Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on January 08, 2008 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

A few weeks ago we, gave Viddler 1st place for being the best sharing site of 2007. That’s when it hit us that we’ve been using Viddler for quite awhile without actually writing about it. Not spreading the word about Viddler is pretty much doing an injustice to our readers. And we can’t forget to mention that we currently have 3 out of 20 of the most popular videos on Viddler.

We use Viddler for all of the screencasts and videos that we produce. The video quality is pretty amazing, and they offer users an incomparable amount of control over the videos that are published. Lets take a look at how it all works…

–Upload a Video–

Viddler’s uploading process couldn’t be any easier. Their Flash-based uploader lets you queue up as many videos as you would like. It will upload each of them one-by-one, process them, and let you know when they are completed. What really makes the uploader intelligent is that you can enter in the title, description, and tags for each video while you wait for them to finish:

You can upload videos that are up to 500MB in size, and they support the following types of files: AVI, DV, MOV, QT, MPG2, MPEG2, MPEG4, MP4, 3GP, 3G2, ASF, WMV, and FLV. In the next version of Viddler they have plans on letting users upload music and pictures.

After the videos finish uploading you can navigate away from the page, and optionally you can be notified via email when they are ready for you.

–Embed/View the Video–

We optimize all of our videos for Viddler’s largest resolution. That way when we embed the videos they look clear and concise, which is especially important when posting screencasts. Here’s an example of our most popular screencast (there’s no sound):

–Features–

I’m frequently amazed that Viddler is a free service because of how well it’s designed, and the number of features it brings to the table. Here’s a quick overview of the things you’ll want to checkout when using Viddler:

• Stats – With every video that’s uploaded you’re able to keep track of how many views they’ve received. You can also see the URL of other sites who are embedding your video, and how many times it has been viewed on any particular site. Pretty cool, huh?
• Privacy – There are three different privacy options that you get when uploading a video. You can make a video public where anyone can watch it, shared where you designate which of your Viddler friends can watch it, or you can make it completely private so that you’re the only one able to view it.
• Downloadable Videos – Unlike many video services, Viddler gives publishers the option to make their videos downloadable. And I’m not just talking the compressed Flash version of the video either! If enabled, Viddler will let viewers download the original video that you uploaded.
• Powerful Menu – When a video finishes playing, or the user presses “Menu” in the bottom-right corner, they will be presented with all kinds of information. They’ll see stats for how many times the video has been viewed, a list of other videos from the publisher, recommended videos, and all of the stuff that you would need for embedding or linking to the video.

–Sharing–

Naturally with any video service, the focus is on members who share their videos with other people. Viddler has the most powerful set of sharing options out of any other video site that I’ve used. You can control whether everyone, your friends, or just you can comment, tag, embed, and download videos. Each of the settings can be configured on a per-video basis, thereby giving you the ultimate control:

–Overview–

As you can see, Viddler is jam packed with features, but there is one thing that I would like to see to make it a little bit better. As of right now you can share your videos with only friends and family by using the appropriate “Shared” privacy option. The problem is that anyone who views the video has to be a registered Viddler user in order for you to make them a “friend,” and I think it would be easier if they offered the option to just password protect a video. Once that’s possible I’ll deem the service perfect!

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