Vimeo, End of an Era

[Marcio Kabke Pinheiro]

5 minutes ago, Clark Nikolai said:

I've seen it though. I was working on a TV show and was about to delete my copy of the footage as I was finished with that episode and got a call from the producer. Both his copies of the footage went poof! The main copy and the backup copy drives both got corrupted somehow. He freaked out but fortunately I and the editor had copies of the footage.

I started backup cloud when my local HD got corrupted (a thing that - fortunately - never happened again in the last 8 years), I've ran CHKDSK in Windows and it deleted the corrupted videos; and since at the time I had a sync software and did not noticed the deletion, they were erased at the external drive too.

I'm an amateur and nothing REALLY important was lost, but I miss some concert footage - specially three from a amazing Sharon Jones concert.

Now the cloud and external HD backup never delete files.

[PannySVHS]

I'm not even talking about data storage as such, which you guys are referring to. Though it's another dubious move, that they simply delete all your videos which you have uploaded under a paid account, if you don't renew your paid membership.

[QuickHitRecord]

I've been paying for the "Pro" plan for the past ten years. With the 'Review' video function that Frame.io copied from them, it's been a great collaboration tool for working with clients. I still have all of my search functionality and can click on usernames to see their bios and highlighted videos.

The one thing I don't love but I can't say that I'm surprised by is that I now have a 1TB limit on my total storage. If I want 5TB, it's double the price. I've written to them asking if they could give us a "finalize video" button that will purge all of the drafts that it is currently saving -- I don't need them after delivering a video. This would allow me to bring my storage needs way down. They said that they would look into it.

It doesn't seem like the platform is flourishing, but I haven't looked into switching because it serves my needs and I have a couple hundred videos uploaded (all are backed up locally).

[eatstoomuchjam]

Now it's truly the end of an era.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46707699

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/sjtjgbabzx

 

[zerocool22]

Doesnt look good. Hope thzy wont go under, I have hosted most of my videos up there.

[MrSMW]

11 hours ago, zerocool22 said:

Doesnt look good. Hope thzy wont go under, I have hosted most of my videos up there.

Ditto, well over 800 of the things…

I finish my annual accounts for 25 later today and tomorrow I’m going to start putting year by most recent year, all of finished productions up on YouTube plus all future ones so if/when the plug is pulled, I will just need to change a few links.

I only need to go back 5 years max so maybe about 100 uploads but still… 😏

[Andrew - EOSHD]

Time for a UK / Europe Based Vimeo alternative then. Time to make our own.

[MrSMW]

1 hour ago, Andrew - EOSHD said:

Time for a UK / Europe Based Vimeo alternative then. Time to make our own.

I would be up for that but SquareSpace would have to link to it as an option as I think they only currently link to Vimeo or YouTube for video?

Could be why there are no other competitive other options out there?

[Video Hummus]

11 hours ago, MrSMW said:

I would be up for that but SquareSpace would have to link to it as an option as I think they only currently link to Vimeo or YouTube for video?

Could be why there are no other competitive other options out there?

This is the problem with a closed, corporate owned web. 

[Ilkka Nissila]

21 hours ago, MrSMW said:

I would be up for that but SquareSpace would have to link to it as an option as I think they only currently link to Vimeo or YouTube for video?

Could be why there are no other competitive other options out there?

To host a large quantity of videos for streaming probably requires quite a bit of money and if there is no paywall then someone has to pay the bills and how to attract enough advertisers to cover them later. US has a lot of filthy rich people who can afford to arrange for these things to happen and take the risk. Europe spends its money taking care of people and so this money for investment is not as easily available unless funded by government or EU money. Since we don't want the business model to be based on data collection & IP theft, what would the business model be based on? Subscription doesn't work because US companies offer free services (but you are targed ads and your data is given to everyone somehow through intermediates and may be used for surveillance, political manipulation etc.)

 

I think basic IT services (including video and photo hosting, forums, social media, basic tools) in Europe should be government funded or at least subsidized and all the infrastructure, code, and data must be located in Europe and preferably the code should be open source so that any manipulation or other illegality can be detected. And the platforms should be considered legally co-responsible for any illegal content or activities.

