The online video sites are seeing action like never before. Last week Google bought the market leader in this Youtube.com for over $1.6 Billion dollars. The Social networking site Myspace.com has a popular video section as well. MSN is launching soon its Soapbox service.
Though I have been to these sites a few times and seen few of the videos, I was not that captivated by them – as the media expects everyone who visits video sites to do. I guess I am not the target audience – which predominantly is Teenagers. I am also not sure on the business model – presently I find no advertisements in Google Video and the advertisements on other services are also very minimal, if not absent.
Anyways, today I decided to give these sites a try by uploading a video. The video I selected was the speech I gave last month in Jayaram College of Engineering on “Can India Sustain its IT Growth and what I look for in freshers?” (Hyperlinked to the other post which has the links to various sites)
The first disappointment for me was all these sites, expects you to be with a video – edited, fine-tuned and ready to upload. None of these sites, provide you either an offline or an online tool to do typical video editing jobs, which if you are not a professional can take hours.
Though almost all of them worked the same, these are the differences I found:
- Google Videos: Two good things about the service – This service allows files more than 100 MB; It gives you a small (240 KB) downloadable Application that makes uploading files more than 100 MB a breeze.
- Myspace Video: Though easiest to use also has the minimal features. Limits to 100 MB of file size
- MSN Soapbox (Beta): Currently the Invite only site; Uses extensive AJAX to give a multitask interface and file upload – you can upload and watch videos at the same time; Limits to 100 MB of file size. The post-upload processing here took hours. Good thing, it gives readily the Hyperlink, Code for Embedding Player, etc. Scores high on UI.
- YouTube.com: Simplest interface; ability to group videos into playlists; Limits filesize to 100 MB.