[00:00:20] Nathan Wrigley: Hello there and welcome once again to the WP Builds podcast. You've reached episode number 481 entitled a new video hosting solution for WordPress users and Vimeo refugees.
It was released on Thursday the 20th of August 2026. My name's Nathan Wrigley, and a few minutes time we will be chatting to Nic Taylor from the Livid Video Platform.
But before then, a few bits of housekeeping.
I love WordPress. I'm sitting reading this to you on Friday, the 14th of August. It's going to be published in about six days time. During those six days, I'm going to get on a plane, go to WordCamp US. Meet a load of WordPressers. When that whole thing is over, I'm probably gonna be heading home. Probably at some point during my flight on the way home, this podcast episode is going to publish. I have a hundred percent reliability that it's going to publish on time, and that you are going to be able to hear it on time, and all of that's going to happen via the magic of WordPress, and I absolutely love it. So there's a small reflection for you. Sorry for going off piste there a little bit, but I really am very grateful to WordPress and all that it brings.
The other thing to mention is if I did meet you at WordCamp US, very nice to have met you. Stay in touch. It would be lovely to be able to keep in touch over the days, weeks, and months to come.
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I am, however, taken a bit of time off for the, This Week in WordPress Show. We'll be back in a few weeks time. I simply can't do that whilst I'm travelling. And so we've also got a bank holiday in the UK so we'll be back, probably towards the end of August or the beginning of September. Sorry about that, but needs must.
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Okay. What have we got for you today? Well, today I am chatting with Nic Taylor.
Nick is from a new and upcoming video platform. It's called Livid. You're going to hear all about it. They have a WordPress plugin, but the idea really is that they got very dissatisfied with what's going on over at Vimeo and they decided to build a rival, but also make it really simple for you to bring all of your video content from Vimeo over.
They've got a one click solution for all of that, and they've got WordPress plugins and Bricks and Elementor integrations, and a load of customizability, and so I thought it would be good to get 'em on the show today to offer you a glimpse of what the tool does, and how it might be able to replace the price hiking that's going on over at Vimeo.
So I hope that you enjoy it.
I am joined on the podcast by Nick Taylor. Hello, Nick
[00:03:29] Nic: Hello, how are you today?
[00:03:31] Nathan Wrigley: Good. Thank you. Nick is, surprisingly to me at least anyway, from the UK. I don't know why, but when I organised this call with Nick, I fully assumed that he was, an American, or at least living in America, but it- but not.
That's not the case. It turns out he's living on the South Coast of Blighty, the, the United Kingdom. So, an absolute pleasure to have you on the podcast today. I'll just give a bit of context to the listeners. We're gonna be talking about video today. Who knows, we may go somewhere else as well, but the idea is to talk about video and which Nick has, I'm gonna say, recently launched.
And, like, five-letter domain names, what the heck? five-letter .com domain names.
[00:04:11] Nic: It's crazy, isn't it?
[00:04:13] Nathan Wrigley: It's called Livyd, .com. No way.
[00:04:18] Nic: Yeah. We were shocked as well
[00:04:20] Nathan Wrigley: I'm gonna recommend everybody stop the podcast, unless you're driving the car, then keep going. stop the podcast, go and have a look at livyd.com.
Have a poke around and you'll see what they're up to. You'll see it's got connections to v- I'll, leave it there. Let's say, let's just leave it like that. So, tell us about yourself, Nick. Just, I know it's a bit of a banal, question at the beginning, but if you don't mind, just give us the, your potted bio.
Who are you? What have you done with your life and so on?
[00:04:48] Nic: Yeah, sure. so yeah, I am the head of product and growth, at Livid. we started Livid back in, I mean, we started building it at the end of last year, but we launched it in February. I have a history working in lots of startups, all of them tech startups, all of them various, degrees of, crazy.
I've worked for all sorts of founders, in lots of, lots of various parts of tech. and now, I'm in a, in a probably one of the best, possible startups that I could be in, where we are building, a product that not only we feel is a, really fantastic product, but is also potentially doing a slightly, slight- slightly cliched, but we feel like a good thing in the world right now in basically helping out people who, may be seeing a slight pr- price increase on some of their hosting bills coming soon if, if they are using a certain provider.
But I won't spoil that all just yet.
