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Flickr Adds Video Capabilities to Service 78

Posted by Zonk from the we-can-see-you-dancin dept.
EMNDev writes "Flickr has announced they're adding video playback capabilities to the popular photo service. Clips are limited to 90 seconds and 150mb, what they're calling 'long photos' as they refer to them. 'Unlike YouTube, where videos from professional media and amateurs alike are uploaded for the world to view, Flickr members can limit who the videos are shared with, through privacy settings. Sharing digital photographs online is now commonplace, with Flickr users having uploaded 2bn worldwide. However, video sharing is less lucrative, with 55% of internet users just playing their video clips on their cameras or on their PCs - without sharing the footage over the internet.'"
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Flickr Adds Video Capabilities to Service More

Flickr Adds Video Capabilities to Service

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  • How do you find them? (Score:1, Redundant)

    by ka9dgx ( 72702 )
    There seems to be no way to find the videos... they don't appear in the recently uploaded folder (or they are as rare as hen's teeth)

    How are we supposed to get an idea of what people are using the capability for if we can't find any native users?

    --Mike--

  • Right on the Upload page there's a "Broadcast Options" section where you can mark a video public, or make it private and allow up to 25 friends to view the video.

    Not exactly a flexible option, but it contradicts the article in a pretty major way.

    • Youtube and Blogger (Score:2, Informative)

      by eleuthero ( 812560 )
      On top of which, Blogger (owned by Google) uses the Youtube service and allows for completely private (to your website) video viewing without a "25 friend" limit

  • we already have youtube (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SoupGuru ( 723634 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2008 @01:03PM (#23015278)
    In my opinion, there's a pretty big difference between photography and videography.

    I think a lot of people that post to Flickr try to create art with their cameras. I know there are many many people that share family and vacation photos too but there is a lot of high quality work on there as well and that's one of the reasons I love Flickr.

    Videos... well, I haven't seen too much art created by a member of the masses with a video camera. I see people causing all sorts of harm to themselves in online videos. I see a lot of cute/stupid/weird things.

    I think it would be great if there was a push to get artsy videos published online. I just don't think a lot of people are capable or willing to do it.

    • Re:we already have youtube (Score:4, Insightful)

      by yo_tuco ( 795102 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2008 @01:10PM (#23015354)
      "I think it would be great if there was a push to get artsy videos published online."

      At 320x240, 15fps there is little incentive to produce or pleasure in enjoying art in video, IMHO. But I guess that's where the creativity resides.

    • Just today I ran into this video [flickr.com] on Flickr. If all the videos on Flickr were this well done I would not have any reason to complain.

    • I see a bunch of WMM created slide shows where the images aren't created by the creator, rarely match the music being played and, worst of all, weren't even photoshopped correctly so they'd have a decent aspect ratio...

      I'm not even going to go into the sad use of transitions...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DrSkwid ( 118965 )
      > Videos... well, I haven't seen too much art created by a member of the masses with a video camera. I see people causing all sorts of harm to themselves in online videos. I see a lot of cute/stupid/weird things.

      If you want to see zero budget video camera movies worth watching you should broaden your cultural horizons to include the short films genre of cinema.

      My local cinema [broadway.org.uk] promotes such stuff and their film festival has some material online [britfilms.tv], see if you can spot which ones are zero-low budget.
      • I'm not trying to suggest there isn't really good stuff out there. It just seems like there are a lot of people that pick up a camera and automatically strive to create beautiful images. But it seems when people pick up a camcorder, the instinct is to film antics and personally meaningful things, not necessarily art.

