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.
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.
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."
File-hosting service DivShare quietly launched a video-hosting service this morning. Designed to help users share short video clips, DivShare is taking a slightly different approach, letting people upload video files, up to 200MB, which can then be shared on social networks, blogs, and Web sites. Users can upload files anonymously or register so they can keep track of every file they've ever uploaded to the service. (Those file, according to DivShare, will "never" be removed.) Each time you upload a file, you're also given a direct download link that can be shared with others.
I wouldn't typically write about a service update like this one, but DivShare's flash video quality is pretty good-looking at 560x420--which is almost up to VGA resolution, the native size for video capture on most digital cameras. Files uploaded to the service will stick around "forever," which is a claim I take about as seriously as unlimited storage.
DivShare also recently launched Groups, a service that lets users band together to share files related to common interests. This might sound like a front for illegal file sharing (which Webware doesn't support), but there are already some neat groups that have formed, including a world travel group and one for publicly licensed e-books. All files are hosted on the service, and similar to Flickr's group feature, there's a centralized pool where users can dump their files. Each group can also get their own custom URL and private-access options.
I've posted an example video below. Grab the original here.
Related: Wikipedia's comparison chart of file-hosting services.
YouTube has launched the first ever YouTube Awards with 70 videos in seven categories. This week viewers can vote to pick their favorites of 2006. It's kind of like the Oscars, but for user-generated video clips such as Lonelygirl15 and Ask a Ninja. As of right now, there's nothing on the awards page but a bunch of comments from confused users who have made their way to the site to find nothing to vote on. Digging deeper, clicking on playlist shows a full listing of clips. We're assuming there will be a voting system similar to the one for Super Bowl commercials, along with some snazzy layout put into place when the page goes live at 2 p.m. PST.
There's much discussion highlighting that this isn't a new idea. In fact, the Vloggies did it last year, complete with an actual event. Winners of this year's YouTube Awards will receive trophies and special promotion on YouTube's front page. I'd like to see YouTube offer some sort of cash or video camera prize to the winners. After all, the traffic and ad revenue generated from these videos is certainly worth rewarding the submitters with something besides a virtual trophy.
Marshall Kirkpatrick from SplashCast has painstakingly taken the time to add all the nominated videos to a single SplashCast player, which I've embedded below [via NewTeeVee].
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