Why Many Of My Videos Won't Work For A While

Viddler, a site similar to Youtube in that you can put videos there and then embed them into your blog post, recently notified me they were shutting down the free accounts.   I posted about this once March 2, 2013.

I used YouTube in the beginning, but uploading was very slow and videos had to be very short.  So one day I discovered Viddler and found they uploaded faster, they had sharper images, and you could upload longer videos.  So I switched over.  That was back in August 2007. 

In 2010 Viddler sent out emails to members saying they were going to convert to paid accounts only.  I told them about my blog, that I was an early adopter, and all the trouble it would cause me to replace all the video on my blog. I suggested they let me continue free as an early adopter.  I'd even put up my only ad for them as a sponsor of my blog.  They agreed in concept, but it turned out they just backed down on closing down the free accounts.  But I got the message.  Meanwhile, Google had bought YouTube, and the quality there was much improved.  So I started using YouTube as my main server for video on the blog.  Once the video is on the server, you can get the embed code and put that in your blog (or on your website) and the video appears.

So about a month ago, I got the new email that they were now closing down the free part of their website.  I had 478 videos on Viddler.    So I've been busily downloading.  I had some problems and the staff were very prompt and helpful.  They even offered me a way to batch download the videos, but I couldn't make it work.

In any case, with the exception of about a dozen videos in December 2008 which had some sort of problem they've said they'd try to fix, I think I have everything downloaded.  Today was the deadline, but they assured me that they wouldn't shut down my page until I had it all done.

So now I'm uploading videos to YouTube so I can swap out the Viddler hosted videos for Youtube hosted videos.  In the near future, the ones that were Viddler will probably stop working.  I'm starting to replace the most recent ones - and I really haven't used Viddler that much recently.  So I think I might get 2014 and 2013 taken care of before the account closes.  Most of those I saved originally to YouTube.  It's the older ones that will take a while and may be unviewable until I get them swapped out.  If I can do ten a day, I could get them done in a couple of months.