The cat’s out of the bag and Flickr has officially launched their foray into the video world. I was fortunate enough to be a part of the “super secret” beta test along with ~260 users a few weeks ago (Thanks Richard!). In that group we were given info about the video feature and asked to provide our feedback and report issues.
One of those issues revolved around the limitations of Flickr Video. Initially, clips were limited to a restrictive 60 seconds. Flickr wanted to ensure that their video feature was unlike any other offering and by placing such limitations, ensure that only user-created, non-copyrighted content gets uploaded. But 60 seconds, really? Many people suggested something around the 3 minute mark as a limit. This was how Flickr (Heather Champ) responded:
We’ve been listening feedback both within the team and all you fabulous super secret beta Flickr beta testers and after much (tortured) discussion, decided to extend the playback limit to 90 seconds.
Well you have to give Flickr some credit; 90 second video clips definitely won’t draw the type of crowd privy to posting TV episodes and movie clips. Instead, much like Twitter people will be forced to be more creative to work with the limitations. Alongside a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge, a user may pan across it with a quick video clip. Flickr just wants to add to the photo experience, not dilute it. I think they’ve done just that. Flickr has never been an ordinary company so don’t expect to compare Flickr Video to other video sharing services.
More on Flickr’s thoughts about limiting video clips come from the general manager of Flickr:
“Digital media has led to a new behavior emerging in the market and people are much more likely to shoot short video clips, essentially “long photos,” with their digital still cameras and mobile phones. There is a great resonance between this new category of content and with the kind of authentic, personal moments already being shared on Flickr.” -Kakul Srivastava
However, if I had to nitpick about one thing it would be the lack of HD. At the moment, HD video can’t played back through Flickr Video. Here was how I posed my concerns on the beta tester’s group:
I can only hope that Flickr Video one day gains HD support, especially as I know I will have some nice footage of Drift Atlanta coming up soon and pictures can’t really capture the experience of cars sliding around and burning up tires.
To get started and put your own clips on Flickr you need to a Flickr Pro account, which runs at $25/year. In addition to the 90 second video clip limitation, the uploaded file must not exceed 150 MB.
And now an embedded Flickr video. This is my roommate’s dog, Katie Morrell.
90 seconds: too cold, too hot or just right?
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Katie is good at shedding. Like you said earlier, the 90 seconds is akin to the Twitter 140 character limit (perhaps). Look at it as a chance to be concise and powerful.
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Personally, I’ve actually taken quite a liking to Flickr’s implementation of video. It’s nicely integrated, pretty seamless, and above all, I agree with the restrictions they’ve imposed. The pro limitation works well to reduce any, if any, spamming, and the 90 second limitation encourages creativity. The thing is… People are already so loyal to the site, that, like twitter, they won’t complain about the limitations, they’ll use them to their advantage.
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Twitter’s like the new short blog.
Flickr video’s like the new short Youtube.
Let’s see what else we can shorten… ;D
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I tend to think they’re going for the camera crowd; people with digital cameras that take video. Most of those cameras are quite restrictive on space, so 90 seconds isn’t all that bad. They want you to be able to dump everything from your camera, video and all, but they’re not looking for people to upload material they don’t own which is fine by me.
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Just right…if it was 60 seconds, we'd never see her jump up on the bed :)
David Friedman of Ironic Sans does this series called <a href="http://ironicsans.com/60_seconds/">60 Seconds</a>…I think these are the types of artistic videos we'll see on flickr.
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Thanks for sharing this Paul. I’ve seen other Flickr Video write-ups around the web today, but yours is the first chance I’ve taken to really read up.
I like your comparison between Twitter/Flickr. I agree with Ronald — Twitter’s limitation makes sense because of the 140-characer limitation of the hardware, and Flickr Video’s makes sense because of the generally limited space of our digicams’ memory cards.
It raises an interesting question about the technology though: Memory’s cheap and getting cheaper… will the 90-second limitation still make sense when average digital camera owners can comfortably recording 10- and 20-minute clips at a time?
Either way, it’s a neat way to differentiate from other services.
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Hahah, I thought it was Katie making the weird noises.. Turns out its your Adium. Disappointment.
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Interesting stuff right there, and we complain about youtube’s 10 min limit… Thankfully I’ve got Flickr Pro from my dsl provider for free. So off I go to upload my first video :)
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I can’t find a way to download the original video.
