Saravanan Sahadevan

Not long ago, I wrote a post regarding youtube’s quality and performance which was as well compared with Vimeo. Today, I felt something was different on youtube. The players has been refreshed. They heard my rumblings? Well, to be honest, its not bad. It looks stylish & easy to use as well. 

Some extra feature that I noticed was about keyboard shortcuts. It responded to certain actions on the keyboard. More of a quicktime type of features. Spacebar for Pause/Play. Right/Left arrows for Forward/Rewind. To me, It’s a good feature. Although, there is a problem in the player. The timeline marker could not be dragged easily. You might find at times its stubborn and refuses to play at the point you clicked. Probably test beta is going on. Anyhow, this is a bug I am reporting. Hope the team takes note.

Overall, I admire the efforts taken by the youtube team. This is what we call service. Responding to user demands. We all gave our suggestions and they did respond to some although they are slow in upgrades. Youtube, is always respected as a pioneer. However, I still do not like the community over there no matter what and it’s never going to be close to Vimeo. Then again, great job Youtube!

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Are you tired of Youtube? Well I surely do have! Recently I was thinking, what could be my alternative source for video uploading in a better place filled with an interesting community. This leaded me to choose Vimeo, the best video player & community. 

Before that, I would like to point out some reasons why I hate Youtube at the moment. 

• Very Cluttered - The environment on youtube has become very disorganized in the recent years. Their core design structure has never changed. And if they did, barely you could have noticed it. Some Ajax powered tabs maybe? That’s all they could give? Its just like old pal Friendster. No matter how hard they try, it never brings out anything sleek. Well why the hell they care. They have a huge user base and think they monopoly the social networks for Video. Well think again Youtube!
• Stream Quality - This sucks to the maximum. I feel bad to watch cool trailers, such as Batman for example in low quality. Why can’t  they have an option to select streaming quality?
• Slow Loading - I don’t know why! Seriously. With such low stream quality, Youtube is seriously slow.
• Too much of crap - Okay, yeah I get it that, there is a huge community at youtube and we do need publicity at times. But my question is, are we exposed to some sort of crap overload? Try heading your self to recent videos or most frequently watched. You will know what I mean. 

Now, let me tell you, why you will love Vimeo as much as I do. 

• Interactive Video Player - This is seriously one of the best interactive Flash Video players I have seen around. Sleek & Sexy. 
• HD Playback - Now we are talking. Those who love HD, I bet you, this is your choice. Vimeo enables you an option to choose normal streaming or HD. But trust me, even the normal quality looks like HD! You barely will notice the difference unless you go full screen. 
• Fast Loading - With such HD playback etc, Its seriously fast loading! Even on low end broadband. I am amazed. And I love it. 
• A friendly community - Vimeo practices one thing that many does not. Friendliness. Vimeo does a lot of things to ensure that the community is friendly and welcomes all your home videos. You could feel pleased by people feeling happy to see you sharing your happiness in life through your videos. You will never get any Punk comments around.

Note : Vimeo is more of place to share your home videos & own produced show episodes. Something that really you love. Where everyone welcomes you. It’s not Youtube! You know what I mean.

Check out this link for Batman - The Dark Knight Trailer on HD. Now we are talking!

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As I said in some previous post, that Fridays are special as there would be post’s on and for Mannin Mainthargal producers. Well on some of the Fridays, I would like to point out some marketing techniques that should be followed at this present era. Its a continuation series based post, so more and more would come with the same title, “Double M Marketing“. This applies for every language producers. By the way, Mannin Mainthargal means Local Talented Artist. 

To start with the most basic marketing technique, would be a website. An official website that represents your presence on the Internet. For instance, just last week, Tom Cruise, celebrated his 25 years in career with a wonderful revamp on his official site. He has added some messages from him self personally to his beloved fans.

So take Cruise as an example. His not only having a website but has achieved to make a presence through it. A humanly feel in a form of a simple message that conveys him self to his audience/fans. That’s very important because fans look up to you. You are their idol to some extent. They expect you to say something special to them or at least know, that It was you who said “Hi” and not your representatives. Make your online fans pleased. 

In terms of design, do not put a low budget into it. Its not a blog or journal that you could hold on low cost solutions. Its your official presence. The more funky and interactive your designs are, the more your fans are going to love it. So do set aside a good amount to your designers. In terms of interactivity, try to have your portfolios filled up with your previous work such as music videos, songs, features and so on. This would add an additional value to your presence. Have an Director-type of Youtube account and get your guys to maintain a community there. You may embed this videos on the site as well.

I would also recommend you to start blogging. Im sure you have heard about famous celebrities such as Jackie Chan’s and Amir Khan’s blogs. So start being like them. But an advise here would be, only blog if you can be consistent. You do not want to keep your fans waiting for long. Jackie and Amir are very consistent. Do also make sure you maintain your community by attempting to reply to comments. It gives an interactivity and you would also get to know more about your fans expectations. 

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There are tons of web sites and services that provide you search services for your needs. But sometimes its just too many and at times you don’t get what you want. This is because you are not using the right service at the right time. This guide is basic and is meant for newbies. So if you consider yourself a newbie, I’m sure this would help. Listed below are 5 best search services that I would personally recommend.

• Google - This would be the best search engine for web sites and blogs of your search terms. There are people who would use Yahoo for instance but I certainly would not recommend that at all. Yahoo is too messy and its search term results are not appropriate. Google has a better bot that crawls flawlessly. Hence providing you the best and closest results. 
• Flickr - Instead of using Google image search, use Flickr. Flickr provides you a pool of professional snapped images and most of the time you are in need of high quality images. If you are specifically searching for good images for your projects and assignments, Flickr is your choice.
• Technorati - Technorati is a place for you if you are interest in the blogosphere. Basically every blog in this world is pinged to this services. You may find your interest by searching tags term of your choice. Normally all blog post would be tagged to specific terms that makes it easier for you to find what you want. 
• Alltop - Don’t you have time to search or to know what’s latest ? Perhaps you do not know a reliable source of web sites that could provide you informations ? Then use Alltop. Alltop is a news aggregator site that mash-ups RSS feeds from reliable and famous website into various topics. This then allows you to select a particular topic and to know what’s latest in a top 5 chronology. For more, all you have to do is click on the website/blog title and it would redirect you to the respective site. 
• Youtube - Even though you are a newbie, I’m pretty sure you would have heard about youtube sometime around. If you have not, its not a big deal. Youtube is a community powered web 2.0 video sharing service. People from all over the world upload favorite videos of theirs and its searchable. You may even upload your own videos. If you are finding some videos for your references or entertainment, youtube has sufficient content today which would simply fulfill your needs.

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