Movie and TV show streaming service Hulu on Monday added tagging to the mix, allowing users to add up to 30 tags to each piece of content for the sake of organization. These tags also work site-wide, which means that users can see all types of related content regardless of whether it's a TV show or feature-length film.
Users have two choices for tagging: one is creating an all-new tag, while the other is to vote up a tag someone else has made. Each time a user does this it adds to the number, giving certain tags more validity, although unlike size-based systems it's not as immediately clear which tags are more popular or common. Users can also delete tags, but only their own--meaning that if there is a bad tag placed by another user there's no way to report it.
Hulu's new tagging system is part public, part private and works on all content.
(Credit: CNET)Tags are made public and can be seen by other users immediately, although they do not yet appear to be an integrated part of Hulu's search engine. Instead, users can search for a specific tag within the tag section of each video. It's also worth noting that some content on Hulu has an expiration date, so you can spend all the time in the world tagging videos, but something you tagged a few months ago might not be able to be watched at a later date.
One thing Hulu could do with tags (but probably won't) is add timing to the mix. Recently-launched (although still in private beta) AnyClip organizes movie clips by what's happening in them. Hulu could do the same thing with its content by giving users a way to tag by time the way video host Viddler does. Though again, this wouldn't be nearly as useful as AnyClip due to Hulu's frequent content expirations.
Worth noting is that competitor YouTube has long had tags for its hosted movies and TV shows. However, it does not let users add them.
Music video slideshow tool Animoto is venturing into new territory Tuesday night with an upgraded tool that supports video clips. Alongside photos, users can now upload videos up to 200MB in size, including segments that are in high definition. These exist seamlessly beside the photo content, and get the same Animoto treatment with transparency effects, reflections, and other eye candy.
Unlike the way Animoto handles importing photos from third party sites like Flickr, Facebook, and SmugMug, the same cannot be said for videos. If you want it to grab a video you've already uploaded somewhere else you need to track down the source file and re-upload it.
Another caveat--and it's a big one, is that you can only use 5 or 10 seconds of a video at a time, in clip form. This limitation is by design, and serves a few purposes. One is to keep a slideshow from getting muddled down in long clips, while keeping rendering times down on Animoto's side. It also acts as an incentive to upgrade to Animoto's paid service, which bumps the possible clip size from 5 to 10 seconds.
To help make the time limitations a little more feasible, Animoto has a built-in clip editor that lets users choose the 1 to 10 seconds they want to use from an uploaded video. Users just pick the start point, and how long they want it to run, and Animoto's servers do the rest. You can also choose to cut out the sound, as well as duplicate any clip. Doing this several times over lets users string together a series of segments from a larger clip to go beyond the time limitations.
Venturing into the realm of video editing is definitely an interesting move by Animoto. In a chat with me last week, CEO Brad Jefferson insisted that the tool was not headed in a direction that would let users control specific times on how long certain pictures were presented, or tweak things like total clip length--two things that are determined by how many photos (and now videos) users decide to use. "I don't like the idea of moving back to the timeline," Jefferson said. "The music is always going to determine how long (the video) is. We've always been about a really simple paradigm that doesn't get people thinking from a tool level."
That's not to say Jefferson isn't smitten with simpler ways for people to edit their videos before they're uploaded. Especially on the new iPhone, which lets users shoot a video, trim it, then send it in an e-mail, or places like YouTube. For now there isn't a way for users to send those clips to Animoto without first heading to their computers to download the file off the phone, but Jefferson envisions a future update that will take the computer out of the equation entirely.
More or less VuClip's looks on a mobile phone.
(Credit: CNET)VuClip, a start-up presenting at Wednesday's Under the Radar Conference, has a simple concept, but a good one: start with any Internet-ready phone. Search for a video by keyword, then select the video from the list of returned results. VuClip transcodes the video on-the-fly for your specific phone--screen size, video format, bit rate, and so on.
Right now, two things set VuClip apart from competitors: the fact that it's designed to search for any video hosted on the Web, and that it focuses more on mass market Java phones than it does on high-end smartphones, unlike most of the content companies presenting this morning. To this end, VuClip has a native app for Java phones in addition to a mobile-optimized site you can navigate to from any phone with Internet.
