Examples: Using Vimeo with YouTube and Server
Vimeo provides different video players and different URLs for that serve different purposes. For education, my main two are: 1) URL link player, 2) Embed player.
Most often, I will use the URL link player because it provides the most comprehensive set of features that I find appropriate for my students. However, when I post videos for the general public, I will use the Embed player because it provides the more common "thumbnail" video view.
Vimeo also provides a "review" player that is used when a video team is used, but since I create my own videos, I have not used the Review player.
The ability to download videos exists in the URL link player, but not in the embed player.
For the embed player, there are different ways to do this. There could be a download button as another control at on the bottom controls. Or, you should be able to right-click on the video and choose to download the video. These two ideas would be controlled by the "allow downloads" switch. As one more idea, maybe this feature can be built into the "share" tool.
In addition to downloading videos, there should be a way to let viewers download captions, such as in SRT, VTT, and TXT formats. This feature would allow students to read what is said in the video and add captions if they use their favorite video player on their computer (viewing videos offline).
There is no setting for "default thumbnail." In my case, I would like the default always to be either 0:00, meaning the very first frame, or 0:01, meaning 1 second into the video. I never like the default that Vimeo seems to pick for me randomly.
Currently, I cannot keep "notes" about videos. I would like to have two or three fields, perhaps called Notes1, Notes2, and Notes3, that I can use to simply keep notes about my videos. Yes, it would be nice if I could search on these fields to locate specific videos.
Some podcast sites, like Apple's iTunes, only work with fully-qualified video URL's that end with ".mp4." Vimeo does not have any option like this -- their URLs are specialized to their players. It might exist because the Download player downloads videos ending with .mp4. So this suggestion is for Vimeo to offer a fully-qualified URL ending with .mp4.
Folders are great. It would also be nice if we had sub-folders that could be arranged and sorted.
Vimeo implemented this feature around 6/21. Thanks, Vimeo!
There needs to be more flexibility to control the size and position of captions.
Showcases: A collection of videos to "showcase." These can be public, password protected, or hidden (from Vimeo viewers.) The videos can also be ordered. Any individual "private" video, even if included in a Showcase, will not show.
