Back in June 2008, I compared the video sharing experience on YouTube, Flickr and Facebook. Since then, YouTube and Facebook have improved in their offering, allowing flexibility for the consumers.

YouTube:
Length of video allowed: 10 min (no change)
Maximum file size: 1 GB – The longer and/or higher quality your video is, the more compression will be required to fit it into 1 GB
Aspect ratio: 4×3 – changed to 16×9 for all videos + HQ and HD (1280×720), 4:3 videos are screened in a pillarbox format
Example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hELl8bYhtNo

Flickr:
Length of video allowed: 90 sec (no change)
Maximum file size: 150 MB (no change)
Aspect ratio: 4×3 and 16×9 (no change)
Example:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/savannara/3027173793/in/set-72157608815747022/

Facebook:
Length of video allowed: 20 min (no change)
Maximum file size: 300 MB 1024 MB (verification required for higher size)
Aspect ratio: 4×3 and 16×9 + HD
Example:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/video/video.php?v=44366766921

Although YouTube decided to support 16:9 aspect ratio with an option for high quality, the video size is still no match for Facebook, which is much larger at 576×324 pixels compared to YouTube’s 480×295 pixels. Where YouTube opted to stream a video at normal quality by default, Facebook streams it by default.

After studying further, I discovered that YouTube is able to play HD videos in 720p resolution (1280×720). So the above paragraph is only partially true. The size I’ve mentioned is only one resolution option of embedding the video. There are actually many higher sizes if you play with the options, which goes up to 660×405 pixels. Anyway, with HD videos, you can choose HD playback and the video is increased to a much larger size of 855×480 pixels.

See example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Clwhm1dRu6c and click on watch in HD on the bottom-right of the video.

Flickr doesn’t deserved to be mentioned as they have not considered video to be important. Even if they are the de facto service for photo sharing, Facebook has recently claimed to have more photos uploaded by their members. As Facebook kicked MySpace’s hiney to take over the social networking sphere, will they take over media sharing as well? Only time will tell. Let’s see what Zuckerberg has up his sleaves in 2009.