09 April 2008

 

Flickr does video


The Neurotics Fab Rock Invasion
Originally uploaded by penmachine

The new video sharing features of the formerly photo-only site Flickr are different: the designers obviously thought a lot about how to implement video without just cloning how YouTube and everyone else does it.

The key thing is that videos uploaded to Flickr must be less than a minute and a half long, and no bigger than 150 MB. That's a limitation, but also a gift. It forces you to think about what to upload, and if you have a longer video, to edit it down to its essence.

My first video upload there is a good example. I had to take a video of my band that was already only a few minutes long and make it even shorter. I had to cut out non-licensed music and any other extraneous bits. In the end it's only one minute, but it still gets the point of our act across, even without any singing at all.

I think the time limit will generate some creativity in the Flickr community, as well as avoiding those interminable videos that take forever to get to the point. Even if a video is bad, you'll only have to waste 90 seconds on it. We'll see what happens within the well-imagined constraints.

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Comments:

More importantly: The quality on flickr videos is WAY better than Youtube. I uploaded the same vid to each, and wow. Flickr definitely gets my vote.
 
I agree that shorter is better, especially since our attention spans seem to be getting shorter and shorter.

It wouldn't surprise me if Flickr extended the length and file size constraints on video in the future, though. They're in a good position to become a "remix my footage and share-alike" destination for videophiles, the same way they are with photogs.

Derek, thanks again for recommending Screenflow- it was completely worth it.

Cheers,

Jordan