Flickr Video Arrives

Flickr’s long rumored video feature has arrived. I’ve gathered the details that Webware, Techcrunch and Wired have outlined:

  • 90 second clips maximum - nothing longer initially at least.
  • 150MB size maximum
  • Uploads for Pro users only for the time being at least ($25/year for pro membership)
  • Anyone can view the videos although you can still control the privacy of the videos like you do with photos.
  • Videos show up alongside photos
  • Videos can be shared, embedded individually or as part of sets.
  • Video includes tagging, geotagging
  • Search videos by tags, and descriptions
  • Uploads directly from camera phones.
  • Upload from web, uploadr, e-mail or API
  • Option to view videos full screen.
  • API for third party developers - yeah!
  • Licensing options including creative commons.
  • Support for English, French, German, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish and Chinese.
  • 700 kbps
  • 12 FPS, keyframe every 12 (fixed)
  • Scaled within a 500×500 box with aspect maintained
  • Audio is 44.1 kHz, steroe, 44kbps
  • 2pass VBR, 700 kbps
  • Photostreams are now coined MediaStreams to better describe the collection of photos and video.

To upload your video (if your a Pro Flickr member) head to the web uploader page (the Uploadr app can’t handle video yet) and upload your movie.

Flickr Videos are obviously intended to be a “video photo album” with small clips accompanying with photos. Certainly, this isn’t a YouTube replacement. Yahoo already has a competing product, with Yahoo Videos. That being said, who knows where this will lead. At some point we could see that 90 second rule laxed and eventually see more of a YouTube-type feature set. I’d expect the uploading capability will be rolled out to free account users eventually, but for now it’s a Pro-Flickr exclusive. One thing I’ve noticed while browsing the sample embedded videos this evening is that there are some slow buffering problems with playback, but that may be because of so many people accessing the very few videos out there at the moment.

Flickr has a nice long must-read FAQ on their new Flickr Videos.

Check out more of Brent?s reflections on tech, gadgets, software and media at Brent Evans Geek Tonic.

 

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