9
votes
Looking for recommendations for ad-free video hosting
I’m creating a special video for my parents’ anniversary and want to share it privately. I don’t want anyone to see ads before, during or right after it. I’m not monetizing it and don’t care about viewer metrics.
Right now I’m trying to decide between subscribing to Vimeo or just placing the file in my Google Drive and sharing out the link.
The file won’t exceed 5GB.
Would paying for a service like Vimeo really be worth it when I could just share out the file for free?
Would appreciate any suggestions or recommendations from content creators.
The benefit of using Photos or YouTube is the ease at which it can be viewed on a variety of devices. So I think you have a great idea. One thing you could do to avoid ads on YouTube would be to add a lot of play after the video.
If you only need it for a short while, do the free trial of Vimeo for when you need it :)
Yeah, their free trial is only 7 days and I’ll need it for at least a month or two.
Come to think of it … I wonder what happens to the videos you upload after your subscription lapses. If they’re still on there in HD resolution then that definitely could work. This is kind of just a one time thing.
I found this great article from veed.io where they review a number of video hosting options. I didn't consider veed.io as a potential solution but it is. Also Wistia has a free tier it seems. Wistia would be my solution here. Go to their pricing and below there is a free thing. YMMV - I have never tried their free tier but have interacted with many Wistia hosted videos on sites or after events.
Ohhh … had totally forgotten about Google Photos! I used to use Picasa back in the day.
This looks like it’s the best option. I’d rather not use YouTube because of the ad situation.
I’m producing the video in 4K (which Vimeo supports), but realize that most folks I send it to will be watching it on their phones and tablets, so anything above 1920x1080 probably won’t matter.
Something you might consider (maybe), is still uploading the video to YouTube (Unlisted), and using an Invidious instance. Invidious pulls the actual video file, so no ads would be present.
In this case, any public Invidious instance would take normal YouTube parameters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ becomes
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ <-- the yewtu.be Invidious instance
There are quite a few instances.
Whether this is truly practical in your case, I can't say. It still may be a solution.
Edit: I should mention that Invidious itself probably breaks YouTube's terms of service (Would this affect you? Probably not.), and the project is on Google's radar. The project has chosen to ignore YouTube's C&D. Their argument is that they have not broken YouTube's terms of service because they never agreed to them, as they are not using YouTube's API... Google could go after individual instances (that's the part that could affect you)... That's a whole different case for now, but I felt that it was important to inform.
As someone that hasn't seen a youtube ad in ages, do unlisted videos even show ads in the first place?
I honestly don't know. I'm also using content blockers. My understanding was that YouTube would still put ads on public videos uploaded by users not enrolled in AdSense. However, I don't know whether that applies to unlisted videos. You raise an excellent question though. That may be something worth testing out, OP.
I would give Google Drive a try. I've used Drive recently for a video and it works great with the embedded video player (it's almost like a basic youtube). Dropbox is also another option.
I've posted 2 videos to Vimeo no problem without paying. They limit you to a certain number of uploads over a certain period of time (maybe 5 per month or year?). And they shouldn't have ads if you make it unlisted.
Yep, my video will exceed the limits they’ve set for a free account, so that’s why I’m asking.
Vimeo would be my preference if it wasn’t for the cost.
If you have an iPhone you can easily share it from your iCloud Photos or create a shared albums.
Can everyone access this easily or only iPhone users?
If you own an iPhone, iPad or Mac the link can be shared with anyone from the photos application when you add a “shared album” the app will ask for the email address. Each person the album is shared with can add comments on each photo or video.
FaceTime also now works with android by sending links to the non iPhone user to join the Facebook call. I just wish they fixed the whole green vs blue messaging thing but that’s a discussion for another post. For the most part iPhone users can share pretty much anything with anyone to work on or view simultaneously.