want too.
Here is something I don't really want to tell anyone about. At Vimeo some people were asking where you could get free video software for HD and the answer was that ther isn't any except for the Vista version of Movie Maker. I have found the most amazing software here on cnet available as a free download. I 'll give you a clue. The only user comment on the software says it "was a waste of time and could not get it too work". Believe me, it isn't and it's amazing.
I've just caught a glimpse of the last comment about gootube not encoding hd . I think you'll find an option beneath the video to the laft hand side that you need to click on"watch in HD " as blue which reminds me of the other irritating thing of alot of videos not playing in stereo. You have to add "&fmt=18" to alot of gootube videos to either get them to play in stereo or high quality or maybe even HD .

[naaabi]

I finally discovered how to get your hd videos on the web without all that "you need a better pc" crap. The answer is the new divx webplayer and blip.tv where your original file is saved for people to choose. And this is the result. I'm going back to redo alot of my old videos so i can finally see them play "buttery smooth" on the net without having to download them.The bufferring is a bit longer but worth it.
Here is the result.I am really chuffed now I've discovered this.
http://blip.tv/file/2152801?filename=Naab-divxitment815.divx

[naaabi]

for "old" pcs like mine encode at 15fps around 2000kbs per sec and not more than about 5 mins and upload to Youtube. It's workinhg great. See latest effort iusemiro.