In addition to searching with VuClip, you'll be able to browse by a few categories or narrow the search to a specific site by keying in the site's name before typing the search term.
I tried a quick search, and about three videos show up per page, which makes sense with screen size allowances, but which also makes navigating a bit time consuming. It's better to be specific and hope your keywords match up with your target video.
Part two of VuClip's plan is to sign up partners on the API; that will let any carrier or content provider use VuClip's service.
VuClip has harnessed about 17 million video views since launching in January 2008.
Snipd, a Web clippings service we profiled in September, has just opened up to everyone. Its claim to fame is that it lets you clip bits of the Web including text, images, and videos, all without having to download any software or register for an account. The first time you use it via its tiny bookmarklet, it simply creates an account for you, which can be claimed later on.
One of the things that separates it from something like Evernote, is that your snippings can be found in a public directory--at least by default. It fully supports keeping items private, which you can change later on. However, you're encouraged to publicly share things for the social element. Just like FriendFeed people can follow you and track your latest additions in a chronological flow, complete with comments and favorites.
Besides its utility as a social-clipping tool, Snipd lets you mark whatever page you're on for reading later. This emulates some of the versatility of the popular Firefox Extension Read It Later (which updated this morning). However, in Snipd's case, you get e-mailed the entire page.
Snipd co-founder Alex Schliker tells me the amount of adult content Snipd has brought in has been so substantial that he and his partner Emil Gilliam are working on a separate site called Stripd that will house it all and keep it out of Snipd's public feed. This could end up getting the pair more traffic than Snipd, considering no-one has really filled that market niche.
Snipd's real threat still comes from Evernote and FriendFeed. Evernote has a product that lets you clip standard bits of the Web while offering a viable alternative to paid word processing applications. Meanwhile, FriendFeed brings a large team of developers (including ex-Googlers), which results in a rapid release cycle. It also offers a stream of content that flows even when users are not implicitly using it. To get past these two the best thing Snipd can do is offer better tools to make Web clippings that more engaging to make and read.
See also: Yoono, Clipmarks, JetEye, and Diigo
Snipd lets you clip bits and pieces of a site to share the parts you want.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
One of the common complaints about Apple's iPhone--and one that did not get solved with the launch of the iPhone 3G--is the lack of a copy-paste function. An independent developer, Zac White, recently unveiled his open-source solution: OpenClip, a standard for other iPhone application developers.
He's not the first one to have that idea: another developer, Preston Monroe, has created a hack called iCopy that lets iPhone owners copy and paste between the e-mail and Web browser applications.
OpenClip is not a standalone app but rather a technology that developers can incorporate into their iPhone applications, should they choose to participate. No applications yet support OpenClip, but it's coming soon for the American Heritage Dictionary and Roget's Thesaurus applications, Twitter client Twittelator, notepad application MagicPad, finance lexicon Wall Street Worlds, and a number of others.
iPhone users will be able to copy and paste from one OpenClip application to the next, but not to developer applications that aren't participating or to Apple's own iPhone apps, such as its e-mail client or the Safari browser.
Apple has acknowledged that copy-paste functionality will be officially coming to the iPhone, eventually, and OpenClip's creator has recognized Apple's plan.
"Instead of just waiting on the sidelines, we wanted to help iPhone users and Apple by being proactive and trying to help with a solution," the site's FAQ reads. "While just an interim fix until Apple adopts a systemwide version, OpenClip hopes to add to the iPhone user experience and provide a working case study for Apple, hopefully allowing (company engineers) to roll out their version more quickly."
Last week NBC quietly released a learning tool called iCue in conjunction with MIT. (See coverage on CNET TV's Loaded.) It's been designed as a "learning environment" using a large collection of news clips taken from NBC's video archives to enable anyone to catch up on news coverage and current events. This archived footage is put into context, as long as viewers are willing to acknowledge that the content is coming only from one source (NBC), and for now only with the focus on the U.S. presidential elections.