        I'm sure one of the barriers is that photos are much more easy to work with. Point, shoot, download from camera, upload to internet. It's hard to have such a simple approach to video without
        • Respectfully, I don't agree with the argument you are making here. First of all, these days the camera and the "camcorder" are often the very same tool. How is it that pressing one button on it makes one strive to create something beautiful, while pressing a different button to record video causes one to stop wanting to make art and instead desire to go yell at the house cat? Since when has it not been the major consumer use of still photography to record antics and personally meaningful things, not nece
    • I agree. With still images people are often taking pictures of something interesting, a big moth on a wall, or a fancy looking bird in the garden etc. In contrast when the same people record video, it tends to be at a party with friends or a variety of other things that are not interesting enough to see, or there are privacy/embarrassment issues involved.

      The other issues is that there are less people creating artistic video content because it's much more time consuming to do.

  • Tomorrow's headline: Flickr and ISPs Clash ... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Culture20 ( 968837 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2008 @01:05PM (#23015294)
    Flickr and ISPs Clash over new Video Capabilities http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/09/1652257 [slashdot.org]
  • With all the technological convergence (Cell phones that have cameras, that are caledars, that are web browsers), it makes sense that software will follow.

    The only problem, is that convergence is only beneficial if it is implemented well. If I had the choice between a site that will do everything (but only at a mediocre level) and being forced to use multiple sites that are all excellent... I'd choose the excellent sites.

    I know not everyone feels this way - but one stop shopping works well for walmart,
  • Unlike YouTube, where videos from professional media and amateurs alike are uploaded for the world to view, Flickr members can limit who the videos are shared with, through privacy settings

    I guess I must be hallucinating the privacy settings on my videos, then? Amazingly effective hallucination, since it works properly.
    • Yes, YouTube has privacy settings as well but you can only invite up to 25 users to view the video under this setting.

  • At least until MS buys yahoo ... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2008 @01:11PM (#23015376) Homepage
    I fully expect all of the utility of my Flickr Pro membership to be completely destroyed if and when Microsoft buys Yahoo.

    They'll invariably migrate it to Active X or Silverlight or somesuch Microsoft technology, make it twice as slow and cost twice as much, and make it tied to a passport login -- it would likely only play Windows Media files. The usual Microsoft strategy when they acquire a service.

    I'm really hoping Flickr wouldn't get mangled in that acquisition. I really like it, and I've already got a lot of photos uploaded and the like.

    Sadly, I don't expect to be pleasantly surprised should it happen. :(

    Cheers

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by hkgroove ( 791170 )
      Dammit! I had to sign up for Yahoo when Yahoo took over flickr. Now are we going to have to get an msn or live account? I'm willing to bet that flickr is a big big reason that MS wants yahoo. There was a huge revolt amongst the users that had been with flickr since their early days (myself included) with many of us putting "old skool" tags on our photos and photo avatar.

      • Dammit! I had to sign up for Yahoo when Yahoo took over flickr. Now are we going to have to get an msn or live account?

        Well, I would have to say that Microsoft has never hesitated to buy a service and migrate everyone to their stuff. Be it hotmail, passport, MSN, Microsoft Live ... they've always tried to move everyone to their own technology as fast as possible -- especially when we're taling about a web-based single-sign on that they can try to get as many people using as they possible.

        I don't have the s

        • Well, I wasn't trying to claim 'cred' with being old skool. It was simple enough as it was using a random email address (in my case, gmail) as my login. But that is superficial.

          Actually, the main issue was many flickr users did not agree with the TOS changes that were to take effect and the possible affects it would have on our ability to choose the copyright settings on our photos (I believe this was discussed here (last year?) when the switch over to Yahoo became completely yahoo-based.) Yahoo has no

          • Well, I wasn't trying to claim 'cred' with being old skool.

            *laugh* Sorry, I didn't mean to imply you were, merely pointing out you'd been there for more of it, so I didn't have much to offer about the older history.

            Actually, the main issue was many flickr users did not agree with the TOS changes that were to take effect and the possible affects it would have on our ability to choose the copyright settings on our photos

            Yup, that's what I'm afraid of too. Microsoft doesn't have a track record which makes me

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I'm a Pro account holder with several thousands of photos uploaded as well, and I concur - M$ buying Yahoo would be bad news for Flickr, most likely.

