1 Register at Youtube and subscribe to video channels

2 Go to the "YouTube 2 iTunes" Yahoo Pipe and fill out your Youtube username

3 Run the pipe, and click the "Get as RSS button"

4 Copy that link, go to iTunes, "Advanced", "Subscribe to podcast" and paste

5 You’re done!

• 4.5: Revver and Blip.tv
• 4: Vimeo and Veoh
• 3: Dailymotion, Youtube, Soapbox
• 2.5: Google Video and Myspace
• 2: Gofish and Clipshack
• 1 and 0: Eefoof, Yahoo Video and Grouper

Revver

• uploading in .mov and .wmv, not in flv (see here) 
• embedding is possible in both .mov and flv (.mov is bigger, so probably flv will be your preferred format)
• 480 by 392 (360+ 32 ) is the biggest screen size of all services and the quality is excellent!!
• you can save video search queries into "collections" or make manual collections – each collection is a vodcast – you download the videos in .mov.  Example: videos about Jazz: feed
• Revver’s business model: they "give you the tools to share it with the world and split the ad revenue with you 50/50".  Both the embedded movies and downloaded movs have an advertisement at the end (a static image with a link)
• There’s one big drawback: the Revver management interface is a pain to use: slow, hard to navigate, sometimes buggy
  • automatic metadata on the files, like original upload filenames, upload date is missing
  • it’s so hard to find the permalink of a single video (you have to go to the "grab this" syndication snippets
  • after trying to perform an action (such as adding to a collection) the interface does not show whether it worked or not…
  • it takes quite a while to have your video reviewed (fortunately they do send a notification email - but at the moment I received it, my video was not yet visible)
  • when you enter the description right after processing, that description gets lost

Scores: 1 upload, 2 quality, 1.5 openness. Total: 4.5 / 6 

Summary: Revver is the highest quality service to host your videos – if you don’t object against the ads.  But it’s a pity you have to put up a fight with the interface to get that far…

Blip.tv

• quick upload, really easy navigation and management interface
• you can upload via ftp, and even from within Windows Movie Maker!
• you can choose your license (All rights reserved, over CC to Public Domain)
• Your uploads are played on Blip.tv either as flv or  in their upload format (but not in the original size)  – see the wmv,  .mov and flv version.  Some of my uploads failed however and the flv conversion isn’t always optimal.
• any search result, tag, category or user page is also available in feed format – the enclosures are the unmodified files in original format!!
• there are all kinds of cross-posting and mirroring options – resp. to your own blog or the internet archive for example
• ads: opt-in only.  Apparently they hope to finance the non-monetized content with the content of users who choose to have ads displayed (50/50 revenue sharing).  Only two advertising partners at the moment, but things are moving – immen.se joined as partner only last week
• you can embed the movies in several formats: 480 by 360, as well as 320 by 240.  There are several embedding options, such as a customizable thumbnail image, a javascript or non-javascript version (for platforms stripping javascript). Here the flv version of the uploaded mov with an (unfortunately blurried) intro image inserted at the start:

Scores: 1 upload, 1.5 quality, 2 openness. Total: 4.5 / 6 

Summary: Blip is the most open and user-friendly (in several meanings) service.  Only the quality of the flv conversion is a bit behind.  Not surprisingly, the service gained popularity among geeks and creatives (it’s the only service who had a considerable number of screencasts :-) ).  Which, in the long term, is not a bad strategy – after all, it’s those groups who evangelize technology to other users and who create original content… (Note: check out this  audio interview by Jon Udell with Mike Hudack, one of the founders of Blip.tv)

Vimeo

• excellent quality , simple, easy to navigate site
• Accepts wmv version (bad quality conversion) and flv (good till excellent)
• RSS feeds per user or per tag, the enclosures point to the original upload format!
• maximum upload size: 30 megs/week!
• 400 x 300 embedded flv version (the controls show on mouse over, do not take space in themselves):

Scores: 0.5 upload, 1.5 quality, 2 openness. Total: 4 / 6 

Summary: Vimeo has about everything you can wish in a video hosting service… but because of the 30 MB max upload, it’s only a viable option for really light users…

Veoh:

• accepts mov (bad quality conversion) and  wmv, not flv
• Innovative features:
  • publishing via RSS: they upload automatically the videos from your private vlog (so Veoh sees itself as your hosting partner)
  • forwarding and getting the embedding html code from within the embedded video flash player
• subscription and video download requires the Veoh client however, I didn’t see any outgoing rss feeds
• screen size is OK, but quality is abominable
• 425 by 340, .mov version:

Scores: 2 upload, 0.5 quality, 1 openness. Total: 3.5 / 6 

Summary: Veoh has some nice features, but the dependency on the Veoh client for some features disqualifies it as a host for your screencasts

Soapbox

• I could upload .mov and wmv (of course)
• within the soapbox environment, your videos are shown in wmv if you’re using IE, in flv if you’re using Firefox
• flv is used for embedding in your own site (regardless platform or browser of your visitor) has some nifty usability features: you can perform edit/upload actions while you keep watching a video…
• you need to login with a live.com/msn account in order to get the code for embedding the video, or even browse more videos: this is handicapping virals and seems plain stupid to me
• see 5MB wmv version (not really great quality)  and 80MB .mov (better, but still not outstanding – embedded here, 412 by 362 px)

Scores: 1.5 upload, 1 quality, 0.5 openness. Total: 3 / 6 

Summary: Slick interface, pretty good display quality, but not really impressive. 

Youtube

• Formats: accepts wmv, flv and mov 
• the video quality of all of the 3 uploads is equally bad
• Size: 425 x 350 – too small

Scores: 1.5 upload, 0.5 quality, 1 openness. Total: 3 / 6 

Summary: Youtube is the king when it comes to speed, social features and usability, but for screencasting it just doesn’t fit…

Dailymotion

• really fast upload, great workflow
• accepts .mov,  and .wmv – the flv gave an encoding error
• embedding is possible in small (200 by 166), medium (400 by 316) and big (640 by 480) screen size (a bigger screen size doesn’t help if the images get blurry…).  Here’s: the medium version:

Scores: 1.5 upload, 0.5 quality, 1 openness. Total: 3 / 6 

Summary: Dailymotion is probably one of the better video sharing sites around, but size and quality aren’t good enough for screencasting

Google Video

• Formats: accepts wmv, mov, no flv.
• on the plus side: they’re the only service where you can upload videos larger than 100 MB!
• video quality: bad
• No feeds for videos by one author, subject…  there is however a way to convert searches into feeds by adding the "&output=rss" parameter to the url, which converts the search to a vodcast with mp4 enclosures!  Example: all videos from blogtalk reloaded as feed.  Note that "blogtalkreloaded" happens to be an uncommon user name, so that the full text here is equivalent to a search by author.
• Size: 400 x 326 – far too small. There’s no preview of how big the embedded version actually will look like

Scores: 1 upload, 0.5 quality, 1 openness. Total: 2.5 / 6 

Summary: Google was the first of the big players (June 2005) to offer video hosting, but didn’t really know how to make it an appealing product so far – so no wonder they bought Youtube.  It would be nice still to have Google video improved for geekier, heavy duty video hosting.

Myspace

• Accepts .mov and flv.  Although they pretend to take.wmv, the conversion of my wmv file failed (tried several times)
• Both versions have an equally poor quality however
• Despite Myspace ‘s bad reputation, the video upload and management interface is clear and clean
• No feeds, embedding works fine (flv version, 430 by 346)

Scores: 1.5 upload, 0.5 quality, 0.5 openness. Total: 2.5 / 6 

Summary:  Good service but insufficient quality for screencasting

Go Fish

• accepts, wmv, flv, mov - the latter one is just a tidbit better, still far from sufficient
• clear, simple management interface
• no rss feeds
• embedded (343 by 290, .mov version) – far too small

Scores: 1.5 upload, 0 quality, 0.5 openness. Total: 2 / 6 

Summary: Again: probably a good service, but not for screencasting

Clip Shack

• accepts .mov and .wmv (but wmv version failed to be processed)
• in order to register, you have to go through screenfuls of sponsors who want your email…
• screen size : 430 by 354 , quality insufficient

Scores: 1 upload, 0.5 quality, 0.5 openness. Total: 2 / 6 

Summary: an sponsor-driven community site, that happens to be built around video sharing

Eefoof

• wmv and flv failed converting, .mov version : bad image quality
• you can post really quickly and anonymously, that’s what I did by accident  BTW…
• embedding is impossible – what they call embedding is a link to the ads-overloaded site

Scores: 1 upload, 0 quality, 0 openness. Total: 1 / 6 

Summary: quick anonymous media sharing, not a place you trust your files to for hosting

Yahoo Video

• flv is not accepted, wmv upload failed conversion after several trials (although they pretend wmv is accepted), the uploaded mov has an appalling image and sound quality (which is really exceptional among the services I tested!)
• no real size preview of what the video will look liked when embedded (as in Google video), it turns out to be 425 by 350:

Scores: 0.5 upload, 0 quality, 0.5 openness. Total: 1 / 6 

Summary: Unbelievably bad product by such an otherwise great web company.  Maybe they should go shopping in the upper regions of this list?

