Vid.ly Serves Web Video to Multiple Devices Automagically [INVITES]

Encoding.com launched a new, easy video-encoding service called Vid.ly in private beta Monday. Using Vid.ly, users can upload a video file and serve it to multiple devices and web browsers all from a single URL.

Vid.ly simplifies and automates the process of not only transcoding video into multiple formats (WebM, H.264, Ogg, etc.) but also selectively serving that video to various device types.

For content creators who don’t want to use Vimeo or YouTube, finding a way to encode, transcode and serve video in multiple formats to multiple devices can be frustrating.

Once largely concentrated around mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, these frustrations have extended to the desktop in recent weeks. Google’s decision to phase out H.264 support in its Chrome browser, at least in regards to HTML5 video, has created a new set of problems.

HTML5 video (or to be more specific, H.264-encoded HTML5 video) was supposed to be our savior; instead it has just become another complication.

With Vid.ly, Encoding.com hopes to help alleviate some of the pain.

How it Works

Using the web browser, users can upload video (up to 1GB in size for the standard free accounts) to Vid.ly. The uploader is robust, supporting FTP and HTTP uploads, standard local file uploads, and cloud services from Amazon S3 and the Rackspace Cloud.

Then, using Encoding.com’s encoding scripts, that video is converted into more than a dozen different formats and sizes. The resulting video is served from a single URL, vid.ly/XXXX.

Users can share that short URL, and browser detection will determine what version of the video is played back. Even better, Vid.ly offers an HTML5 embed code that can be used on web pages or blogs, as well as access to a VP6 Flash file for use with custom players.

What this means is that content creators who want to serve HTML5 video to all visitors don’t need to worry about using Ogg for some browsers, WebM for others and H.264 for the rest — the HTML5 embed code will work across the board.

Pricing

In its private beta, Vid.ly is offered as a free service. File sizes are limited to 1GB and profiles cannot be adjusted.

In the next few months, a professional version, Vid.ly Pro, will become available. Vid.ly Pro won’t have the file size limitations; instead, it will let users customize encoding profiles and will support adaptive bitrate for iOS devices. Vid.ly Pro users will also be able to use Vid.ly with their own CDN.

Encoding.com President Jeff Malkin tells us that — aside from the professional accounts — the company hopes to benefit from the Vid.ly landing page and branding from URLs shared across social networks and SMS.

Until now, Encoding.com has primarily targeted more professional users. Vid.ly can certainly be leveraged by professionals, but there is a lot of potential for consumers with more minor video needs.