[00:05:47] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, Yeah, we'll, come to that. so yeah, like I caught sight of this, platform, know, 10 days ago or something like that, and immediately jumped on it, got myself into the, platform, started having a poke around and having had a little poke around, Nick and I got into a conversation. It's basically a video hosting platform kind of your dreams really. There's no... I, don't really know how to describe It's a really clean UI. It does exactly what you want it to do. You upload a bunch of videos, you configure how you want the video player to look with some sensible defaults, and then you can, you know, customize the wazoo out of it. once you've set up a player and you think, "That's how I want all of my players to look," you can then set one up and say, "From now on, I want everything to be like that one." Now, listeners to this probably know that I've run the Page Builder Summit many times. I think we've had eight rounds of that. And, and I was basically looking for some place to put this, and I, think we've now decided that, yeah, it's gonna end up at Livid. But you're jumping into a, gosh, hosting video. You're up against the likes of, YouTube and, cough, Vimeo. So, tell us the story. us the story about, I suppose.
[00:07:08] Nic: Yeah, so Vimeo, they are the second largest, hosting provider after YouTube. YouTube of course is number one by a million miles. but of course the difference is between YouTube and Vimeo, who, on Vimeo, the, actual customer on Vimeo are the people hosting the videos, where of course on YouTube, the customer is either an, advertiser or it is, the actual viewers, themselves.
So of course, Vimeo has been, number two for a long time, for people who want to host videos and be able to have full control over how it looks, and also how, how that video is discovered, and then also critically at the end of that video, what happens next. of course on YouTube if you're hosting on there and you're looking to put a, video from YouTube onto your website, the downside is that YouTube is designed to pull people in to YouTube.
so of course when that ends on that video then YouTube really wants to do everything it can to say, "Hey, here's a video about crazy cats. Why don't you come and watch this?"
[00:08:09] Nathan Wrigley: It works so much.
[00:08:10] Nic: Oh, it does. indeed. they are very clever people. but of course, Vimeo's been in this, spot now of number two for a long time.
and they've increasingly catered to a wider, audience. So of course, they started off initially as the crowd who were on the much more sort of creative side, and for a long time didn't even have a paid plan. and then they began to look at how they could, how they could, they, how they could attract, attract extra users then, in the business space.
And eventually they grew up to wanting to also attract enterprise. and they've also then got, what's called VOD, which is video on demand. So, having the ability to host videos which are then paid for, including now all the way up to OTT, which is called Over The Top, which then, allows people essentially to create their, own Netflix.
but in that space, they've grown, massively, but so have their costs, and they have, begun to stagnate, which then made them very, attractive, to a certain company, which is probably one that most people have never even heard of. but it is a company called Bending Spoons. you may have seen some headlines around them recently.
They recently IPO'd, in the, US. but they specialize in buying up stagnant businesses. they strip out the costs, they fire everyone, and then the last thing they do is they raise prices. and those price rises are normally very big. so they are midway through that process currently with Vimeo.
So if you are a current user of Vimeo, you may or may not, have seen an email, telling you that your plan is changing. they haven't done this yet for everyone. They've actually only done it for a very small, small set so far 'cause they do a very intense period of testing. but, essentially over the next, between, I would guess six months to possibly 12 months, pretty much every single, self-serve user on the platform, will end up paying potentially substantially more.
And by substantially more, anywhere up to 2400% more, is the highest that I've seen so far.
[00:10:23] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. Wow, okay. I have heard of Bending Spoons actually, curiously, because a few of the, things that I've traditionally used. So I have an app called Evernote, bought by Bending Spoons I reckon 24 months, 18 months, something like that. And, also, another one called Komoot. is I don't know, it's a trails app.
You can use it to do cycle rides and, and things like that. Again, bought up by, Bending Spoons. Vimeo obviously bought up by Bending Spoons. I, don't know if there's more than that, but,
[00:10:59] Nic: There is one...
[00:11:00] Nathan Wrigley: go on
[00:11:01] Nic: Sorry, there's one big one which they've done fairly recently, which everyone may have thought has actually gone. but the, everyone's favorite internet provider from the late '90s, which is, i- which is, i- is, i- which is AOL, has also been bought by them now
[00:11:20] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. That is a blast from the past.
[00:11:22] Nic: Oh
[00:11:23] Nathan Wrigley: that. Yeah, and in my case, I, can't... I'm, not gonna get into sort of badmouthing, Bending Spoons or anything like that, but I will certainly say that the costs, e- exactly as you described, you know, the cost for, or less the same thing, has gone up.
