Everyone take a deep breath and repeat after me: There is life for your films beyond YouTube, and it can be found at blip.tv. Now in its second year, the video-sharing service is enjoying a surge in popularity and it’s about time you jumped on the bandwagon.

Blip.tv was designed for user-generated video with a focus on episodic content rather than the viral video that floods similar sites. What really sets blip.tv apart from its competitors, however, is the plethora of options it offers its users who are serious about getting their work seen throughout the Web, prompting filmmaker Scott Solary to tout the site as “the closest thing to one-stop shopping for your Web uploading and distribution needs.” Beyond free hosting, the site also allows users to upload audio or video in numerous formats (QuickTime, MPEG, DivX, mp3 and more) at a max size of 1GB. Once uploaded, content appears immediately both on its destination site as well as on the user’s personal homepage at [username].blip.tv. Distribution becomes easier and more lucrative for the DIY set with cut-and-paste HTML and RSS feeds for cross-posting your content, and an opt-in advertising program splits revenue 50/50. Named by the Webbys as the Best Broadband Web site of 2007, blip.tv appears to be growing, adding new features such as pro accounts that offer mp3 audio podcasts, Apple TV and iPod compatibility, timed publishing and quicker transcoding.  

If you’re looking to get your hours and hours of hard work away from the pixelated dregs of other hosting sites, give blip.tv a try.