Short videos are a big deal right now. Within the first 24 hours of Instagram offering video, its 130 million users uploaded more than 5 million videos. Here are our 6 best apps for sharing videos. Not sure if Instagram video is for you? Here’s the low down on that service and all the alternatives.
With its massive community of over 130 million users many of whom already have an established following, Instagram doing video was the next logical step for the platform. Ever since the app became the defacto standard for photo sharing on iOS (and more recently Android) people have been wondering what the ‘Instagram for video’ would be. Turns out it could very well be Instagram. Videos have to be a minimum of 3 seconds long with a maximum length of 15 seconds. Instagram brings its much vaunted ‘Cinema’ stabilisation to the equation as well to make your videos feel even more polished before you add 1 of 13 new filters to it. Because of the stabilisation feature, videos cannot be imported from your gallery or camera roll like pictures can.
Vine
The new darling of the social media world and a direct competitor to Instagram’s video aspirations, Vine is already on of the most popular apps on iOS and Android. With over 13 million users sharing over 1 million videos a day, Vine users were already sharing more content to Twitter than Instagram users barely 4 and a half months after the service was launched. Vine has a simple concept built around sharing 6 second looping videos which allows for the creative among its users to create scenes that seem to go on indefinitely by starting and finishing in the same position. Like Instagram videos cannot be imported from your gallery or camera roll.
Viddy
Viddy eschews the 6 second limit of Vine and the paltry 15 seconds of video allowed by Instagram and instead gives you the option of having up to 30 seconds of video. Further deviating from the previous two choices Viddy allows you to import a video from your device first and trim it down to 30 seconds long before you apply a filter, select a backing track and upload. You can then upload and share to Facebook, Twitter, tumblr or YouTube.
Vimeo
Unlike the limited length videos of the 3 previous apps, Vimeo allows you to upload videos of any length, the only catch is that as a basic (free) user of the service you’re limited to 500MB of uploads per week and 10 videos per day where Vimeo plus members get 5GB of uploads per week. You can record and upload through the app or select a video from your gallery or camera roll but there is no applying of filters or camera stabilisation.
YouTube
YouTube has been around for over 8 years and boasts over 60 hours of video uploaded to the site every minute. Uploads are limited to 15 minutes in duration (2GB in a browser and up to 20GB if you use a compatible browser) but are unlimited in terms of how many can be made in a day. Android users can share videos directly to YouTube from the sharing menu while iOS users can upload via the YouTube Capture app which is available in the app store.
1 in every 5 people on earth have a Facebook account giving you the largest possible audience for your videos and uploading video to Facebook is as simple as making any other post to the social network. Videos can be uploaded from the gallery or camera roll as well as recorded and uploaded directly to Facebook. iOS users have the added benefit of the Facebook Camera App which allows you to upload and view photos and videos from the social network exclusively. You can upload an unlimited amount of videos per month and there is no limit on the length of video that can be uploaded. Sharing videos to other social networks is a manual process once you are finished posting.
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