Posted on 22-08-2009
Filed Under (On the web, Review, Video) by admin

While Vimeo, YouTube and SmugSmug are great to store and distribute your clips, your control over the way they are presented is minimal. An easy and cheap solution is to use a blog engine, such as Wordpress, to create a blog and then publish your clips there. Unfortunately, generic blog themes, while able to display embed clips, are not designed/optimized for this purpose.

This is where dedicated vlog themes take the stage. I have been working for a while on another blog (more on this soon), with a lot of video content, and needed to see what was available.

After some researches, I have collected the following list. I will keep it updated as much as I can. If you see a cool theme missing, leave a link in the comments.

Note: if you need help to set up a blog, feel free to contact me.


Video Flick

video-flick

I like: how all videos are treated as equal, they all share the same amount of space on the page. The tag cloud and search box invites the visitors to use them (which would increase the number of pages viewed). It is also one of the few themes where I find the ads to fit with the over all design
I dislike: the comment box in the right sidebar.
Best for: sites with alof of video content that can be tagged/categorized but where each clip stands on its own (ex: no episodes). I bought this theme a while ago to showcase my commercial work.

Home page

On Demand

on-demand

I like: huge player (on the  details page), easy to customize to give it a special look (see here for an example), side blog for articles, integrated rating plugin, clean while not being too minimalistic.
I dislike: of all the video themes from Press75, this one has to be the most popular. It means you will have to do some serious customization if you don’t want your site to look like the others. Not able to play clips from the home page.
Best for: this theme can be used by pretty much anyone who needs to post videos & articles, with a focus on the clips. Good all around theme.

Home page

TV Elements

tv-elements

I like: Home page puts a lot of attention on the featured clip, which can be played in a big window. Clean design with very simply color scheme. Cross posting videos and standard blog article is easily.
I dislike: Hard to navigate the clip index since we can only view a fiew items at the time. At least, contrary to the Video theme (see bellow), a thumbnail is provided.
Best for: bloggers who wants to showcase their work. Could also be used to publish webseries if the clips are grouped by categories.

Home page

Vodpod

vodpod-theme

I like: Home page shows a lot of content but it is very well divided. Very clean and the featured clip navigator at the top is a great way to increase visibility of old (and popular) clips. All clips can be played from the home page thanks to a slick & clean popup viewer. Can use different thumbnail for the clip than the clip itself. Integrated rating plugin.
I dislike: creating post, while easy, requires a bit more work.
Best for: people who post a lot of videos content supplemented with text.

Home page

Video Elements

video-elements

I like: Similar to Vodpod in architecture and features. Easier to modify since its design rely less on images.
I dislike: without customization, looks a bit too simple and boxy.
Best for: someone who knows CSS, like the site structures  and wants to tweak the design to his taste.

Home page

Groovy Video

groovy

I like: does a clear division between what is featured and what is recent, integrated rating plugin, a lot (17) of color themes, the most popular thumbnails at the bottom of the page is great if your clips have interesting visuals.
I dislike: only featured video can be played directly from the home page, small size of the video window on the home page, home page can quickly look very busy and disorganized if the thumbnails don’t match together.
Best for: someone making a sequence of related clips and who has control over the video to ensure uniformity of the thumbnails. Else, it would look very amateurish.

Home page

WooTube

wootube

I like: Home page shows featured video or simply a list (with thumbnails), integrated rating plugin, many color themes (7) to start with and uses widgets.
I dislike: no side blog. Content is a little bit too spread over the screen
Best for: people who want to show a lot of various videos and have people comment/rate them.

Home page

Video

video

I like: Video is a very clean and minimalistic theme. It puts all the focus on the active video and comments.
I dislike: does not work very well if you have a lot of video to share since there are no index/list pages and navigation is done from a small frame at the right of the screen. No side blog.
Best for: people who produce series of related clips since it is easy to navigate the categories.

Home page

Modularity

modularity

I like: HUGE video player on the home page, clear categorization of content
I dislike: the theme is not as much a vlog them as a blog theme with video features.
Best for: bloggers who produce still and video content across many categories.

Home page

High-Def

high-def

I like: displays posts by categories on the home page, HUGE video player on the home page.
I dislike: the theme is not as much a vlog them as a blog theme with video features.
Best for: news style blogs t optimize the use of the categories.

Home page

Full screen

fullscreen

I like: Pictures/video take all the place. Almost no text. Very visual and clean.
I dislike: while the pictures are big, the text is microscopic, it has to be fixed in the CSS to be readable. Navigation is not obvious (you have to locate the tiny category links).
Best for: Portfolio or situation where the owner has control over the content to insure homogeneity.

Home page

Wave

wave

I like: it is cheap, has integrated rating plugin, uses widgets for both sidebars, a lot of the options can be customized from the admin panel (no CSS required!).
I dislike: looks a bit cluttered. I dont like the play button in the lower right corner. Puts more emphasis on the text content than the video.
Best for: people who are short on cash and are not afraid to modify the CSS to their taste.

Home page

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Comments

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Jenn on 27 August, 2009 at 3:54 pm #

This (as are pretty much all ofyour posts) is an excellent, helpfl post. I would love to see a review of, if the exist, combo photo/video blog templates for Wordpress. With so many photographers starting to dabble in video, these type sof templates would be welcome.

Thanks for your blog – I have found it very helpful!


Twitted by hashphotography on 28 August, 2009 at 6:17 am #

[...] This post was Twitted by hashphotography [...]


Karel Bata on 17 November, 2009 at 1:41 pm #

Very nice page!

I’m going to post a link a link to it on my page at Video Embed Tests which is a side-by-side comparison of all the major embedding video hosts – and which your visitors may also find useful.

Keep up the good work!