      Not that Yahoo buying Flickr was good news: the whole "you need a Yahoo account to sign in now" spiel really sucked, although at least you can log out of Yahoo independently again (so myself, I just created a new Yahoo account separate from my old one for the sole purpose of signing into Flickr with it).

      But Yahoo at least realised that Flickr works because it w

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dyefade ( 735994 )
      While we're on the subject - assuming MS mangles flickr, can anyone suggest good alternatives? I'm not too bothered about the video aspect, but good presentation, photo management features (which is where flickr excels imo) count for a lot. I've been looking at pix.ie lately, but haven't tried it out yet.

      Suggestions?
      • Would google/picasa meet your needs? I haven't use it myself, but they're the biggest alternative i could think of. I suppose there's also deviantart and photobucket, but I've no idea if they're any good.
      • I have used Phanfare for a couple of years now which works very well.

        I must admit I prefer the way Flickr's interface works and the openness of it. And the new Phanfare client is rather heavier than the old. But, if you are looking for a place to archive lots of photos and enormous videos, it's fantastic.

  • Yahoo Video (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF ( 813746 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2008 @01:19PM (#23015472)

    So let me get this straight. Yahoo bought Flickr. Yahoo merged their Yahoo Photos service into Flickr because it was already popular and people preferred it. Now, Yahoo is adding video to Flickr... but they still run a competing service called Yahoo Video. I presume they hope Flickr's popularity will rub off on video too and create a competitor to Youtube?

    Is anyone else sick of all these walled garden Web services? Wouldn't it be great if all the competing services would interoperate and then you could view anything from your choice of Web service, depending upon which interface you liked best? Some days it seems like Web 2.0 is just a step backwards to the internet of yore.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ka9dgx ( 72702 )
      It would be even better if we could all just run our own damned servers at home, and not worry about having to shackle ourselves to someone's server farm in a far off corner of the world.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DrSkwid ( 118965 )
        Yeah, let's all generate our own electricity and bake bread.

      • It would be even better if we could all just run our own damned servers at home, and not worry about having to shackle ourselves to someone's server farm in a far off corner of the world.

        I'm not convinced of that.

        One of the great things about Flickr is that is is stored on someone else's server, so bandwidth and storage problems are their problem, subject to the limits of my account. But, they do all of the hard work -- I just upload photos.

        I like Flickr, and I don't want to host the same thing on my own m

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by maxume ( 22995 )
      The Flickr videos are limited to 90 seconds. I would imagine that they are offering it as part of being the 'destination' for media captured with a digital camera, rather than a system for distributing video of any and all sorts.

      (The walled garden aspect is a bit of a bummer, but Flickr and many other sites offer pretty reasonable APIs that allow for the extraction of most of the content of a user account, and people write scripts to pull from one service and push to another all the time. The situation coul

    • So let me get this straight. Yahoo bought Flickr. Yahoo merged their Yahoo Photos service into Flickr because it was already popular and people preferred it. Now, Yahoo is adding video to Flickr... but they still run a competing service called Yahoo Video.

      And, therein lies the rub with these acquisitions. Someone comes up with a good idea, and implements it. People like it, and actually use it. Some larger entity comes along, buys it, and then wants to "re-brand it" and "improve" it. The original servic

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by dsaint ( 14427 )
      Flickr isn't a walled garden the way say Prodigy or AOL were. They have a public API. Other photo sharing sites or software even take advantage of the API for migrating photos.

      Also with Flickr's emphasis on "long photos" instead of videos this isn't a challenge to Youtube. Flickr is hoping to keep the quality of the content high.
    • With it being limited to 90 seconds, I think they are using flickr as an online iPhoto. iPhoto allows videos from your point and shoot to be organized with the pictures. Yahoo Video and YouTube are more suited for stuff made in iMovie or Windows Movie Maker.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dyefade ( 735994 )

      So let me get this straight. Yahoo bought Flickr. Yahoo merged their Yahoo Photos service into Flickr because it was already popular and people preferred it. Now, Yahoo is adding video to Flickr... but they still run a competing service called Yahoo Video. I presume they hope Flickr's popularity will rub off on video too and create a competitor to Youtube?

