Vimeo is another online free video hosting and delivery service dedicated to short high-quality clips.

Chris Pirillo mini-clip for TheWeblogProject

Originally conceived by Jakob Lodwick, it was recently brought to life by him together with Zach Klein.

On Vimeo you can upload just about any video format though not everyone can view all of them (not all computers and operating systems can read and playback the different kinds of video formats available out there).

The quality of the uploaded video is far better than any of the other newer free video hosting services I have tested so far, including YouTube and JusPress which further convert and optimize your video clips and of the new Google Video Search too.

Videos can also be downloaded, instant messaged (if you use AOL IM) or freely commented. Vimeo employs a tag-based folksonomy and claims (though it doesn't make clear how to do so) that multiple clips can be played together to create a movie. I personally hven't been able to do this myself.

An RSS feed for each Vimeo video publishing author is also automatically activated.

Unfortunately on Vimeo you only have a weekly limit of 8 MB for video uploading. That maybe OK for very short clips or for those cell-phone based videos. While the weekly limit gets reset every Sunday you can bypass it by eventually deleting clips you don't need anymore.

Vimeo requires a simple online registration and it is completely free.

On my test video account at Vimeo I have so far uploaded a Quicktime (.mov) and a Windows Media Video (.wmv) clip. Both display excellent quality relative to my original and the only difference I can see so far is that the Windows Media clip displays no thumbnail.