Despite all the talk of the explosion in online video, playing it can be an incredibly frustrating experience due to the incompatibilities between the various video formats and devices.
A new service from Encoding.com launches today that seeks to address this with a simple new service to make a video playable on a variety of mobile devices: Vid.ly.
With Vid.ly, you upload a video once, and the service “does the heavy lifting for you,” transcoding it to 14 formats and making it compatible with most modern devices. You can also give Vid.ly a link to an FTP, Amazon S3, or Cloud file.
From there, Vid.ly makes it easy to share the video with others as it provides a short URL. Those that click on it will be served the video file compatible with the device they’re using. You can also embed the code on your website to the same end – people can stream your movies no matter if they’re on a Blackberry or an iPad.
Vid.ly certainly addresses one of the major pain points of watching and delivering video content online, and Encoding.com says it will launch a Pro version in the coming months that will offer API access.