And it's definitely got me searching around. And Vimeo's cost even before Bending Spoons, I think had got to the point where I was thinking, "I don't know what the value is here, in all honesty." So, what's curious is your livid.com website, you really hone in on that message, don't you? it... I'm, guessing that you're hoping that Google will, or, AI search, whatever it is these days, will be your best friend because it really feels like that's what you're leaning into.
Like, people who open up their Vimeo account discover that the bill has gone 2x, 3x, whatever, I'm making up numbers there, that they then go out and search for a Vimeo alternative and hopefully find you. So, how do you feel ab- Like, how has that message landed? Have you had good success with that? Have people resonated with that or have you...
I don't know. I've just never seen marketing quite like that where it's one company against another company. T- tell us about how it's going.
[00:12:38] Nic: Yeah, so we're definitely not subtle. and, yeah, it is, very intentional and, we're doing it because we do feel like these days in order to stand out and in order to be known very quickly, you need to be doing something that is quite unique. And the video hosting space is not particularly sexy.
it's not particularly exciting. so we needed to build something, around that. So absolutely one of the angles we've taken is basically, yes, we, want to be known primarily as the, the key alternative to Vimeo. that's been a big driver for us, but we've actually had one that's actually been working for us in an even stronger way.
so one of the other things about a platform like Vimeo that is very attractive, to a company like Bending Spoons, is actually how difficult it is to leave Vimeo. so I've spoken to users on Vimeo who have been on that platform now for 10 years. Some have been there for 15 years. And of course for them, they've got videos now on Vimeo.
They've got libraries that are getting quite large. and they've also got videos on there that literally they don't have a copy of those now somewhere else. so when they are considering leaving Vi- Vimeo, they then go, "Okay, how easily can I get my stuff out of Vimeo?" And they go, "Oh, there doesn't seem to be a button to just download all."
and of course that is intentional. There is no button to just download all. you are, you'd have to put in a lot of time and a lot of effort. And not only that, if you've got your own website, on, on, say WordPress, you would also then have to update every single embed you've got.
and again, for certain people, depending on what style of business you are, that could take forever.
[00:14:17] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah
[00:14:17] Nic: thought, you know what? Apart from building Livid, let's also build a tool that's gonna make it really easy to export everything from Vimeo, and we will make it completely free. And if users just want to use that tool and not even export, export it to Livid, if they just want to use it to download to their system locally, that's fine.
And it's completely free. They don't have to sign up to, Livid. They can just use that to extract all their files from Vimeo and just have those back
[00:14:41] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, that's good. I didn't know that. I thought it was a direct connection between like s- I don't know, their API and your API or whatever is
[00:14:48] Nic: No,
[00:14:48] Nathan Wrigley: just put it on your Mac or your Wind-
[00:14:51] Nic: Yeah.
[00:14:52] Nathan Wrigley: Okay.
[00:14:52] Nic: So,
[00:14:52] Nathan Wrigley: interrupted.
[00:14:54] Nic: no, it's fine. it's, it's always interesting to see how people think the tool works because of course Vimeo are not the biggest fans of us. they're not a big fan of our tool so we have to of course make sure it operates in, certain ways to ensure that it will, still work.
But we are able to now, if, you want to move directly from Vimeo to Livid, we can not only, find, your videos, we can also find your folders. So your entire folder structure that you have got on Vimeo would get transferred over to Livid. If your files are set to private, to unlisted, to public, if they've got a password set, we're able to literally switch that over.
And then not only that, we're also able to know the ID of every video. So if you're then on, if you've then got a website and let's say you've got access to the front end code o- of your website, we can just give you a simple string and you can do a search and replace for player.video, player.vimeo.com/video and replace it with the string for Livid and suddenly you could have thousands of videos on your website and they'll just switch over instantly
[00:16:00] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, so you do a string replace, but the, crucial bit, the livid.com swaps out for the, vimeo.com and hopefully if all things go smoothly and according to plan, one quick search and replace query should rid of all of the, ones and put the Livid ones in their place. Okay.
That's interesting. Yeah. And so is that bundled up as a plugin then? Or is the plug... I, know that you've got a plugin, but is the... Is that the... No, that's your Love, This is the migrator thing. That's not the plugin. Okay
[00:16:35] Nic: Yeah, so that's the, that's the LOVE tool, which stands for the Livid One-Click Video Exporter.
[00:16:40] Nathan Wrigley: Mm-hmm
[00:16:41] Nic: and then, the string replacement, at the moment that's just, something which we're able to send to, send over to people. But we then also have, and next to that we also then have our plugin for WordPress which is able to then take that wh- that whole process.
