Phanfare is awesome for videos!
Friday, March 31, 2006 at 04:40AM by Charlie O'Donnell Fabrice pointed out Phanfare's new video support feature and I'm sold. It took me about 10 minutes of use to decide I was going to become a paying customer and that this is where I'm going to store all my videos from now on.
Basically, you drop your videos into a downloaded client, and then phanfare uploads them in the backround, and then after another little while, converts them to Flash on the fly. Its so mildlessly simple. I can then play them on my blog... and they come out so much nicer than YouTube, that butchers my video quality.
I'm going to get all my videos up there as soon as I can. The only issue is that it does not have Mpeg-4 support fully worked out yet, but I've been promised that its coming in the next few weeks.
I don't care if it takes an hour to get them all setup, because, that hour isn't spent waiting around, crashing, etc... I just drag and drop and poof, they show up on the web. In fact, the client works so well as a file management tool, which preview images of my videos, that there's really no reason to keep any of my videos on my computer. The $6.95 is a no brainer!!
Can't wait until Mpeg-4 support is done... so I can just go straight from my flash memory card to dragging and dropping, to the web in Flash.
Thanks Phanfare, you just saved me like 8 steps and a lot of headache.
The interesting thing is that Phanfare isn't built to create an entertainment site, like YouTube. Its not about having the most popular video... its about a better way to store your own videos. I've said before that I think this is a much bigger market, especially once people start converting their old VHS tapes to digital via a Media Center PC.
Reader Comments (7)
With the d/l client, I can drag and drop 10 videos and it just sits and uploads in the background.
Plus, YouTube mangels the quality of my videos. Try it yourself with the same video. Sure, you get it back right away... but it looks like shit.
But that is changing. in the next release, we will detect in Flash what version you have and then update in-place from Macromedia. mp4 support is also returning in full force in the next release.
Why is Phanfare better than YouTube (aside from the quality of the conversion we do, the greater limits on import file size, and that we keep a DVD quality original on our servers as well as a web streaming version)? It depends on who you are and what your purposes are. Giving your video to YouTube is like sending it to America's Funniest Home Videos. You lose control over it, and you are giving it up to somebody's else's media play. It may be appropriate for some of my videos, but not all.
Phanfare is all about controlling your own media (fullsize originals backed up!), managing it with better workflow from any computer, and consuming whatever downstream services you want. Already, with Phanfare you can blog your videos, print to Shutterfly, Kodak or Snapfish. Eventually, you will be able to syndicate some of your photos out to Flickr or iStockPhoto.
But for the vast majority of your images and videos, you probably want a semi-private online collection, to share with family and friends, and manage from any computer using software that is signficantly more interactive and responsive than any AJAX web app.
As a parent, I have little interest in putting up videos of my kid in the tub and tagging them "tub" on YouTube.
Seems like for some people, all they have is a public life. for those people, Flickr and YouTube are great. But if you have a public and private life, Phanfare is better.
Andrew ErlichsonCEO & FounderPhanfare
hmmm. yet another video hosting service! we will have to add it to testinggrounds.loadepun.comthere are many hosting sites out there - free and by paid subscription - that do what phanfare is doing (desktop uploader, privacy options,conversion to flash). Youtube and Revver may be the most well known but we have thirty sites listed and counting in the testing grounds.
we're in the process of testing them all out and letting people know what is good (and bad) about each of them and inviting our readers to post their own comments and ratings for each site.
you might want to check it out before plunking down your cash...
Should have tested that.
I've tried Castpost, Vimeo, Revver, YouTube, GoogleVideo, and VSocial...
In terms of Desktop Uploader, Conversion to flash, and storage of my full hi-rez original video, I haven't seen anyone else do that yet.
no need to be snarky about it, charlie.
Grouper might be in line with what Phanfare is offering. they have a desktop uploader with unlimited uploads. storage for full quality videos and a flash player. haven't tried it out yet (there are so many to test) but i hear some good things.
can't wait to take phanfare for a spin too!
-Anne