AOL UnCut Video – YouTube video hosting wannabe

AOL has launched a beta video hosting service – UnCut Video.

About AOL UnCut Video

• It is free and unlimited video uploads.
• UnCut videos are played in Flash 8 format.
• Maximum video length is 5 minutes.
• Powered by VideoEgg, supported video formats are 3gp, 3gp2, avi, dv, mpg, mpg4, mov, mqv, and wmv.

Brief review of AOL UnCut Video

The AOL UnCut video web page design is similar to YouTube. Anyone can submit comments, but only AOL and AIM members can upload videos.

Videos are low quality, with noticeable jagged edges during playback. AOL sacrificed video quality for faster playback speed(the playback speed is not fast, anyway…)?

Volume cannot be adjusted on the player. The Play and Pause button should be combined into one button. Also, the code of embedded video player is extremely long (for cross-browsers compatibility?)

Sample code of AOL UnCut embedded video player:

<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=7,0,0,0" width="415" height="347" id="browser" style="padding:0;margin:0"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="movie" value="http://communityvideo.aol.com/uc_videoplayer.swf" /><param name="FlashVars" value="assetURL=http://pdl.stream.aol.com/aol/us/cvn/2006/5/11/c883bdec2e3293c92a573a73b683673_dl.flv&duration=32&showExpandButton=false&expandFunctionID=expandVideo"/><param name="quality" value="high" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /><embed src="http://communityvideo.aol.com/uc_videoplayer.swf" quality="high" bgcolor="#cccccc" FlashVars="assetURL=http://pdl.stream.aol.com/aol/us/cvn/2006/5/11/c883bdec2e3293c92a573a73b683673_dl.flv&duration=32&showExpandButton=false&expandFunctionID=expandVideo" width="415" height="347" name="browser" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" /></object>

Sample AOL UnCut embedded video player:

My two cents

It is good to see another free video hosting service. We, the web publishers, get the benefits. Hmm… maybe I should start a video blog, too. :)

When I first time mentioned about YouTube, nobody knew about the free video hosting service. Now, a year later, YouTube has becoming the most popular video hosting service. Isn’t AOL too late?