4.1. Most common platforms
Now that we have seen how to record and edit a video, we will now look at some guidelines for publishing and sharing videos.
Video hosting sites are online platforms where you can upload, edit and share videos. You will get an embed code to share the videos on your website or on social media.
The strengths of the most common platforms are listed below. This way, you will be well-informed before choosing where to host your videos:
YouTube
- Popularity: This is the platform that receives the most visits and plays daily. However, competition is also fierce.
- Video length: with a normal account, YouTube allows you to upload videos of up to 15 minutes.
- Private video sharing: YouTube gives the option of making videos private and sharing them only with certain people. This feature has a limit of up to 50 people and always with prior registration to the platform (with Gmail). YouTube videos can be shared on social networks.
- Live subtitles: Subtitles are a great way to make content accessible to viewers. YouTube can use speech recognition technology to automatically create captions for all types of videos.
- Advertising: frequent advertisements can disrupt the viewing experience, causing frustration among users.
Vimeo
- Resolution: Vimeo stands out for its quality of content. This is the main reason why many film professionals choose to use this platform, as their work can be seen in much greater detail.
- Video length: Vimeo has a video length limitation of 24 hours, and the free version allows you to create up to three video samples, one channel and one group. If you created your free Vimeo account before 7 November 2023, you can upload or create up to two videos per month, with a limit of 25 videos in total.
- The size of each video can be up to 250 GB in the free version, and it allows you to upload videos in 4K, HDR and Dolby Vision.
- Advertising: Vimeo does not display advertising in the videos. No ads will appear before, after or during the video in the video playback window.
- Sharing private videos: you can choose not to share private videos, share them only with Vimeo contacts, share them with certain Vimeo users, or simply protect the video with a password that will be requested at the start of playback.
In recent years, videos can be uploaded to various social media platforms, such as Facebook, X, Instagram or TikTok. Each platform has its own particularities and the main advantages are that the videos automatically go viral when they are shared.
- For example, Facebook is a platform with a wide range of audiences and offers options such as sharing to groups and your personal profile pages. Videos shared here can be longer and can benefit from the audience targeting options offered by Facebook Ads.
- X, on the other hand, is known for its immediacy and limited characters. Videos here tend to be shorter and have a more informative focus.
- Instagram emphasises visuality and visual storytelling, which is why it is popular for short, creative videos. Instagram stories offer options for longer videos, and tags and hashtags are key to their visibility.
- Finally, TikTok is a platform totally oriented towards short videos and vertical format. Its ability to make videos viral quickly and its participatory community have made it an ideal place for content to go viral.