Once you have moved all of your videos over to Livid using LOVE, you can then launch, the plugin on your, website on WordPress. and it supports, standard WordPress, it supports WordPress Bakery, Bricks and WordPress... sorry,
and, there was one more that we've got.
[00:17:18] Nathan Wrigley: Elementor. I
[00:17:19] Nic: Yes.
[00:17:20] Nathan Wrigley: yeah, Elementor. yeah
[00:17:22] Nic: and, with that you- it's able to scan your entire site and find all of the videos you've got on there that are hosted on Vimeo, and then it will map them to the videos that are inside Livid.
And again, you can press one switch at that point and it can swap them out for
[00:17:35] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, interesting. Yeah, pro- yeah,
[00:17:40] Nic: you. so literally you can do zero-
[00:17:40] Nathan Wrigley: was just gonna say, listeners to this podcast will probably know that, you know, there's a, there'll be a plugin that'll do that search and replace for you. There'll be a find and replace plugin. There's probably a dozen of them, in all honesty. I can certainly think of a few where you'd be able to put in the string, do the matching, the pattern matching, and then be able to update it and, you know, try it on a couple and see if it works, and then probably be able to do that successfully. Okay, so let's get into the actual platform itself. So, I've got an account, I've had a play. I haven't deployed anything yet, but I'm, honestly, you've got absolutely everything that I need in there. So I manually uploaded everything because I was getting my video from a different source, so there was no migration out of Vimeo.
In my case, I was getting them from elsewhere, and so they were on my Mac, and I uploaded them all and it, Actually, I think I chucked in about, what was it? About se- was it 70 gig or something? It was a, large, selection of videos. So they all went in, and they all went in, like, straight away.
There was no errors as far as I could see. All the videos got parsed. I could then put them into folders and subfolders of subfolders, name all of those. And then, as I said, I was able to go in and there's a probably, you can correct me on this, but there's about 15 things that you can configure each video. Do you just wanna run through the, customisation options? 'Cause I know that's gonna be the bit which lands in this podcast, is what, can you customise about the player? What can you white label? What colors can you change? Just tell us, I, honestly, tell us all of them 'cause I think
[00:19:14] Nic: Yep.
[00:19:15] Nathan Wrigley: knowing.
[00:19:15] Nic: Absolutely. so we allow you to update the colors. So, that includes, the buttons, the accents on the buttons, so basically the, the hover states, the text color, the background color. So if you're using it inside an iframe, which is a different size to the video, then you can change, what that, looks like either side.
you can up- u- upload your own logo, so you can then have that in the, top corner, and you can also have that, hyperlinking, to somewhere else. you can, then all of the player controls, you can switch those off and on. So if you literally just want the video to play, and you want that to play with absolutely zero control showing, then you're able to switch off ev- everything.
we also support being able to play back onto AirPlay, onto Chromecast. you've got, you've got options there for picture-in-picture. and then when you also embed, so all of those options are just the options which you can switch off and switch on. but we've also, if you're familiar with embeds on, Vimeo, and then we've basically replicated, almost, we're nearly there now, almost all of the same variables, as you have there.
So again, if you're switching out any, videos, then in most cases, if there is a bunch of settings which you've been using at a very kind of custom level, then those will also then be, be usable then on the videos from Livrd.
[00:20:41] Nathan Wrigley: just pause you for a second there? 'Cause I
[00:20:43] Nic: Yeah, of course
[00:20:43] Nathan Wrigley: what that is. So does that mean that in the embed you can add parameters, oh, I don't know, for example, autoplay equals true or something like that, and then you could... You, know, you'd probably have got into a habit of copy and pasting the same set of parameters. So your parameters, do they literally match verbatim in the way that they are so that the same string, like, I, don't know, autoplay equals true would be autoplay equals true or whatever
Okay, that's,
[00:21:11] Nic: Absolutely.
even to the point whereby we've even created a copy of o- one of the parameters because it's actually got the label within that parameter or of Vimeo.
so even if it's still using the label of Vimeo, it still works.
[00:21:26] Nathan Wrigley: Okay
[00:21:27] Nic: so 'cause we, yeah, again, it's j- it's just all about ensuring that for everyone it is as simple as possible
[00:21:32] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, Right, so we got to that. Was there any of, any other toggles or switches or things? Oh, I can think of one. transcripts, that's always, big thing. You know, accessibility is a big thing at the moment, and, possible. I don't know what kind of file formats you support. I always use VTT, so I think, or SRT.
