YouTube vs VIMEO – quality battle
by David Druckenmiller on May.15, 2009, under Technique & Technology
Here’s a side by side comparison of YouTube and VIMEO. With all the buzz about YouTube’s improved “HD” quality and auto embed code, I was curious to see how the two sharing sites stack up against each other. In light of the distraction of the two clips playing automatically on the main blog page, the auto play of these clips has been turned off. You can still click the play buttons though and get the same effect.
The uploaded source clip was a 1280×720 5000kbps .H264 compressed QuickTime movie. Note the entire build has a textured graphics treatment, sort of like old paper. The embedded YouTube display is 640×385 and for VIMEO is 640×360. The display may require you to adjust your browser window width a bit as it is rather large. Give it a look and see if you can tell a difference.
An appropriate clip, given the coming 65th anniversary of D-Day in June. To veterans young and old, …”thank you.”
May 16th, 2009 on 12:25 AM
Youtube plays faster…Vimeo looks better
May 17th, 2009 on 2:00 PM
I had the opposite experience. Vimeo loaded faster. Freezing the last frame of video provides for a good comparison. The vimeo has obvious compression artifacts in the gradient of the suns rays. If you look at the branches of the trees, the Youtube version has more detail. I would eve say the Vimeo is slightly desaturated. Interesting comparison. Thanks for sharing!
May 21st, 2009 on 2:02 PM
Youtube plays like a slide show on a Mac 2×2.0 PPC.
Vimeo plays smooth as silk.
December 4th, 2009 on 3:21 PM
Vimeo wouldn’t load for me. YouTube at least loaded, but was choppy. I’m not liking that a newer PC is worse than an iMac built a year before, and would like to attempt this comparison when I get a newer Mac, as the results might be different.
December 4th, 2009 on 3:31 PM
Mike agreed, the constant need to upgrade is becoming annoying as the computer folks capitalize on the desire to stay current .. hmm VIMEO seems to be having some trouble lately on embeds. I hope to do a test with a true 1080 clip soon just like the 720p clips here. Thanks for the comments.