Grouper

• Formats: accepts wmv, mov 
• processing takes really long and then… where are my videos?  I could only find them back via the general search days later…
• I was unable to play the video in Firefox, in IE (with Windows media player) the .mov version plays without sound (and with appalling image quality), the wmv without images!!
• Size: 400×300 (+25) – didn’t bother to embed one

Scores: 0 upload, 0 quality, 0 openness. Total: 0 / 6 

Summary: if I believe Techcrunch, Grouper might be interesting if you download their proprietary viewer/uploader.  Not for web-based use though…

Criteria

What is important if you search a service to host your self-produced screencasts? I scored each of them for the following criteria:

Upload:

• is uploading fast and easy?
• can you upload in several formats or just one?
• are there other ways of uploading, other than a simple web form?
• how easy is managing, and editing uploads and their metadata?

Quality

• image and sound quality (whereas in most entertainment videos, it’s sufficient just to get an idea of what’s happening, for a sceencast it’s necessary for at least menus and text to be readable…)
• size on screen of the embedded video (size does matter, but image sharpness and a sound without hiccups are more important)

Control:

• is there an rss (vodcast) feed for your videos, or collections of videos you make – so people can subscribe?
• what are the download options: flv, compressed quicktime, and/or the original format and size?
• can you monetize your videos?
• can you embed your video on your own site, in different formats and sizes?

If you use video sharing sites for other purposes (fun, marketing, entertainment) then you might find other criteria more important, such as the social features, viral marketing features, usability and findability from the watcher’s point of view – but that’s not what I concentrated on here.

Results

• Among the services I tested, Blip.tv and Revver stood out, with Vimeo and Veoh following. See all ratings and short reviews.
• An ideal setup would be a Feedburner-like service that consumes your vodcast feed (like Veoh does), and transforms the local video file references to (automatically) mirrored versions on a hosting service, giving you view/download stats and optionally ad revenue sharing (what Blip.tv is offering now).
• I did not compare terms of use and copyright policy of all of the services – but I think you can safely assume that law follows code: the more freedom the hosting platform gives you as a user/contributor, the more your rights as the producer are respected. Openness of the platform doesn’t have to be an ethical choice, BTW – it could be a sound business choice too, see my summarizing remark on Blip.tv (an interesting read: the “Ethics of Web2.0” posting and the ensuing discussion).

Source material

I had used Camtasia Studio (free trial here) to record and edit an 640 by 480 movie (see resources for more tools). That’s too big to make it embeddable in most layouts, so I exported to 480 by 360 movies in the following formats:

• .avi: too heavy to upload, even for the shortest video.
• .swf: video quality was just too bad.
• .mov – 80 MB (download): still a huge file, but for some services .mov was the only format that converted into relatively good quality videos.
• .flv – 8MB (download): good quality, high compression. Some services don’t accept it as source format however.
• .wmv – 5.6MB: excellent quality when exported in the orginal 640 by 480 format (download). When produced in the lower 480×360 resolution, quality is a lot worse, and size increases! So I used the 640 by 480 version, however just a few services accept .wmv as source format.

Probably other upload formats/or options could have resulted in different quality scores – few services give instructions on how to optimize the source material for them however – Youtube being a notable exception.

Other video sharing comparisons

• 10 video sharing sites compared on criteria “posting”, “viewership” and “editing” (April 2006)
• Feature comparison table and white paper (May 2006)
• Video sharing site comparison (Aug 14th 2006, an extensive comparison of ease of use, storage and openness)
• Compare embedded versions of the same source:
  • 8 versions a concert video from a Nokia 91 at Peter Forret’s
  • a Youtube-Vimeo comparison and more at the “Making movies” blog
  • some 30 embedded versions by different services: 1 2 (browser might crash)
• Posting video’s from a mobile phone: the experiences of a Thailand traveler

Still other Alternatives

• Self-hosting still is an option. You’ll probably choose for flv (platform-independency, high compression) and the Flash Video Player by Jeroen Wijering.
• Tubetorial.com is a screencasting portal you might consider if you do not have your own blog.
• Screencast-O-Matic is a free service with a Java applet that lets you record and upload screencasts – on the other side of the spectrum, there’s Screencast.com by Techsmith (Camtasia!) to host your corporate screencasts for a fee.

Screencasting resources

• Comparisons of screencasting tools at Wikipedia
• Showmedo: screencast collection by 2 Sussex-based researchers, check out the screencasts on screencasting :-)
• a screencast on Vimeo on how to create screencasts with Windows Moviemaker
• Jon Udell’s Screencasting strategies