[00:21:52] Nic: supported, yep. So we support VTT. we can create transcripts for you, but you can al- also upload your own. and you can also upload multiple transcripts for separate languages
[00:22:03] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, so you create-- So if I upload a video without a transcript, you'll do that. What, a, bit of AI runs in the background, and you'll automatically do that for me?
[00:22:11] Nic: Absolutely. So it's not, it's not set to auto, but for the videos where you do need a transcript, there is a button which you can press, in order to create that
[00:22:19] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. and so basically when you go in, let's say that you've uploaded a video, you go into the UI for that video and every single one of the things that Nick has just mentioned i- is either a toggle or a field. You know, you upload the video. But then what I did, I don't know if this is how you intended it to done, is I uploaded a really short video of about 10 seconds, configured the video exactly how I wanted it, and then put that in the root directory of the, so let's say Page Builder Summit.
I put it in the root directory of Page Builder Summit, and then I've got directories for t- 2022, 2023 and so on. then I just called that Page Builder Summit template. And then what I've done is I just click on the videos that I want to adopt the exact settings for that, and then you don't even have to open the video up.
You can do them all at the same time. So we had I think it was, 207 videos, something like that. So I just highlighted them all, clicked Select All and then said, "Use that template," and then instantly they all look exactly want them to. That is my favorite feature
[00:23:29] Nic: We will be doing some improvements to that feature. So you are, you're using that in a absolutely perfect way, but we want to make that even easier for people. So we're gonna basically, create, the ability to set, to set, a template so that, when you upload a file, you can actually then have a, an actual preset default.
[00:23:48] Nathan Wrigley: Oh. Yeah, okay. Yeah,
[00:23:50] Nic: and then we've also just recently, relea- just recently released, if you go into your user settings, you've got the ability to also now set defaults for, access. So, for example, if you want to say that every video you upload, by default everything is private, but if you want everything by default to be set to unlisted, and you want everything to be- to default to, to switching on comments, then you can, now set that at the level for your account
[00:24:19] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, that's interesting. So, right, so we've got the idea of how the platform works. basically it's all the video platforms. You upload video, you put them into folders, you set the colors and the things that you want it to look like, and then we're on the important bit in the WordPress way of things. You have a plugin which enables me to... How does that work? Do, so if I, let's say I'm in the default block editor, Gutenberg, and I'm, I drop in, I, you've got a Vimeo. You've got a Livid block. Drop in the Livid block, and then has that somehow b- bound, is that binding to the platform through an API or something where I can see my list of videos inside the WordPress editor?
Or do I have to copy and paste the code from the vimeo.com website and then chuck it in the Livid block? How does it work?
[00:25:07] Nic: Yeah, so we've gone for a kind of in, It's halfway between that, right now. So basically for all of the, the builders which, I mentioned previously, and, with those you're able to do two things. A, once you install the plugin, you're able to scan the whole site to swap out videos.
And then the second part of it, which is the more kind of long-term view, is it will add a very easy livid block for you. and that will work from the point of view where you don't have to copy embed code. You can literally just copy the link to the video itself. So if there is, It's, it, it's a, system call- called oEmbed, which,
[00:25:48] Nathan Wrigley: mm-hmm.
[00:25:48] Nic: is, there to standardize, how these files, are read.
we are looking basically, to push for WordPress to add us natively, so that you shouldn't even need the plugin in future. But right now the plugin solves for it. and it solves for it then, not just purely in WordPress, but of course then across lots of builders. We are slowly extending it to more and more builders.
basically if someone ... I think our record so far is on Sunday, someone dropped us a, message asking for us to add support for Bricks. I think we'd added support for that within two hours. So
[00:26:25] Nathan Wrigley: and growing in popularity as well, so that's a good one to,
[00:26:28] Nic: Oh, good. yeah, I'd, be very interested to hear your, your opinion as to, 'Cause at
[00:26:29] Nathan Wrigley: yeah, that's a good one to pick out. Yeah, nice
[00:26:33] Nic: the
moment I've got no, real kind of complete picture of being like how many builders do you reckon we're gonna need to support with-
[00:26:44] Nathan Wrigley: many. There's so many builders. you and I will have a chat about that afterwards because, it, honestly, use all the oxygen in the room there. So let's have a chat about that afterwards. But there's loads. But it does seem like you've taken a big nice bite out of the ones that maybe are gonna be, in- interesting for you in the future.
