Vimeo free started off with limiting you to one HD video a week and 500MB total per week. 720p was good enough and I only produce one video a week max anyways. This has been the case for the longest time and I expected them to never implement 1080p uploads for free users.
For the longest time, Vimeo was the home of lipdubs by small groups of filmmakers… THEN the RIAA got pissed and introduced a “Music ID” system to crack down on that, making it no better than YouTube in that aspect.
Also, for the longest time, Vimeo kept your original file and allowed people to download the source file for better resolution. That went away for free users and their excuse was “we’re running out of bandwidth and storage.”
Now, they’re pulling a 5GB TOTAL limit for ALL VIDEOS residing in your account, meaning if free users want to push out new content, they have to DELETE old videos. What if your entire chronology is on your account that you can’t delete? You’ve just screwed people that might use Vimeo for free for a few family vacation videos that now TAKE UP TOO MUCH SPACE. And the excuse is the same as last time. “We’re running out of bandwidth and storage space.” BULLSHIT. You’re following the freemium agenda like Dropbox, but worse.
Want to complain and make your voice heard? The Help forums are gone. In place is a helpdesk copying Google’s “talk to a python script” helpdesk.
As a longtime Vimeo user, I now have to pay $101/year to publish my content. Forget the cake, it was thrown out to sea for those who have been grandfathered into Vimeo and this is the worst slap in the face for those that only live paycheck to paycheck.
So… you want them to keep storing people’s videos for free and watch the company go bankrupt? They need to make money like any company, and they aren’t even close to the size nor have the funds of Google. So I think this was inevitable. With more people moving away from youtube and or expanding their platform, they need more resources.
They sent a carefully crafted email to free account owners, and state if you’ve gone over the storage limit. They did NOT make this a public announcement.
Grandfathered in incentives would have been nice though, they do support PayPal so that’s what I’m going to have to be forced to do and overdraft my bank account to keep producing content.
January 29th is what the email I got stated the changes will take place. They said all videos will still remain, but you will be restricted from uploading new videos if you don’t free up space or upgrade.
If it’s a service you can’t afford then go elsewhere like YouTube, you’re certainly not stuck on Vimeo.
It’s also only really about 1h of work a month to pay for so you could pick up some extra work or income to cover it if you wanted to stick with Vimeo.
It’s my reel, my history, and has some of my best work. It is also my future cause I retired my YouTube channel. It still hasn’t gone through the Real Names change or the strict Google+ change it’s that old… If I resurrect it, that’s what I have to deal with.
On YouTube you just create a separate channel page/account you don’t use your name. No reason you couldn’t upload your content to YouTube. Probably should be. Diversification is usually a good thing…?
[quote=“FurryJackman, post:18, topic:123829”]
If I resurrect it, that’s what I have to deal with.
[/quote]
So, do it?
If it’s possible to download your old videos