14 DAY TRIAL // Vimeo is rolling out a few features, based on user requests. There's nothing revolutionary here, but it should make plenty of users a lot more pleased with the video sharing service. Users can now set up custom shortcut URLs for their videos. Vimeo Plus users can also choose to have their videos play in HD even when embedded. Finally, the more private users can disable the Recent Activity module on their profiles.
"Ever notice how hard it is to remember specific video URLs? http://vimeo.com/17853140 isn't very descriptive is it? Today we're rolling out a new option for every video that let's you specify an alternative human-readable shortcut," Vimeo's Andrew Pile announced one of the new features.
The video in Vimeo's example is also accessible via vimeo.com/staff/video-editing-basics, a much easier to remember URL. The videos URLs will include your custom profile URL as well as a title of your choice.
The new URLs look much better when shared and are also more descriptive. However, the change is only skin deep, the actual URL of the video will remain the numeric one and visitors will simply redirected so, as Vimeo notes, there are no SEO benefits to this.
"Back when we made HD embedding free and unlimited for Plus users we also changed the default embed quality to SD and left it up to the viewer to choose HD," Pile explains.
There are a couple of very good reasons for this. Embedded videos are rarely big enough to take advantage of the HD resolution, most of the times they're even smaller than the SD resolution.
This means that the player has to downscale the video, taking a toll on processing power and having no quality benefits. SD videos also load faster, of course.
However, some users didn't want to make any compromises about quality and have been asking for a way to have embedded videos play in HD by default.
"Since making this change, complaints about loading and buffering have decreased but many Plus users still want viewers to experience their work in the highest quality," Vimeo wrote.
So Vimeo is now giving users this option. Viewers of course, can still revert back to SD quality if they wish.
Lastly, Vimeo now allows users to hide the activity module from their profiles. This option has been requested by plenty of users and it has now been finally implemented.