      They also already have Jumpcut: http://jumpcut.com/ [jumpcut.com]

    • Wouldn't it be great if all the competing services would interoperate and then you could view anything from your choice of Web service, depending upon which interface you liked best?

      You have thirty (30) seconds to explain how this adds value for the shareholder, then I'm calling security. Go.

      It would be great, but the dominant player in a market doesn't usually have an incentive to stop vendor lock in practices, and the companies that would benefit from customer mobility don't have the leverage to force it

      • You have thirty (30) seconds to explain how this adds value for the shareholder, then I'm calling security. Go.

        It raises the value of that type of service, for anyone who implements it, including us. It also ensures that no one will ever move to another service because they want the more open one -- and no one ever deliberately chose a service because it was closed.

        How'd I do? Under 30 seconds?

        It's also worth mentioning that Yahoo does implement OpenID -- poorly, but they're trying. (And so does AOL, and

    • Is anyone else sick of all these walled garden Web services? Wouldn't it be great if all the competing services would interoperate and then you could view anything from your choice of Web service, depending upon which interface you liked best?

      How about standard issue streams and everyone just buys/makes their own stream viewer interface. You could even build it right into a special viewing device/monitor. Sounds like old school TV, except instead of being broadcast through the air it's being broadcast through the wires. Given long enough, it will probably be transferred back to the air again...

  • Running an online video encoding service ( http://www.videopaste.com/ [videopaste.com]), I think the number of users putting videos online in a professional (not a "video for video's sake") method is increasing every day. Maybe it's just a biased view that I have, or maybe it's the niche market we serve, but we're continually seeing a rise in userbase and quality of videos that are uploaded.

    While it's nice to upload a video and share it with your friends and family, there are already many services doing this. I guess it w

  • Why is this exciting? (Score:3, Informative)

    by brundlefly ( 189430 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2008 @01:32PM (#23015596)
    "Unlike YouTube, where videos from professional media and amateurs alike are uploaded for the world to view, Flickr members can limit who the videos are shared with, through privacy settings."

    YouTube's broadcast settings allow limited distribution as well. Up to 25 people can be added to a whitelist of viewers. Flickr and YouTube differ a tiny bit here on how privacy restrictions are implemented, but for 99% of use cases they have competitive parity.

    The more significant difference would be that Flickr is going to allow 10x file sizes over YouTube. This allows for much greater control over the resolution quality, and hence will be much more attractive to "artistic" use.

    More generally, though, this would seem to be yet another case of old-becomes-new-again. iFilm.com (now spike.com) has been running a similar service for over 10 years now. Perhaps there are significant differences in their terms of service? Perhaps the combination of still images plus moving pictures is some huge new convergence previously overlooked? Perhaps the brand recognition of Flickr will make this more successful than iFilm has been?

    In the absence of answers to these questions, my snap judgement of this announcement is "ho hum".
  • The "long photo" concept is just perfect for me now that I can shoot really impressive video with my Canon G9 digital still camera. I rarely shoot video with a traditional camcorder, but now that I can do 30 fps at 640x480 with my G9 I find myself using that feature a lot. I'll bet 95% of the videos on Flickr will be recorded on mobile phones or digital still cameras.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tangy ( 1270364 )
      The Casio EX-F1 makes even more sense! Imagine all the little slow motion takes that you could find all over the place. Simple movements in what would otherwise be just a still shot. It's a powerful idea for the future of photography.
  • There is already another video hosting/archive site that is allowing you to show you video to everyone, certain people, or just your self.
    http://www.yimit.net/ [yimit.net]
  • Good idea: low quality, unedited, raw video clips matching high quality photos. People don't like & don't know how to edit video & the photo ties make it easier to organize.

