A transmission from the deep south.
AWESOME use of the Vimeo player in the header of this page.
Thanks! As Ronen mentions, this came our way via Tumblr Projects, and all of the modifications to Jacob’s Redux theme were done by Mike Harding. It’s a great way to get a custom look without having to start from scratch with a new theme.
Hey kids, the Nice Type channel I curate is now on Tumblr! And Twitter, what the hell. The channel showcases the best of Vimeo’s motion and kinetic type animations; both of these are automated feeds in case you’d care to follow here, or there.
Sidenotes: I’m using the Nice Type theme (and my own Tumblr) to test Typekit (more on the results of that later). The Nice Type tumblelog imports posts as links (Tumblr doesn’t have an option to auto-import video feeds) and then retrieves likes, views and owner data via Vimeo’s JSONP API. A side-effect is that reblogging of these posts won’t work so well, but hey, I was 90% done when I realised this flaw in my plan.
Vimeo offers plenty of customisation options when embedding its player, but Tumblr’s automated code generator doesn’t respect these, overwriting them with its own defaults. To fix this, I wrote a quick jQuery function to rewrite Tumblr’s default options string for all Vimeo embeds on the current page (get the ready-to-install version):
$("object[data^='http://vimeo.com']").each(function() {
var parent = $(this).parent();
var vimeoCode = parent.html();
var params = "";
if (vimeoCode.toLowerCase().indexOf("<param") == -1) {
$("param", this).each(function() {
params += $(this).get(0).outerHTML;
});
}
var oldOpts = /show_title=1&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=00ADEF/g;
var newOpts = "show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=55CC55";
vimeoCode = vimeoCode.replace(oldOpts, newOpts);
if (params != "") {
params = params.replace(oldOpts, newOpts);
vimeoCode = vimeoCode.replace(/<embed/i, params + "<embed");
}
parent.html(vimeoCode);
});
Tweak the newOpts string to whatever you prefer — it will work for all embeds except those that have had their options locked by their respective owners. You can see it in action here.
Update: IE mangles the <object> tag when returning it as an HTML string. I’ve updated the code to make it work as intended.
In many ways, Vimeo’s ethical hipster editorial philosophy makes it a more natural fit than YouTube for a buttoned-up government website looking to offer video to the masses while minimizing risks that consumers will be referred to offensive material developed by other users of a video sharing service.
— The Washington Post’s Garance Franke-Ruta covers the White House’s quiet switch to Vimeo for broadcasting its video content. (via Vimeo Buzz)
Speaking of Vimeo, here’s a peek at the new stats module that will be part of Vimeo Plus 2.0, due sometime soon. So damn good.
Shameless promo for my Vimeo channel, showcasing the best typographical explorations and oddities on the site. If you’re a Vimeo user and spot anything that belongs in Nice Type, drop me a line.
Vimeo’s Channels 2.0 is now live, and what an improvement. They’ve really done well separating groups from channels, with the option of converting your existing channel to a group if your focus is more around discussion. It’d be nice to have a little more control over the layout templates, for example I’d like to be able to show more videos on the homepage of my Nice Type channel, particularly as there’s a big empty space below the list now. (via Jack Zerby)
From Clayton Cubitt’s side-by-side comparison of the default video quality on Vimeo (left) and YouTube (right):
100% screen grab, from each site’s page (not embedded, and not Vimeo’s HD page), from same 720p source video. On top of it, the YouTube version’s motion was about as smooth as a webcam in 1997.
Increased weekly storage, HD embedding, player customisations, ad-free for US$59.95 per year. Here’s the announcement.
They are a site dedicated to original, personal creations and they are willing to enforce that idea by alienating large blocks of users who feel otherwise. Bravo.
— Jack Shedd in support of Vimeo’s decision to ban gaming footage.
Written and designed by Matthew Buchanan. Colophon. Please give credit. Email
