Scott asked a pretty good question why I don’t host my own video. I though others might be interested in so I decided I would turn it into a post.
I could certainly host the video on my hosted server. I don’t host a server out of my house any more. Cable bandwidth is just not enough. When I add in the fact that cable does occasionally go down external hosting is better for my needs.
Just like flickr for photos Vimeo has a nice social scene when it comes to sharing my videos and looking at what others are doing. For example I belong to a group called Pocket HD. Like the name says the group is for people with small hand held HD recorders like the Flip UtraHD that I now use. You can add your videos to groups and share them with others in just about any other topics you can imagine. Vimeo also has a weekly video challenge that I want to eventually start doing as soon as I get through all my vacation video.
Eventually server space would catch up with me on my host even if it took a could of years. Also, if I wanted to launch my movies in a Flash based player I would have to spend time to compress the video on my own which does add considerable amount to time to the process. Upload to Vimeo and have them do the compress is much less time on my hands. Even if it is just waiting for the compression to finish most of the time.
I do have a local copy on my home media Mac Mini HTPC for backup. But I find I still like to stream the videos via Vimeo. When people come over I can show them right from Plex on my HTPC. The experience is pretty nice. Check out these screen shots of Vimeo via Plex.
Right now it is easy to use Vimeo and I do enjoy the social aspect of it. I guess those are the main two reasons I don’t host them on my own.
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