YouTube or iFilm : The Great Debate

          The Trashwire film collection is available on YouTube, but I recently uploaded a few of the Trashwire videos on iFilm as well and it made me think. I used to use iFilm all the time, it was great for watching Viral Videos, those little clips from TV shows or commercials that everyone seems to be talking about. They had some great stuff on there, John Stuartâs awesome appearance on Crossfire, Jimmy Kimmelâs ãTrapped in the Closetä parody entitled ãThe Pizzaä and so many more great videos. You could watch the clips in several formats and you could rate them and add them to your list of favorites. iFilm was great for watching clips of the most popular things on TV, but it was seriously lacking in the ability to upload user videos. For example, I wanted to add Suburbia Undercover to iFilm a few years back and they required a hard copy, like a DVD or VHS. They had no way to simply upload mpegs or wmvs to their site, making it very inconvenient to add anything to their selection.

          Then, thanks in part to ãLazy Sundayä and the guys from The Lonely Island, another video site became the place to go for internet video.

          I first heard about YouTube several months ago when Dr. Gregory send me a link to a clip of these two Chinese kids singing Backstreet Boys songs on their webcam. The clip was great and I started to look around YouTube for more videos like it. I still figured it was just another iFilm, except with a lot of videos made by regular people rather than clips of TV shows. Then, ãLazy Sundayä aired on SNL and, though I TiVo-ed it, I was hoping to be able to watch it on line so that I could share it with all my friends who donât watch SNL. I donât remember exactly how is discovered it was on YouTube, but I found it there and began sending the link to the video to all my anti-SNL friends. Then I checked out other stuff by The Lonely Island on their site, and found that lots of the videos were from the embeddable player offered by YouTube.

          This might be getting a little tech-ish for some of you so Iâll try to simplify. iFilm only offered the ability to watch videos from their site and link to the page where you could find the video. YouTube offers the ability to play the video from your own site, rather than having to redirect someone elsewhere. If youâve seen the Suburbia Undercover page or the Trashwire Media page, youâve seen embeddable players. Isnât it much better to be able to play the video from Trashwire as opposed to having to click some link and then find the video on some other site, watch it, then navigate your way back to Trashwire so you can find the stuff you were just looking at before you clicked the link? The embeddable player makes it so much easier for people to watch videos directly on the website. iFilm now offers this service too, but the YouTube players just seem easier and better to me.

          YouTube also makes it a lot easier to organize and arrange videos. For example, when I open up the YouTube home page, I get a list of how many times my videos and my profile have been viewed, a list of newly uploaded videos that match my favorite tags (descriptions like ãSouth Parkä or ãAndy Sambergä) and a little section on featured videos. When I go to the iFilm home page, I get a list of the most popular Viral Videos, but it takes quite a few clicks before I can get to what I want. On iFilm, itâs much harder to get to my videos and see how many people viewed them, commented on them, or rated them. Even iFilmâs new embeddable players are harder to get to, though very easy to use once you get them.

          The area where iFilm seems to surpass YouTube, at least for me, is in loading speed. I have a broadband connection like most people, but YouTube videos always seem to load slowly for me. It sucks for autoplay because you end up with a chopped up video as it loads little bits at a time. I usually end up hitting pause and waiting for the whole thing to load before I play the video. iFilmâs videos seem to load faster and I have less pausing to load more while in the middle of the video. This is probably because iFilm is bigger and they have a faster system.

          The other plus of iFilm is their new show with VH1, WebJunk 20. This show, hosted by Patrice OâNeil, features the top 20 most popular videos each week. The show provides a good bridge between watching videos on the internet and good old fashioned TV. A lot of the time, I watch WebJunk 20 and find out about new clips I hadnât seen during my various visits to YouTube. I think this is because YouTube seems to have more videos because itâs so easy to upload them. Unfortunately, that means thereâs a lot more crap that you have to sift through before you get to the good stuff. Donât get me wrong, iFilm has lots of crap uploads too, but with the help of their TV show, people can find out exactly what to search for.

          Iâm going to continue to upload Trashwire videos on iFilm and where ever else I can possibly put them, (gotta get the exposure you know) but I would recommend viewing them on YouTube because itâs a lot easier to use. Also, if you do check them out via the YouTube site, rate them or post a comment about them so we can find out what you think.

          By the way, feel free to copy the embeddable links for Trashwire videos from YouTube to your own site or blog if youâd like to have our videos there.

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