Vimeo Goes Mobile

Good news for Vimeo users with iphones - Vimeo is now supporting mobile versions of your videos that can be played on your phone - as well the ipod Touch, Android phones, and the Palm Pre. This is a big deal for educators who use Video to display student work, especially considering the number of young people who do the majority of their web browsing on mobile devices.

For those who don't know, Vimeo is a video hosting site, much like YouTube, but different in a couple of ways - ways that are especially important to educators and serious filmmakers. First of all, Vimeo's quality (both HD and DV) leaves YouTube in the dust. Like any video sharing site, users only get the quality that they put in, and that video you shot with your grandpa's phone isn't going to turn out very crisp, but if you start with quality footage and follow Vimeo's compression guidelines, your videos will look like they're hosted on Hulu. Just the fact that they provide easy-to-find guidelines for prepping your video is a big bonus.

The Smother, "The Snuggie Without the Holes" from MTS Digital Media Academy (if you are on a iphone or other mobile device as you read this - click here for the mobile version of the video).

The other thing that sets Vimeo apart is the content on the site - important to the people who decide what does and doesn't get through school filters - there is no juvenile videos of kids knocking over bike riders or pirated music videos. This is a site that is geared toward serious audiences and they keep the garbage out, including inappropriate content.

I have several channels on Vimeo to showcase work from different classes and school years and I'm pleased that my students and their friends will now be able to check out their work on their phones and ipods.

For more information on how to convert your Vimeo files to mobile files, check out their blog.