YouTube vs. Vimeo

There has been a lot of talk about dance video services lately. Doug is talking about Google adding ads to your video, Backstage gives a run down of dance videos on YouTube, and NYCB just opened a YouTube channel.

As a kinetic and visual art form, Dance relies on being spread through video rather than text. It’s impossible to convey a work through words. You can describe it, but you’re really describing your experience with the work, and much is lost in the translation from visual to verbal mediums.

But when you go to put your dance on the Internet, why do you degrade your hard work by using YouTube? Setting aside the campy interface, the poor encoding quality and the mono audio sampling, why do you want your videos to sit in the company of the YouTube userbase? 

It would be understandable if there were no other options, but with sites like Vimeo and Blip.tv, why are we still using YouTube? Vimeo has a clean interface, much better image encoding and an artistic and creative userbase. It supports HD video, a nice full screen mode and customizable embed options.

I understand the desire to use a technology format that everyone is familiar with, but if only for artistic reasons, look at some sites besides YouTube.