Let's just put it that way. But there are many, more. okay, let's talk about like allowances and things like that because obviously you upload something to YouTube, you've basically got unlimited everything, but you know, all the caveats, you don't own it, and if you pause the video, you're gonna get for every other kind of video on the planet.
Many of them will pull people away from your content. That's not the model that you're going for. firstly, can I detect if ... Let's do the WordPress scenario. Let's imagine that I've, created a page, I've embedded one of your videos. I've done all that successfully. It's on the page. Can I make it so that there's no hint that it's a video which is hosted by you?
So visually speaking, not obviously if you go into the source code, there's probably a way of figuring that out. But a casual user looking at your video, is it white labelable, for want of a better word?
[00:27:56] Nic: Yeah, absolutely. so, included in the, both the, embed code, but also we are now supporting, in some of the builders, we're now supporting the ability to add us as a background video. so, you've got the flexibility there to basically completely strip away Livrd. so you don't have to have our logo, you don't have to have, any of the controls on screen.
If you literally want the site to load up and have your video play in the background or foreground, but in such a way whereby it just looks like it is part of your site, 100%.
[00:28:32] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, so you, in that sense become like a bit of a CDN, just you just serving up the video and doing not much else. But in the situation I'm imagining, I've got this, like I said, this Page Builder Summit, and we have videos, but obviously, you know, we, want that to look like it's come from the summit, so I add my colors.
But there's no sort of livid logo embedded in there somewhere. Okay. Yeah,
[00:28:53] Nic: Nope
[00:28:54] Nathan Wrigley: that was the, way that I assumed it. And what about, know that video is costly. You know, it consumes an awful lot of data. You, know, we're getting into the era of 4, and I say, 8K. By the way, who needs 8K?
Like, can the human eye even do that? I don't know. But, how... What are sort of the caveats that you've got around how much you can store and how much you can transfer? 'Cause I think you've got a storage limit as well as a transfer limit. I don't know if they're like, pay-as-you-go or whether you can a la carte bump one up and take the other one down.
Just let us know how that all works.
[00:29:34] Nic: So at the time of recording, we have got, we've got one plan, which is the pro- the, plan which we call the pro plan. that includes two terabytes of storage and, an allowance for three terabytes of bandwidth per month. to compare that to Vimeo, Vimeo offers two terabytes of bandwidth, and various amounts of storage.
at the time of recording, the amount of storage they offer is changing every day. but, on our side, I expect by the time this, this show is heard, we will probably have a second plan available, which will probably have five terabytes, at that point. I'm not gonna spe- speculate as to how much that one will cost, but I expect it will also have three terabytes of bandwidth.
However, on the bandwidth, if you ever go over, we charge a tiny amount, for each gigabyte over of just 0.01, cents.
[00:30:29] Nathan Wrigley: Per gigabyte
[00:30:30] Nic: sorry, $0.01. So yeah, z- so
[00:30:33] Nathan Wrigley: So one US
[00:30:34] Nic: one cent. Yeah, one cent per gigabyte, which I believe is the cheapest on the market. Maybe it's not at the point this goes out, but I know it is ve- very, cheap.
[00:30:44] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah.
[00:30:45] Nic: compared to Vimeo, if you did that on Vimeo, they would move you to a enterprise plan at that point for exceeding two, two terabytes, so
[00:30:52] Nathan Wrigley: So how do you handle that then? Do you-- I- is that an automatic agreement? When I sign up with you, I just acknowledge that if I go-- if I stray beyond my three terabyte limit, I agree to be charged an additional one US cent per gigabyte or do I have to-- or do you warn me? Like, "You appear to be getting close.
Invoke this. We're gonna do this, additional thing in your account on your behalf."
[00:31:13] Nic: Yeah, so it's completely optional. the two options you have is that basically when you get close, we will warn you that you are about to reach, the limit, and you can then choose if you want us to then basically stop playback at that point, or if you're quite happy, for that to go over. so it's normally quite easy at that point to estimate how much over you'll go, in that month.
so it's very rarely, a bill that is, large or a, surprise. so far it has worked really well for us
[00:31:46] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. And one feature which I haven't made use of, but I saw somewhere in the UI was I think you call it Showcases.
[00:31:54] Nic: Yes
[00:31:55] Nathan Wrigley: and, it looked to me like Showcases would be a really good fit for my, the Page Builder Summit because the Page Builder Summit, we did version one and then six months later we did version two. It, could be wrong about this, but it feels like you, bundle a bunch of videos together, call that a showcase, and then they all get displayed in the one Living UI. is that even correct? Have I totally
[00:32:18] Nic: Absolutely. No, that is very spot on.
