Vimeo for iPhone review

The official Vimeo app for iPhone is finally here. The new Vimeo app looks amazing and is loaded with a ton of awe inspiring high quality video content created by its “respectable” user community, which you can now be a part of as well. You’ll be delighted to find the Vimeo app is actually a dot-it-all compilation of video utilities, boasting a full blown movie creation feature, video viewer and account manager. I’m not sure why it took Vimeo this long to create an iPhone app but let’s just say it was worth the wait.

Before you can use the Vimeo app you need to register for a Vimeo account or log in with one. This restriction – though quick and painless – seems a bit much for casual users. Once you are logged into the app, you’ll see the 5 tabs:

My Videos
Here is where you can select or shoot videos files and upload them directly to your Vimeo account. You can choose the video quality (HD, Standard, Low) before you upload your movie. You can pause and resume active uploads at any time. Once you have some videos uploaded you’ll see a list/thumb view of your the stuff in your account in this tab. You can edit your uploads and delete them from here, and share them via social networks.

Recordings
The Vimeo app has a full fledged video project creation feature built in, very similar to what you get from the official iMovie iPhone app from Apple. You create projects then shoot video clips or import existing ones into it. You then customize your project by editing its title, add/remove movie clips, audio soundtracks, text captions, manage transition effects, pixel effects, change fill types, adjust volume, set in/out points, and a whole lot more. The editing reel can be pinched to zoom your entire project and any item can be tapped to select and edit. You can tap the + icon to add new videos and pictures to your project, and edit any of them to your liking. When you’re done with the Video Editor, you can export a rendered version and upload it to your Vimeo account.

My Stuff
Your Inbox, Watch Later and Likes are stored in this section. You can watch your queue of community videos that you’ve saved or “hearted” at vimeo.com or from the app. The inbox is populated with newly added videos that for you to watch.

Browse
Here is where you can watch public videos on your iPhone as a casual Vimeo user. The app has created some categories for users including Staff Picks, HD Videos, Short Films and more. There is no way to find stuff by searching however.

Account
Here you see statistics about your Vimeo account, including MB usage of your weekly upload limit, and individual info about total plays on each of your uploads. Stats have a load of sorting and viewing options, enough to keep you occupied for a while. A free Vimeo account limits uplaods to 500MB/week. Upgrading to a Plus account at $60/year bumps you up to 5GB/week and adds HD embedding support.

We had a few issues with the Vimeo app thus far. You can’t search for videos by keyword, which is a big disappointment. You can post comments on videos, but you can’t read comments from other users. You can’t share community videos via Facebook or Twitter, which seems like a missed opportunity to gain more viewers. Forced registration prior to using the app might cause some people to cut out early. Every time you load a section the app puts up a “Loading” message while it refreshes the latest content from the web. This happens even if you move back to the same channel that you were just on a few seconds back. I would love to see the app optimize its pre-caching. Finally, there is no iPad optimized version of Vimeo yet. Considering how beautiful the HD videos would look on your shiny new iPad 2, we are hoping to see an iPad version of Vimeo sooner than later. Having said all that the Vimeo app still shines bright. It has a beautiful simple UI and performs smoothly, not to mention its stunning video content.

Overall, Vimeo is a feature packed video app that does a whole lot for free, and looks great sitting there next to YouTube on your iPhone.

Here is a video demo of the Vimeo app on the iPhone

AppSafari Rating: 4.5/5

AppSafari review of Vimeo for iPhone was written by Joe Seifi on April 1st, 2011 and categorized under App Store, Free, Fun, Video. Page viewed 6866 times, 1 so far today. Need help on using these apps? Please read the Help Page.