Brain Handles

Following up on the Microsoft Soapbox vs. Google Video comparison, I thought I'd try YouTube, despite some prior problems putting my videos on YouTube.

Whaddaya know? YouTube took the video.

Now, I still prefer Microsoft's upload process to YouTube's, mainly because of that progress meter. Like Google, YouTube uses a simple animation to indicate that an upload is in progress, but gives you no indication of how far along the upload is. Microsoft Soapbox actually gives you a percentage. This is really nice to have when you're uploading a 58 meg video and want to know if you should just go get a drink of water or queue up an episode of "Harvey Birdman" on the Comcast Video on Demand.

Another thing... when Microsoft told me my video was ready, it was. YouTube, after minutes stating the video was processing, changed its status to live. Accepting they were telling the truth, I tried to watch it. No dice. Despite listing my video as live and ready to watch, YouTube gave me error messages when I tried to watch it and even gave me an "Internal Server Error" message when I clicked the "share video" button.

So here's the Microsoft Soapbox video...

Video: Making Valentines With FunDraw.com

And here's the YouTube Video

Again, both are from the same master.

The first thing I notice is that the sample frame when the two load up is MUCH clearer on the Soapbox video. The YouTube frame is heavily degraded.

When you start playing, it seems that YouTube offers the video at a slightly larger size. You'll see that the text in the video is bigger on the YouTube video than on the Soapbox video. But, once again, the Microsoft video wins for clarity, with the YouTube video being a bit fuzzier.

They both offer the play button up in the middle of the screen, which is an improvement over the Google Video user interface, but the plain and simple act of writing "Click To Play" below it gives Microsoft a slight edge on which is more user friendly. Though it might only be a small percentage of users, there will be some who need that instruction (or respond to being told to click) and you could see a slight boost in the number of people watching the video because of that.

Another very important element. With YouTube, if you do not click on the play button itself, but click elsewhere in the video, it opens a new window and takes you to YouTube's home page. Yup, not the page for the video, but YouTube's home page. With Soapbox, if you click anywhere in the video area, it starts the video playing.

I consider actions that provide unexpected results to be bad user interface design. Furthermore, when those results aren't helpful, it's even worse. So Microsoft definitely scores a point, while YouTube loses two.

At one point, I reloaded and tried to play the YouTube video again for some further comparison. It not only gave me an error message that the video was no longer available, but it did it in white text with no background, so wherever it crosses white in my video, the text disappears. That knocks their user interface down another point for offering up potentially invisible error messages.

Now, one problem with Soapbox is that its navigational links on the Soapbox site aren't always Firefox friendly, which is annoying. But aside from that gripe, I'm liking their UI both on the site and on embedded videos.

All in all, I'm not going to declare Soapbox the hands-down winner, but after going head-to-head with Google Video and YouTube, it's definitely got an edge on both. Whether you're a webmaster or a web surfer, it's worth your while to check out Soapbox.