[00:32:21] Nathan Wrigley: okay
[00:32:21] Nic: yeah, the idea is that basically you can share, one or lots of videos, and those videos could also be in folders, inside the showcase. and you can set then your own permissions, as well then for that showcase. So for example, you could have, a bunch of videos which are actually private, which actually, if people try to access them directly, they won't work.
But if you put them in the showcase and you actually say, "Actually, anyone accessing that showcase and watching the videos from within that showcase," maybe at that point they aren't private, maybe at that point they are on a password, and maybe at that point you have switched on comments, and you're asking for, feedback.
so, depending on your use case, it, could be like a really good way to show your portfolio. it could be a really good way to share with clients if you are on the more, creative side, and you are, looking for ways to get feedback. or potentially, if you are, a business and you've got maybe some content which is for training, or for courses, and you don't want to necessarily have to build out pages for it, you can also then show them on a showcase on Livid.
And the cool thing about the showcase is you can also on those pages switch off the Livid branding completely.
[00:33:34] Nathan Wrigley: So yeah,
[00:33:35] Nic: you can literally have a completely un- un- experience there which is completely clean of Livid except for the, the address
[00:33:43] Nathan Wrigley: Le- let me just explore that a little bit more. So let's say for example, I don't know, I've got a, let's go for something. So let's say for example, I've got a WP Builds showcase or something like that, and I dump a bunch of videos in there. so I could, have that as private, you'd have to know what that URL was to find that showcase.
But I wouldn't password protect that. Firstly, can I password protect the root domain for the showcase? Okay, so there'd be a password field, click, put the password in, we're in. But then within that, let's say I got into that. I could have a collection of videos which are not private, then a collection of videos which were private.
So, you know, password for this one, password for That one everybody can watch, that one everybody can watch. It... So you can mix and match it a bit like that.
[00:34:32] Nic: Not quite.
[00:34:32] Nathan Wrigley: Okay.
[00:34:33] Nic: so the, That's almost correct. So every single video on Livid has got its own, its own settings for privacy. and that is basically...
[00:34:43] Nathan Wrigley: there. Yeah,
[00:34:44] Nic: Yeah, so that's set on the video. But i- if you then put those videos into a showcase, the privacy setting you set for that showcase will override access to those videos, providing users are accessing those videos through that showcase
[00:34:57] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, no, that, would be exactly what I was trying to
[00:35:00] Nic: Oh, okay, perfect
[00:35:01] Nathan Wrigley: that's great. So I could have it set ... So I set it on the per video basis, so the settings for the video, I might have it set up one way, and then the, showcase in the context of being in the showcase, the settings in there will override it.
[00:35:14] Nic: Absolutely
[00:35:15] Nathan Wrigley: that's really interesting. So I could put a couple of promo videos like ops- like, here's what this showcase is for. You know, if you want to, if you want to see the other ones, you have to be part of the membership scheme, and we'll send you the password," or what have you. That's really interesting.
So I could have 20 videos, 18 of which are hidden, but not visible unless you've got the password. But a one or two promo videos which are saying what the other 18 are all about. a course in
[00:35:41] Nic: Yes,
[00:35:42] Nathan Wrigley: Oh,
[00:35:44] Nic: absolutely.
[00:35:45] Nathan Wrigley: to, to monetize for, owners of the, plat- not for owners, for users of your, platform, do you have a plan to monetize videos so that they could, for example, say in order to watch this, you need a s- I don't know, a Livid account, and that Livid account has to Do you can see what I'm saying? Like, yeah
[00:36:06] Nic: Really? It's, it'll be interesting. I, believe, that's something that I can't answer right now, but I believe by the time people are listening to this, that will be answered.
[00:36:16] Nathan Wrigley: Okay
[00:36:17] Nic: I just at, the moment we are, we're unsure. There's a, lot of directions which we could go in. right now we're at a bit of a crossroads.