To get going, users can simply wander around the site, viewing various footage that's been meticulously categorized and documented (complete with transcripts). They can also put their knowledge to the test with a smattering of editor-created mini games that require both a contextual understanding of what was going on at the time of the clip, along with whatever other bits of historical insight are found in the one- to two-minute segments. There's a whole lot going on, and I'm betting the casual user is going to get lost very easily.
That's not to say NBC hasn't created a very powerful tool. If you've got the time and patience to learn the system and sit through a bunch of old news clips, you're likely to pick up some knowledge, albeit slightly outdated. Some games are even easy, like the clone of concentration that has you matching pairs of presidential candidates with former U.S. presidents based on which state they're from--that's downright fun.
Concentration is one of iCue's more enjoyable excercises, having you match up presidential candidates from different eras based on what state they're from.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Another thing NBC has definitely gotten right is the video player. Each clip is housed in a tiny floating window that can be flipped over like widgets in OS X's Dashboard. This B-side contains the video's metadata, including an entire set of keywords that pull up a listing of related clips. Users can add their own keywords, in the form of tags, as well as color each video item one of six colors, which I think is superfluous, unless you're planning to color code your entire collection of videos--a nice touch for library science majors, but likely to be useless for most.
NBC's video playing widget is simple yet full of extra options on its 'B-side' that you can flip to.
(Credit: CNET Networks)The site is also a social network in the making. iCue users can befriend one another and send each other their small video collections (iCue calls them "stacks") that contain whatever notes, comments, and tags that have been added to each clip. I couldn't wrangle up anyone to swap stacks with me, but in practice you can chronicle an issue from beginning to end with a collection of clips and pass it on to someone else to watch in whatever order you want. That's pretty neat, albeit time-consuming to put together.
So to answer the question I asked earlier, NBC's iCue can definitely provide a whole lot content and context for current events if you're willing to jump through some hoops. There are a ton of clips on there, and parsing through them can be as easy or as difficult as you're willing to make it. NBC's greatest asset is in some of the pre-made sets of exercises and games, which put the grunt work on the editors instead of the users.
Update: Information about the frame rate has been updated, see more below.
Today Flickr is introducing the single biggest change to its service since launching in 2004--video. The photo service is rolling out the capability to upload video clips of up to 150MB to its paying Pro members. Free members will still be able to view these clips, but will be unable to add their own, at least for the time being.
The company has taken a very different direction than I originally imagined by limiting user video clips to just 90 seconds. It's a far cry from the arms race of higher quality and unlimited length offered by services like Vimeo, Viddler, and even YouTube to a certain degree.
That's not to say videos will look poor and grainy, though. The system has been designed to scale any clip you can throw at it, including high-definition from high-end point-and-shoot cameras or your HD-capable camcorder. The frame rate also maintains 30 FPS, which is half the speed of video captured on most modern point and shoot digital cameras, but a step up from the 12 FPS that was available while I was testing the service over the weekend.
Flickr videos can be played right in the stream of thumbnails. You can also jump to the full-quality version of it with one click.
(Credit: CNET Networks)What Flickr is trying to do with these small clips is provide a place for people to post and share the little videos they're capturing on their digital cameras. The throwaway items that are still very watchable, but hardly worth spending the time to upload to a separate service. The company knows this move will turn many off to the new service, but as part of the Yahoo ecosystem there are important boundaries that dare not be crossed. In light of Yahoo Photos shutting down last year to make way for Flickr, the company seems to have recognized the importance of brand separation and seems intent on creating these artificial boundaries if only to keep people from being confused.
The folks at Flickr say the time limits were not a move forced from having to share company resources with Yahoo Video. Kakul Srivastava, director of product management at Flickr says Yahoo Video is all about giving people a place to create their own content channels and drop those large videos. Her vision for Flickr video is simply to popularize the longer version of photos--something they hope becomes an artistic medium, and that people simply get used to taking alongside their still photography.
So how do videos fit in with the photos? Quite well, actually. Glancing at someone's photo stream (now classified as a media stream), photos and videos sit side by side with no differentiation besides a small play button in the bottom corner of video thumbnails. Like photos, you can simply click on them to go to the page that contains all the usual things like user comments, tags, and metadata, or you can simply view the video in its thumbnail size right in the stream--complete with player controls. It's absolutely wonderful, albeit tiny.
