@LPowell,

Here is a sample clip I uploaded a few days ago on Vimeo to check to see if I could improve the quality and playback.

It's a Cinema 4k clip transcoded to a 2K ProRes 4444 clip in Compressor and placed on a ProRes 4444 timeline in Adobe premiere with the H.264 settings above. I uploaded the 2k ProRes clip to Vimeo.

@bleach551 Yes, I have tried both 720p and 1080p re-encoding options on Vimeo's site. As expected, the 1080p version displayed in the embedded Vimeo player window above looks better than their 720p version.

@LPowell: Ehhh, now I recall why I stopped using Smugmug for video. It doesn't stream as well as Vimeo. I just went to one of my old videos on Smugmug from 2014. It pauses as it streams very often.

As a test I then started to stream the Vimeo swim meet video full screen on my other monitor. No pauses at all. Then, to prove it wasn't because it the swim meet video was already cached, I started to stream a very old 1080p Vimeo clip from several years ago. Again, no pauses; while the Smugmug video clip pauses a lot.

So...though I love Smugmug for photos...they probably are NOT a good choice for videos.

@Manicd

I downloaded the 74mb file from vimeo and honestly the "viewer experience" quality is not much different to me from the 18mb. I think it's just the perspective of the camera to the stage and stunts that gives the appearance of low quality.

The 18MB 1080p download version is acceptable to my eyes as well, but that is NOT what Vimeo is streaming off their website. Compare what you see when you click on the embedded Vimeo viewer above to the downloaded file displayed locally on your PC. If you can't see a significant degradation there must something drastically different in how Firefox is displaying Vimeo's website on my PC.

I don't actually care about Vimeo's marketing or website presentation. I already have clients, I just want a reliable online video host they can use to review the footage before downloading the original files. This is what Vimeo claims to provide, but what they actually deliver falls unacceptably short. I'm raising attention to it here because there's a chance someone may have experience with a viable alternative.

Okay so some of this is my fault. When I login, which I have only a free account, I can now see the original file size.

I downloaded the 74mb file from vimeo and honestly the "viewer experience" quality is not much different to me from the 18mb. I think it's just the perspective of the camera to the stage and stunts that gives the appearance of low quality. There's really nothing you could have done better. Nature of the game I guess? The image quality is fine. It's just perspective that gives low quality feeling. Not meant to be offensive, just saying what I think happened.

@jjj_ri_usa

I did want to point out that when you download from Vimeo, you do have the option to download the ORIGINAL and not the 1080p (which Vimeo encodes at a rather puny bitrate of 4.47 Mbs.)

This is what I initially assumed as well, but I discovered that after I log out of Vimeo, the Download Original option is no longer available. So Vimeo provides original file download service only to the user who uploaded the file in the first place? /facepalm

Vimeo's 18MB downloadable 1080p version of my video above is actually not bad, and I wouldn't be complaining if that was what they offered for streaming on their website. I can't compare it directly to what YouTube displays at 1080p, as I can only find a way to download a 720p version from YouTube. Bottom line with Vimeo, however, is that what you upload is not what you either see or download from their site.

Well, it's funny this topic just came up. I uploaded a very large high bitrate file to Vimeo over the weekend and it looks awful. I assumed it was because it is of a swim meet, and that Vimeo's compression mistook the water as 'sky' so decided it could could compress the heck out of it. I can't send a link to the Vimeo clip since it is private. I will only be sharing it with swimmers and their parents (since it was "girls in swimsuits"....)

I used a very high bitrate since this was from a rented GH4 shot in 4k then rendered to 1080p. I had never shot 4k before so decided to err on the side of 'too high' bitrate.

The rendered 1080 looks gorgeous on my PC, but, it is 3 GB in size (VBR-Target=50 Mbs, Peak=75 Mbs). It looks like mushy garbage on Vimeo.

However, I loaded it into YouTube as an unlisted video, and it look really mushy there too.

But, I did want to point out that when you download from Vimeo, you do have the option to download the ORIGINAL and not the 1080p (which Vimeo encodes at a rather puny bitrate of 4.47 Mbs.)

The image below shows the data for my last upload. This video on Vimeo looks awful. But, if someone downloads the ORIGINAL (3 GB) it looks nice, but, most swim parents are not going to download such a huge file.

So, my work around will be to upload a fixed-size (probably 1024 x 576) version to my own website's video player, and allow a VBR of about 7.5 Mbs. I've tested that, and it looks "good enough" (as long as the viewer does not make it full screen!)

What's funny is I have also been happy with Vimeo's compression in the past. Just now downloaded the 1080p version of an old clip from 2014 that looks great on Vimeo. I was wondering if the VBR was higher back then, but, nope, just the same VBR=4.47 Mbs.

If you download the original MP4 above, you'll see it's a cleanly rendered 1080p video, with stage lighting, exposure, and color balance per client's request. Oversaturated and a bit cartoonish? Yes, to my eyes, but that's what the client wanted and if anything, it should need less bitrate than a subtly textured, more realistic grade would require. And Vimeo can't even handle something as undemanding as this?

@LPowell

I suggest to make good example test video.

Add it to both services, download both of them and compare using real tools made for H.264 analyzing.

This is just my opinion. Vimeo, Youtube, and the 18mb file look like poo. Youtube might have look a little better than Vimeo but only because youtube compression tends to add blur which in this case somehow actually makes it look cleaner than vimeo. In my experience vimeo usually feels sharper but not in this case.