    Bad idea: selling the social networking angle more than the real value.

  • Aside from the risks to the Flickr photo community by introducing YouTube-style junk videos (and the people who are into that), it seems odd that a new video service would roll out with Flash as the only way to play. The iPhone and the growing number of competitors shows that mobile video is something that shouldn't be ignored by a service.

    It really seems like Yahoo/Flickr is trying to get competitive with Google/YouTube, but YouTube has moved into the iPhone world while Flickr has introduced something that

  • 100mb (Score:2)

    by slcdb ( 317433 )
    Only 100 millibits? Where do I download the app that performs this amazing feat of data compression?

  • A Decade of Progress (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Jekler ( 626699 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2008 @08:26PM (#23019774)
    If people had told me 10 years ago that this was about as far as we'd get with the internet in a decade, I really wouldn't have believed them. As much as I hear about all the huge advances in technology, I always ponder the 320x240 pixelated screens of YouTube and remember that it's what people consider 10 years more advanced than what we had in 1998. And in 1998 we had VRML with people announcing that we were on the verge of the internet being a 3-Dimensional landscape. We also had 320x240 pixelated video, but I thought that was just temporary. I remember watching South Park on RealPlayer G2. Now instead of it being an application, it's even more pixelated and embedded directly in a web page, just in case downloading content was too convenient. Flickr's progress has been to strip down the size and length of videos. I can't wait for 2050. By then, we'll have reduced clips down to 3 seconds that you can only watch in a 16x16 thumbnail. And as the "Web M" Trend (It won't be hip to use numbers anymore for internet "versions"), all the coolest companies won't have any vowels at all. Hooray progress!

    • And in 1998 we had VRML with people announcing that we were on the verge of the internet being a 3-Dimensional landscape.

      In 1998, we thought it was a good idea.

      That said, today we have things like Second Life. I suppose what's more disturbing to me about that trend is not the lack of technology, but the centralization of control -- Second Life is run by one company. The client is open source, but there is no network, and if Linden ever goes out of business, that VR world is gone.

      We also had 320x240 pixel

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Jekler ( 626699 )

        "That said, today we have things like Second Life. I suppose what's more disturbing to me about that trend is not the lack of technology, but the centralization of control..."

        Becauase of centralized control and proprietary software, things like Second Life don't seem like a successor to VRML. Prospectively, VRML rendering would have been built-in to modern web browsers, you wouldn't need to use an external client. Things like Viscape and 3DML made the "virtual web" seem like it was only months away. I

        • there are many reasons I wouldn't consider Second Life a VRML successor.

          My point here is that the main public desire for VRML is eliminated with Second Life, and with World of Warcraft. And I can only shudder as I imagine what VRML must actually look like -- there has got to be a better way of serializing a game world in a portable way.

          If YouTube, Veoh, et. al. goes down for maintenance or other reasons, videos are unavailable.

          At which point you watch other things.

          Flash video compared to downloaded vide

  • I would love to see the sources for the 55% claim in the Telegraph article. What is meant by the following claim?

    However, video sharing is less lucrative, with 55pc of internet users just playing their video clips on their cameras or on their PCs - without sharing the footage over the internet.

    It appears to presuppose that 100% of Internet users record video clips. In fact, I'd be very surprised by well-documented statistics showing that 45% of all Internet users upload video, which is the clear implication.

  • without having actually seen some of the videos being posted. I'm coming into this conversation a day late so my comment will most likely languish unnoticed, but I feel compelled to speak up so here goes.

    I'm a pro Flickr user and I'm quite excited about the addition of video. The Flickr community, like any community, has a lot of bad with the good, but there's a greater amount of beautiful work available on the site. The interestingness algorithm is what makes Flickr stand out from the other sites, IMO. You

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