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Well it is pixel perfect so I guess HD is not so urgent. I love th 90sec limit, I can’t stand watching long videos, and so I do with mine.
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privacy is what’s cool here- we can post short “video photos” without the whole world seeing a-la youtube, right?
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@ PStam – Exactly how did you get invited to the beta? They’ve taken video in a polished direction to not overplay the photo aspects of Flickr. Reading the “video help” there are lots of features that aren’t available yet, so it seems they’re still planning on expanding a lot.
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This post gave me a reason to re-activate my Pro account. Not only am I going to transfer my many GBs of photos to Flickr for permanent storage, I’m also raving about the ability to email short videos from my phone to the Internet. Awesome!
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Waiting more than a year since it was announced flickr would be offering video has bad enough until this announcement. I can appreciate the desire not to become another YouTube, something the pro account only limitation should accomplish on its own. The 90 sec limitation is abysmal IMHO and is not in line with current multimedia demands of users. 3 Minutes would have been more acceptable to be perhaps even palatable. This release has put a very sour taste in my mouth regarding Flickr. I have been a loyal and a paying customer for many years. We pay for several pro accounts in fact, a fact that very well may change come renewal time. I have been reluctant to move my content because I have collected more than 2000 images in my account, but this may be the straw the breaks the camel’s back for us. At last count we had three paid accounts, all of which would be cancelled and moved if this kind of limitation is not increased. I didn’t expect unlimited file sizes no unlimited video lengths. To me limiting to 5 minutes, pro accounts and the current 150mb file size would still more then stem the YouTube effect flickr is trying to avoid. 60 seconds, 90 seconds is simply not enough, I could live with 3 minutes begrudgingly, but I could live with that limitation.
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I do not want to comment until I try it out a little bit, but I like the direction flickr is going. They want to add video capabilities without doing it like everyone else. However right now I think Vimeo has a lot of advantages that may make some people stay there for now. Still I am excited to play with flickr video.
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@Matthew Stevens: I disagree- flickr should stay true to it’s roots. It does photos really well. If it turned into some Youtube clone, that would suck. From the flickr blog:
“If you’ve memorized the Community Guidelines, you know that Flickr is all about sharing photos that you yourself have taken. Video will be no different and so what quickly bubbled up was the idea of “long photos,” of capturing slices of life to share.”
I really like the idea of long photos- short clips that add to your photo album, no more.
Hooray for flickr! (I need to take me some more photos!)
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FYI you’ll be glad to know the frame rate was upped to 29.97 FPS as well which I was really glad to see (personally.) The image quality is really tight, better than YouTube in particular for detailed things; I made some “ascii” video which didn’t see any blurring etc. when uploaded (it was PNG-8 originally), which is pretty cool.
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For the most part I see Flickr Video mostly for smaller, non-HD movies (mainly ones shot with point-and-shoot digital cameras). Right now HD just seems too new to me to have a big enough market, and until more systems can handle HD (the storage, editing and playback), I can’t imagine enough people will use it.
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[I work at Flickr]
You can post HD stuff, and several people already have, eg:
http://flickr.com/photos/atul_suklikar/2369746975/in/pool-video
It’s just going to be encoded at a smaller size.
Oh, and you also have access to your original file.
HTH.
So when does http://flickrslidr.com/ for videos come out?
I have been waiting for this feature for a while and have switched to vimeo to handle where Flickr left off. Like you however, I was disappointed to know that my videos will not be in HD. So basically, Flickr came out with the same service that 100’s of other sites already have right?
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Flickr Video is Yahoo’s attempt to catch up with Google’s YouTube by hitchhiking on the popularity of the photo-sharing website and its strong community.
In my opinion this will go down in history as:
“Too little, too late.” [me, http://christoph-d.blogspot.com/2008/04/thoughts-on-flickr-video.html
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90 seconds does give that Twitter aspect to it. It’s interesting to hear the community feedback now, but remember when Facebook made huge changes. Lot’s of complaining but eventually people got used to it. Flickr users seem to be even more involved as many are paying for the service. Great stuff Paul.
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btw: we do store your original video file and allow you to download it, just like we do with photos :)
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Loving it so far.
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I don’t think I will use flickr video.. it’s so short time limit
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