[eatstoomuchjam]

The best bet for a YouTube alternative might be something a bit more decentralized.

PeerTube have been around for a bit, but still haven't really taken off.  Sorting by "global views" shows the most popular videos getting around 10k views.

https://peertube.tv/

There are also options like Floatplane and Patreon, but their focus is more on people who will pay to follow a specific creator vs delivering a client gallery or similar.

Finally, there are commercial services like Vidflow - no personal experience, but they're probably fine.  Who knows how long they'll stay in business, though?

[Andrew - EOSHD]

Interesting mentions, but it needs not to be a general dumping ground for any kind of content, it needs to be laser focused on filmmakers / artists / DPs and musicians, exactly like Vimeo was in the very early days with the full community aspect built in, comments threads, forums and really good portfolio curation. Staff Picks has to be there (under a different name of course), as a launchpad of careers like it was at Vimeo.

There is no reason why it can't work again.

YouTube is dominant, won't be going anywhere.

So it shouldn't even try to compete with that.

The unique selling point is the ad-free viewing, original file downloads and community aspect, as well as that laser focus on filmmaking & cinematography of all kinds.

A niche site for artistic filmmakers that costs £60 per year ad-free, that isn't just another copy-n-paste YouTube or Frame.io is what's needed now!

Any interest in gathering ideas for a crowdfunding?

 

[Andrew - EOSHD]

I would argue that social media is due a re-invention as well. Everybody hates what it has turned into (basically crap addictive television).

Facebook is no longer a place where you hear from friends. It always promotes clickbait, professional content creators and ads above what your friend's post, and the stories on Instagram have stolen what Instagram started which was a linear feed of photos, and turned it into TV. As entertainment it works fine, but it undermines the original concept of what Instagram was supposed to be and why people liked it.

I would have a cross between Flickr and Instagram for photographers, with decentralised hosting and no Meta copyright BS.

[eatstoomuchjam]

31 minutes ago, Andrew - EOSHD said:

A niche site for artistic filmmakers that costs £60 per year ad-free, that isn't just another copy-n-paste YouTube or Frame.io is what's needed now!

Would you limit storage space for uploads and/or remove videos after a certain amount of time on the platform?  Storage tends to be one of the biggest difficulties cost-wise for a video hosting site.  Keep in mind that you don't store just one copy of the video at the resolution that was uploaded.  You store multiple copies of the video at progressively smaller sizes - so if somebody uploads 4k, you will end up storing at least 1080p and 720p copies as well - as well as potentially 2.5k and 480p copies depending.  People don't usually expect their videos to stay on the site for only 1 year.  So even if you're able to stay even at £60 ($82USD)/year for a year or two, as long as people are uploading and not deleting things, your costs will keep increasing.

That's also not to mention transfer and CDN costs which are also potentially high.

Imagine having a single very popular creator who uploads a daily 20 minute video in 4K quality which is then streamed by 1 million people every day.  Will you still charge them just $82/year even though they're costing you a lot more than that?

To make it worse, storage costs are increasing a lot - thanks to the AIpocalypse for RAM which impacts SSD's as well... and since SSD's are up, hard drives also went up since the big players are buying more of them instead of SSD's.

This is where decentralized options like PeerTube start to become tempting - though they suffer the problem that a chunk of the content can vanish because a single operator gets tired of paying a lot of money to host others' content.

[Andrew - EOSHD]

16 hours ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

Would you limit storage space for uploads and/or remove videos after a certain amount of time on the platform?  Storage tends to be one of the biggest difficulties cost-wise for a video hosting site.

Vimeo was probably one of those American tech platforms that never existed to make a profit, only to grow, backed by generous venture capital funds. It's the Amazon model. Lose money for decades and finally become so massive and big that you can finally at the end make some huge profits with a diverse business (i.e. not just books!)

With Vimeo they were number 2 only to YouTube so the server costs must have been astronomical.

With a return of the same concept, personally I'd do it differently. I'd make sure the subscription fee covered all the costs and made a profit which could be invested back into growing the business, rather than relying on corporate socialist handouts from banks.

