by Dave RileyRather than let the grass grow under the tripod, we've created a RatbagMedia Channel on Vimeo where we'll try to coalesce some DIY video projects from round about.
Vimeo's advantage as a place to publish video is that it offers higher definition presentation and one click download. So all you would-be video activists out there -- just aching to share your latest video journalism project or your ground breaking documentary -- Vimeo has a bit more to offer you perhaps than relying on YouTube for all your web publishing needs.
Upload to YouTube by all means -- but also consider uploading elsewhere as well.
Preferences are going to vary but Facebook has to be on your list....
If you don't know, one of the many annoying aspects of YouTube is trying to download video files that can be played offline --- such as during a political gathering. Vimeo makes that easy -- so long as the downloader client has a free Vimeo account. (Hey! That's an easy sign up!)
Better quality. Easier download. So much better to get the video shared, off and on line.
So if you want to check out the channel -- albeit a bit sparse at the moment -- be sure to let us know if you have any offerings we can program in. The aim is to aggregate some useful videos that activists can deploy for their campaign work. So we'll be looking for documentaries, reports on protest events, maybe a few special talks shot on video, advocacy presentations, etc.
And once they're there we'll try and promote the archive as an ongoing resource.
To keep up with changes to the channel -- as new stuff is added -- you can subscribe to its content using this feed address: http://vimeo.com/channel19714/videos/rss.
If you like a video from the channel you need only go to its viewing page and click on the download button which looks like this on the bottom right of the page:
And Voila! You can screen the video at your next event depending on its Creative Commons licence.
Vimeo has a reputation for catering to " a high end, artistic crowd because of its higher bitrate, resolution, and relative HD support." So the general video quality (editing, photography, etc) is a tad higher than your everyday YouTube upload. So Vimeo's archive is well worth exploring to see what else may be available to suit your viewing needs. There's a lot of undergraduate film school stuff too and many animations.
I guess over time we'll be able to put together a widget with some great stuff to watch. So consider joining in the project.
In the meantime, we're slowly developing the video resource on the Activist Toolkit. Just in case you have a mind to start shooting some video --even with your everyday snap shot digital camera set to video mode, or a slideshow orchestrated as video -- you may find the basic DIY there. Just enough to get you going...
