Video Hosting

          Video hosting is an important part for showreels. It is important because you want to know that regardless of how many people are viewing your video at once, it needs to play every time without buffering or taking too long to begin it's initial playing.

          The two most obvious choices are of course YouTube and Vimeo. YouTube has the best infrastructure nowadays with Google always updating it and increasing hardware dedication. This means that of the two YouTube will be least likely to buffer or take too long for it to initially play. Possible employers will only wait a few seconds at best before they count you out because their time is valuable, and it isn't their problem if your video isn't working on their device, which is why YouTube is good as it is supported on all platforms. It's also free, including HD uploads, and can be embedded into your own site if you want to make sure no ads are getting in the way of what you're wanting to show.

Vimeo is also very good, it is supported on most platforms and rarely has issues with buffering and initial playback. However, if you want to upload in 1080p high definition then you have to pay $199 a year for VimeoPro. It then also promises to support all devices and offers support within an hour which is great if you're about to release an important video, but for just hosting your showreel it doesn't seem worth the cost as all you need is a single upload to be available and possibly be in high definition, which you can't do unless you pay. This is why I will be using YouTube to host my showreel.

I did also take a look at a site called Fillim (http://fillim.com/). This site seems tailored for independent films, or short films and animations. This type of thing could be very useful in the future if I were to release a short animated film, as it looks as if it would get more attention from the type of people who are interested in that type of thing, as well as being able to charge viewers for it if you wanted income from that, but for now I have no reason to use it as I am unfamiliar with it and unsure of how reliable it is for what I need. As far as I can tell you can't embed the videos either for sharing.

Fillim 'about':

http://fillim.com/film/welcome-to-fillim-by-dan-solo1

VimeoPro: