Vimeo rebuilt its video player from scratch, basing it on HTML5, rather than Flash

Jan 7, 2014 15:15 GMT  ·  By

Vimeo has announced that it has sped up the video-streaming technology supporting the site and has switched to HTML5 from Flash.

According to the announcement, the new player brings a better overall performance and some post-production features. Furthermore, videos now load in half the time, which is always a good thing.

[ADMARk=1]The last time Vimeo introduced any changes to the video player was two and a half years ago, during which a lot has changed in the tech world.

“It was clear that we needed a more flexible and accommodating base for our player. So we did the only thing that made sense: we rebuilt the whole thing from scratch,” the announcement reads.

While the player continues to look roughly the same, its backbone has been rebuilt completely. Vimeo says it spent a lot of time optimizing playback to have the videos start a lot faster.

Vimeo on Demand has been around for a little while, but the company has now added a way for users to quickly rent or buy content directly from the embedded trailer, which means that some time is saved for those interested in this service.

The share screen has also been redesigned, allowing users to share to Facebook, Twitter or by email much faster. The service also received an integrated login option. This allows users to quickly log in through a pop-up form while liking a particular video or adding it to the Watch Later queue.

As mentioned, Vimeo has now switched to HTML5 by default and hints at the fact that it could soon add HTML controls. If you have more than one player opened in your browser, any changes you make on one – such as volume, HD, or image scaling – will apply to all tabs. Perhaps the most useful feature is that Vimeo will automatically pause the current playing video if you start another one.

Closed captions and subtitles support was added and they’re both supported in all desktop players, Mobile Safari on iOS 7, Chrome on Android tablets and Kindle Fire, but the list will grow soon.