As for storage - you get a finite amount, and you have to delete the junk yourself to keep your account in order, or delete old stuff that never gained any views. There's a lot of waste on platforms like YouTube, a lot of junk like live streams that have 2 hours of dead air in them (just a camera pointed at a stage for example).

16 hours ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

Keep in mind that you don't store just one copy of the video at the resolution that was uploaded.  You store multiple copies of the video at progressively smaller sizes - so if somebody uploads 4k, you will end up storing at least 1080p and 720p copies as well - as well as potentially 2.5k and 480p copies depending.

These lower res copies pay for themselves in reducing the bandwidth bill.

16 hours ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

People don't usually expect their videos to stay on the site for only 1 year.  So even if you're able to stay even at £60 ($82USD)/year for a year or two, as long as people are uploading and not deleting things, your costs will keep increasing.

I think it balances out. Some users will use storage all the way up to the cap, some will stay well under it, so it's all about the average.

16 hours ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

That's also not to mention transfer and CDN costs which are also potentially high.

Yes but let's say 100,000 users paying £60/yr that is 6 million quid a year, which should more than cover the hosting costs 🙂

16 hours ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

Imagine having a single very popular creator who uploads a daily 20 minute video in 4K quality which is then streamed by 1 million people every day.  Will you still charge them just $82/year even though they're costing you a lot more than that?

No definitely not, it's all about the average views, everyone subsidises each-other, so when you have a breakout success it's covered.

YouTube benefits from massive economies of scale but look at the cost of Premium. It's as low as $4 per month in some countries like India, with vastly more bandwidth and storage requirements than a niche filmmaking site, but YouTube still makes enough money from it to run the platform with no caps and take down ads for those users.

16 hours ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

To make it worse, storage costs are increasing a lot - thanks to the AIpocalypse for RAM which impacts SSD's as well... and since SSD's are up, hard drives also went up since the big players are buying more of them instead of SSD's.

This is where decentralized options like PeerTube start to become tempting - though they suffer the problem that a chunk of the content can vanish because a single operator gets tired of paying a lot of money to host others' content.

It's a temporary increase in RAM and SSD prices, it'll all go way down when the AI bubble bursts in a few months.

I don't think peer-to-peer can work for a Vimeo-clone.

For exactly the reason you mentioned above :)

[eatstoomuchjam]

3 hours ago, Andrew - EOSHD said:

As for storage - you get a finite amount, and you have to delete the junk yourself to keep your account in order, or delete old stuff that never gained any views. There's a lot of waste on platforms like YouTube, a lot of junk like live streams that have 2 hours of dead air in them (just a camera pointed at a stage for example).

This is certainly a sustainable approach, but it might end up being very unpopular with users - that and it would encourage trendy/mass appeal/influencer content vs evergreen content.  It's not a wrong decision, but it definitely won't appeal to everybody.

3 hours ago, Andrew - EOSHD said:

Yes but let's say 100,000 users paying £60/yr that is 6 million quid a year, which should more than cover the hosting costs

It might.  Keep in mind that depending on the market, you will also have legal concerns and fees associated with hosting user-generated video content.  The second anybody uploads CSAM, you're going to be dealing with international police, regulations, etc.  Then add in processing of copyright claims, etc.  That many users will also necessitate a user support organization of some sort.

3 hours ago, Andrew - EOSHD said:

YouTube benefits from massive economies of scale but look at the cost of Premium. It's as low as $4 per month in some countries like India, with vastly more bandwidth and storage requirements than a niche filmmaking site, but YouTube still makes enough money from it to run the platform with no caps and take down ads for those users.

Massive economies of scale indeed - plus owning a lot of their own fiber and CDN (reducing transfer costs) as well as owning their own storage, etc.  Premium is, IMO, one of the best values in streaming and it's hard to imagine that it doesn't lose google money, at least somewhat.  They may look at it as losing them less money than users installing Adblock.

3 hours ago, Andrew - EOSHD said:

I don't think peer-to-peer can work for a Vimeo-clone.

Peer to peer, no.  Federation, maybe.  We'll see how things go for Bluesky and the like.