The player is a modified version of the one found on Yahoo video with controls that fade away after a few seconds to reveal the full shot. Users can embed clips on third-party sites as they would anywhere else, and developers can pull in them in through the same data API that's helped integrate Flickr into all manner of third-party tools and services. Expect to see Flickr videos making their way to photo mashup and editing services in a few weeks--JumpCut excluded (for now at least).
Getting your videos on there in the first place is almost as easy as viewing them. Videos can be uploaded at the same time and the same way you're used to uploading your still photos. The Web uploader takes them just fine, and so does an updated version of the desktop software for PCs and Macs. Once your videos are on the service, you can't get them back to your hard drive, something I'm told will be coming later on.
Video on Flickr is off to a good start, but with the artificial time limitations, I find it to be unsuitable for most of the clips I take. For those I'd be better off uploading to a standalone video service with more generous time and file size limits. I can only imagine some of my less tech-savvy friends trying to upload a video that's slightly over the size or time limit and simply giving up. That said, power users and people who are intentionally shooting short-form video will find the service a joy.
In the future I expect Flickr to lift the size and length restrictions entirely. In my chat with Srivastava, she had alluded to as much. The company also plans to let free users upload videos later on when the platform matures.
Various specs can be found after the break. See also News.com photo guru Stephen Shankland's post on it.
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Don't count out VideoEgg just yet.
Rumors have circulated that the San Francisco-based company is on the verge of a shutdown, but that's not the case, said Matt Sanchez, the company's CEO.
The rumors no doubt were churned up by the e-mails the company has sent notifying users of its decision to stop hosting videos uploaded to the site by the public and to scale back hosting services on the VideoEgg Publishing Platform.
"What we're doing is focusing on efforts around our ad network brand, the EggNetwork brand," Sanchez said Wednesday. "We want to focus on ad product and brand advertising online, so these are just steps we're taking to rationalize the business."
My.video.videoegg was used for "very small amounts of personal use," Sanchez acknowledged. "It was people trying out the service. In actuality, for many people it was a demonstration of the upload technology. That was where we started as a company."
Already, VideoEgg has shut off the uploading function on the site. The service shuts down completely on May 31, so users had better grab their clips now. As for the company's platform service, VideoEgg will continue the service for larger, profitable companies. Everybody else is out.
Sanchez said the 100-employee company hasn't cut back on staffing and will just "refocus" some employees. VideoEgg, founded in 2005, is still not profitable, but Sanchez said the company is encouraged by the growth of its advertising arm and is selling ads in eight markets in four countries.
VideoEgg employs a direct sales force to work with media-buying agencies. They can manage an ad campaign as it goes out over Videoegg's network--a collection of video, social, and gaming sites, Sanchez said. "We can concentrate now on making great tools for brand advertisers."
Programs that grab videos from Web sites like YouTube aren't a dime a dozen--they're a dime for 200 dozen. Most of them aren't that good, either, which makes Ashampoo's freeware ClipFinder such a breath of fresh air in the video-grabbing game.
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I use TechSmith's Snagit screen-capturing tool (review) on a daily basis to gather all sorts of shots for posts and archival purposes. It works great at getting those pixel-precise sizes you might be going for, along with taking a step or two out Windows' less-than-stellar built-in print screen function. Today I've been playing with a small download called Clip2Net. It's a free and simple screenshot program with built-in Web uploading for screenshots AND image files. It's not at all as advanced as Snagit, but if you're in the market for a relatively easy way to take and host screenshots, or share a roll of pictures with friends, Clip2Net is a promising hybrid solution.
Setup is simple: Just download and install the less-than-1MB file and you're good to go. You can start capturing right away, either in regions or the entire screen at a time. Registering and plugging in your login credentials lets you upload your shots to a Web folder that saves all your shots. Likewise, if you'd like to stay anonymous, Clip2Net will provide you with a URL where your shot is being hosted--although keep in mind that if you lose that URL, you won't be able to track it down again.
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