Finally, at nearly the same market level as Google, another player has stepped in using its own highly recognizable and oft copied brands. Yahoo!‘s Flickr now has the ability to create “long pictures” which is just a fancy way of saying video. Limiting users to 90 seconds, marketed as a creativity enhancer, it is not trying to be a complete replacement to YouTube but with nearly every digital camera on the market today featuring the ability to shoot video, Flickr is easily one of the best “One-stop-shops” in digital imagery and sharing.

So, with the time limit being the major limiter on the Flickr service, I wanted to take a look at the next important factor in online video — quality. Shot on my Kodak EasyShare Z812, which shoots some very pleasant HD sized video, I have here a short and sweet test to compare the two. Handheld and in shoddy light, but with little movement and fine detail in my impeccable facial expression acting, we should see which of the two services handles it better. After shooting the short vignette, I uploaded it straight from the card to the two services without processing. The .MOV file is an MPEG-4 sitting around 37 MB at 1280 x 720 pixels running at 30 fps.

Due to the painfully imbalanced speed of my TimeWarner RoadRunner cable internet, my uploads were peaking out at around 66KB/s, but for the price, it is hard to pass up. Plus, unlike DSL, I don’t get gouged for just having internet access and not standard service as well. However, it TW starts down the path and away from Net Neutrality as it has been feigning, I won’t have a problem switching. So, with that short aside, it took a little over a half hour to upload the video to both services. I ran both uploads in parallel, but interestingly, the Flickr upload finished sooner even though it was started second.

Once uploaded, the Flickr version was available immediately after I had entered in the title, description and tags while YouTube took a bit longer, but not too much. YouTube asks for that information before uploading the video, which may have helped account for the perceived difference in processing time.

I’m sure you’ve played both videos above and can see that the Flickr video is much crisper. Now the original was not as crisp as it could have been, and given better light and a little more distance from the lens (or not bouncing the shot through a mirror) it would have been much better, but the YouTube version is down right soft. Like a down pillow.

The Flickr page just displays the video in the expected style at the uploaded aspect ration and when you go full screen the video stays reasonably crisp with a tasteful UI that fades out after a few seconds. YouTube maintains its cluttered page, and place the video inside the standard player, which for some inexplicable reason is 4:3 and puts black bars on the top and bottom of the video. I guess I get the embedded play idea, but knowing that I didn’t have those bars in my video makes me feel like they changed my movie. Also, going full screen doesn’t extend the video from edge to edge making a black border all around the video. So, not only is it fuzzy, but it could only be worse if they actually went full frame.

The embedded players are essentially the same as are what are on the sites themselves. Flickr uses semi-transparent UI that floats on top of the video, while YouTube maintains the 4:3 aspect ratio and chucks most of the important UI on the bottom edge. There are definitely times when the Flickr interface would get in the way of the actual video, it makes for a cleaner look on the page.

For me, the clutter at the end of the YouTube video which features (hopefully) related material is the final straw. While it make for the occasional interesting find that you wouldn’t normally see, it is usually filled with completely unassociated garbage. It all depends on the type of video, I guess.

So, to end this long winded and probably wholly uninteresting post, while YouTube will maintain its rule due to its ubiquity, I think that for shorter, more personal clips Flickr is the winner. Hands Down.

I would like to note, that in general I’m a big Google lover and generally don’t like Yahoo!, Flickr and some of the other Yahoo! side brands are cleaner products with better offerings. That still won’t make me use them for search or email though.

For those who want to compare the two to the original, here it is (37.1MB – right-click and save as).

But while I take all of this in. I don’t contribute in kind. Like a torrent leecher, I read others blogs without commenting. I rarely post on my own blog, let alone tweet, upload to flickr or youtube. With all of this social networking, I am the wraith like anthropological researcher, observing but not interfering. My Second Life is about as dead as my first.

I’m not sure what it really means, but I not fully engaged in the technological life that I embrace. I have no excuse with my constant connection. Two thumbed typing should become as natural as the home row.

I need to interconnect. I need to let go. I need to speak now, while the time is right, without overthinking.

I need to take on the world.