DivX returns to Web video with the HD-licious Vreel
When I put together a small comparison test of video services earlier this year, an overwhelming number of people got on me about not including Stage6, a side project of the people behind the popular DivX codec to showcase what their technology was capable of. Shortly thereafter, Stage6 shut its doors in a rather dramatic fashion--giving users mere days to find somewhere else to host their high-resolution videos.
That was in February though, and since then a group of half a dozen developers has put together their own solution, called Vreel. Originally planned to launch back in March, it opened up its doors this morning.
Like its predecessor, one of the service's strong suits is that it uses DivX, a codec that's not as popular as Adobe's Flash for Web video, but beat it to market for delivering high-resolution videos and is largely the format of choice for videos found on sites like The Pirate Bay. Since then, Flash has caught up technologically, but high-resolution videos have not quite reached the mainstream, only popping up on sites like Dailymotion, Vimeo, and in a gallery on Hulu. The user-uploaded videos already filling up Vreel's servers are beautiful (albeit mostly illegal).
The service is allowing users to upload gargantuan video files by most standards. The current cap is 1GB, which is what many free Web storage services offer as their entire limit. I'm told users will be able to upload even larger sizes in the future. The best thing is that there's no time limit, so as long as your video is under the size cap, it can be as long as you want. Considering the news about YouTube extending its video length, this is a necessary move.
The short clip I uploaded earlier today came from my digital camera and was converted from AVI to DivX with no noticeable loss in quality. The one caveat there is that, to see it, users have to install the DivX Web player in their browser, the same thing you have to do with Flash and YouTube. DivX's player, however, has a few tricks up its sleeve. For one, you can pop out any video to its original quality, which on some widescreen videos looks just great. It's also got a much more complex options menu for every clip that lets you do fast forward and rewind, and even save the clip if you have a premium version of the player--the same kind of things you get with Apple's QuickTime.
Unfortunately, the one thing missing is a way to embed the clip on other sites, so if you want to see how it looks beyond the screenshot below, you'll have to go here
Update: Oops, looks like we helped take the site down. Removing links for the time being--will put them back up when the site returns.
Update 2: Vreel is getting more servers and should be officially "re-launching" soon. We'll keep you posted.
Update 3: Everything is back to normal. Links are back.
High-quality videos on Vreel shine. You can even view them in close to native resolution with a pop-out player.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
Josh Lowensohn writes for Webware.com, CNET's blog about Web applications and services. E-mail Josh, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/Josh. 
http://labs.divx.com/node/6277
If you know the URL of the source file, you can embed the web player on your own site using this code generator:
http://labs.divx.com/WebPlayerCodeGenerator
I suggest only doing so if the hosting parties TOS allows this, otherwise you may be accused of leeching bandwidth.
- by joecool6101 October 25, 2008 11:28 AM PDT
- Since vreel is constantly down i thought i would share with you guys http://stagehd.com .. its been around since the unfortunate closing of stage6 and hasnt needed any of that annoying downtime that vreel says they need to stay online and working as they are good programmers and know how to run a good site on the fly. Its worth your while i assure you. **I am not affliated with them, just a fan**
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