Seyret Vs HWDVideoShare Part 2: User Features & Usability

*** This article is part of a series comparing 2 very popular Joomla video components; Seyret & HWDVideoshare. ***

Part 2: User Features & Usability

In the first part of this series I talked about the administration features. In this followup article i'm going to touch on the public parts of the scripts, and those accessible by the general membership.

A) Categories

As I mentioned in the first part of this series, both components have a very similar category structure, allowing for parent and child categories to help breakdown the full list of videos. From a user point of view, the categories are very much the same; they display the categories including the number of videos held in each.

As you can see HERE, HWDVideoShare's category structure is very straight forward, however through basic PHP and HTML editing, the template is fully customisable.

I am going to give Seyret props here as it comes standard with a category module for your sidebars. HWD has a category module as part of the pro features only. As such, Seyret gets the nod but only slightly.

B) Upload / Add Videos

The upload features of Seyret and HWD are very similar in nature; that is, both of them are designed to either upload a video from your PC, or to add a video from a third part service such as YouTube. The procedure to add videos is straight forward for both, enter the entire video URL (ie. YouTube video URL you want to add), select a category you want and hit submit.

At this point, HWD has a feature that puts is well ahead of Seyret, and it's something so simple many would overlook it. Quite simply, on the next page you don't have to do anything at HWD. The title, description and tags are all completed for you. You can edit them if you please, or simply leave them as they are.

In Seyret at this point you generally have the title and description completed but no tags, so you end up having to manually tag the video, literally adding in an entirely new step in the proceedure.

Seyret does offer to redeem itself however, as it is compatible with a very large list of video servers from around the world, possibly giving it a greater reach globally.

From purely YouTube, Google Video etc HWD is always going to get the better rating.

C) Groups

As mentioned in part 1, Seyret does not offer anything like groups, so HWD gets the default win here. From a users point of view, when you are looking at videos on HWD you are able to share the videos, and add your favorite videos to groups you are members of. Say for example you are a member of the Dallas Stars Ice Hockey group, then you can add videos relating to that group from the video view page. This helps build the community and generates more interest in the videos.

D) Commenting, Rating & Sharing

With regards to commenting, but applications require the use of third part commenting components. Personally I like to use the JComments component as find it the smoothest to use and best looking. Of course, the choice of commenting system is purely personal. Both components are compatible with the main commenting components available including the JoomlaComments, JComments and in the case of Seyret, the Fireboard discussion forum.

Both systems have a 5-star rating system for the videos allowing users to rate how good or bad a video has beeb. I have found the HWD Ajax system to be much more streamlined and better to use.

From a sharing point of view, both the components come certain sharing features right out the box. Seyret offers the primary sharing options and allows you to turn on or off depending what you need. HWD has what appears to be more sharing features, including the main social webs, email and bookmarks.

Winner? In all honesty btoh components do exactly the same thing and offer virtually identical features. I will call a draw here.

Summary

In part 1 I came to the conclusion that HWD was on average the better of the 2 components. While Seyret looked to redeem itself in the usability aspect of this review, it came up short of an HWD component that is both solid and very usable.