Why I made this website
There are only two video platforms suitable for film: YouTube and Vimeo. Unfortunately, both of them kind of suck.
YouTube has copyright and ad issues. It is very common to make original works then have some random back alley company or organization copyright your work. Of course, one also has to suffer from the atrocities of Google filling the entire webpage with ads. YouTube’s video compression isn’t all that great too but it is good for low-bandwidth viewing purposes in my opinion. This makes YouTube more suitable for mass consumption – gaming videos, vlogs, memes, clips, and more.
Vimeo is perhaps the better platform for sharing videos that don’t fall under the mass consumption category. It isn’t hard to tell apart the content found in Vimeo from YouTube, mostly because Vimeo is particularly aimed toward independent filmmakers, small and big studios, and corporations. Despite the limited bandwidth for free accounts (5GB), Vimeo should be enough for use cases like portfolios (such as this website). In fact, I recommend Vimeo to anyone who needs to set up a simple video portfolio.
Another popular centralized video sharing platform is Odysee. Unfortunately, Odysee doesn’t allow private videos and signing up as a creator is difficult. The platform is also much closer to YouTube than it is to Vimeo.
So why bother creating this website instead of just using Vimeo?
Admittedly, there aren’t any practical reasons to do so unless you really care about any of what I’ll list down below:
1. Decentralization
Decentralization is always appreciated in the internet. We don’t want only one or very few services controlling our data. People who own data should be in control of said data.
2. No ads and telemetry
There are no ads, telemetry, tracking, or data collection here. I don’t need to know who’s watching the videos here. If you do want me to know, you can voluntarily tell me.
3. No JavaScript needed
I think JavaScript in many websites serves its uses but there are a lot of these sites (Vimeo included) who break when JavaScript is disabled. Disabling JavaScript is done by people who see it as a security risk. Because videos here are served through plain HTML5, you do not need JavaScript to watch videos. It is accessible to Tor browser with the security level set to safest.
4. It’s a great learning experience
Seriously. It’s fun to learn new things. My university studies have nothing to do with creating your own website but I just simply enjoy learning process. Any computer-related or IT skill is always useful in this era anyway. In fact, film shares a very close relationship with communication and technology (more on that in a future paper or article).
Anyone who cares about the list above should consider working on their own little projects like this one. Of course, making a website and using video platforms like Vimeo is possible (and quite ideal for most). At the end of the day, perhaps the most important reason this website was made is that I want my own space where I’m free to post and upload writings and videos in any way I want. It is essentially a personal space, homepage, hub, or whatever you’d like to call it.