[00:36:26] Nathan Wrigley: Mm-hmm
[00:36:26] Nic: and, that, kind of, approach is a consideration 'cause one thing that Vimeo have done, and I, when, I say they've done this, they've done this literally last week. They have announced that service, which is called Video On Demand, where basically that, users are able to specify a price, to be able to access, a video, they are going to shut that down.
and so we've suddenly now got, lots of, users out there now who are looking for a alternative, and it seems to be that there is potentially, a gap there which, Livid could, fill. but we wanna make sure that we are not sacrificing anything else that we, also then feel is a very good, features to actually build for our core user group.
so yeah, it's, it might happen, it might not.
but
[00:37:21] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. By the time this comes out, go to livid.com and have a look. You'll be able to see whether it's there or not, or if not, you know, go back in a few months' time. Okay. So on a sort of technological level, presumably, I mean, I could be wrong about this, but I doubt that you've got the backbone infrastructure to run all this.
I imagine that you're levering some cloud provider like AWS or Google Cloud or who
[00:37:42] Nic: Absolutely.
[00:37:43] Nathan Wrigley: which one are, which one of those have you, have you gone for?
[00:37:47] Nic: We are with Google
[00:37:48] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. Google's cloud infrastructure. Okay. So the, you know, what is there to say about that? It's not gonna go over. It's bound to stay up 100% of the time.
wonder, have you, had any downtime with Google? has your video ever not played or so far has it all been hunky
[00:38:05] Nic: So we've never had any play- any playback issues. We have had, we've had one outage, so far, which affected uploads. so we did have a, per- a, short period of time, where uploads were failing, which ironically was actually due to a updated script from Google. but
[00:38:26] Nathan Wrigley: You can't make it up.
[00:38:28] Nic: yeah.
Yeah.
[00:38:29] Nathan Wrigley: oh,
[00:38:30] Nic: yeah, that, that was, It's, always the caveat of being like, "Yep, you're, you are using the big players, and surely that means that it can't go wrong." And then suddenly, something small goes wrong. But, yeah
[00:38:42] Nathan Wrigley: it goes wrong with those people, it's not just you though, is it? Usually it's like there's the widespread moaning around the internet
[00:38:47] Nic: Oh, yes. Yeah. You're
[00:38:48] Nathan Wrigley: goes wrong. It's s- it's so interesting to see what login screens collapse and things like that. So
[00:38:54] Nic: Oh, definitely. Definitely
[00:38:55] Nathan Wrigley: So there we go. I think I've answered...
sorry, I think I've not answered anything. I think I've asked everything that I wanted to ask, and you've answered it. So livid.com is the destination to go and check that out. Anything that you wanted to say that I've missed? 'Cause I know that new and there's probably things that you maybe have got on roadmaps that you wanna get out there.
If so, now's the moment. If not, we'll knock it on the head
[00:39:17] Nic: Absolutely. yeah, I'd probably say the only thing to add is that, of course, whenever people are looking for a, new home now from, from Vimeo, then one thing that I'm sure everyone is thinking about is knowing that the place that they're going to is a safe space. And by a safe space, I mean that, if you're gonna spend the effort to switch providers and you wanna make sure that the provider you're switching to has got the finances, has got the, planning, the foresight in order to still, still exist in, six months.
and, the good thing for us is that, we come from a background of StreamYard. so some, there could be some, s- some folk out there, that have, heard of StreamYard. but if not, that was, a streaming platform, which, is basically, the engineers that built that are the same engineers now that have built Livvid.
and we are backed and financed as well by, the, the founders of StreamYard. so we are in a, a very strong position. and, your videos are very safe on, Livvid.com
[00:40:26] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, good to know. That is good to know. That I was a heavy user of Streamlad- StreamYard, easy for me to say, for the longest period of time. I moved on. things went a, little bit interesting there for, the same reasons that we talked about at the beginning of the show. yeah, so okay, that's good to know.
So, Nick Taylor, with that in mind, thank you so much for chatting to me today. Really appreciate
[00:40:48] Nic: Thank you
[00:40:49] Nathan Wrigley: check it out, livid.com.
[00:40:50] Nic: Thank you.
[00:40:52] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. I hope that you enjoyed that. Like I said at the beginning, I have full confidence that this is going to have posted on time whilst I'm probably sitting on an aeroplane. Fingers crossed, let's hope that that actually happened. If not, I will have egg all over my proverbial face.
I would just like to say thank you to Nic for chatting to me today all about Livid, and what they're offering refugees from Vimeo. Hope that you enjoyed that.
The other thing to say is This Week in WordPress will not be happening for a few weeks because I am going to be on holiday and travelling, but we'll be back, either towards the very end of August or the beginning of September, so we will see you then.
Okay. All that I need to do now is say, stay safe. You have a good week. Here comes some dreadful cheesy music. Bye-bye for now.
