Vidnik is a new Mac application that lets you quickly record video from your Mac's iSight camera and then upload it to YouTube. Simply run Vidnik, set your YouTube account username and password, record some video, crop it, add some tags and a description, choose the video category, and then click "Upload."
The movies you record are saved as .mov files in ~/Movies/Vidnik so that you can use them for other things as well. You can also drag other movies onto Vidnik for easy upload to YouTube.
Vidnik is a good tool for video bloggers (who want to use YouTube's bandwidth instead of their own), video responses to other YouTube videos, and solo musicians who want to be able to quickly upload performance video.
Flashforward2008 is going to be in San Francisco this August. This annual conference is directed at Flash designers and developers and those who aspire to be called a designer or developer. Every year Flashforward features a Film Festival with open nominations of the best Flash content out there. In 2008 the categories have changed to the following:
Application
Cartoon/Story/Narrative
Code
Experimental/Art
Game
Motion Graphics
Navigation/Experience
Sound
Typography
Video
Anyone can submit links to Flash based works in all categories that are 'innovative and compelling.' Previous winners include Paper Vision 3d, the MoMA Contemporary Voice exhibition, and the amazing Tokyo Plastic. If you do submit a nomination to Flashforward2008 via the official film festival page, please let us know in the comments below with a link. The deadline for nominations is Father's Day, June 15, 2008.
Microsoft released an updated version of its iTunes competitor today. The new Zune Marketplace adds TV downloads and a bunch of new music features. Here are some of the highlights:
The desktop application is integrated with the "Zune Community," allowing users to send messages and share their collections with friends
Ability to drag and drop a friend's Zune Card onto your portable media player
Gapless playback
Tools for editing meta data
But it's probably the new TV store that's going to steal the show. Microsoft says more than 800 episodes are availabe as of today, with titles including South Park, The Office, Heroes, 30 Rock, SpongeBob, Ghost in the Shell, Battletar Galactica, and Robot Chicken. Programs will cost you $2 per episode. There's no word on if and when we'll see movies on the Zune Marketplace.
You know those pretty slideshows that you can view in Flickr? PicLens is a browser plugin for Firefox and Internet Explorer that lets you view images from a bunch of sites as slideshows. When we last looked at PicLens, you could view images from Flickr, Google, Photobucket, SmugMug, DeviantArt, and Yahoo! Now PicLens has added support for YouTube videos.
When you click the PicLens button in your browser, you get a black screen and a search bar. Just type any term in the search bar and you can sift through a wall of YouTube thumbnails. Click a video and it will start playing. You can blow videos up to full screen, or look through more thumbnails while your video is playing. In other words, it's kind of like watching YouTube without the ads.
Remember Lycos? Once upon a time they were a search engine and internet portal, just like Google and Yahoo! And today they're... well, actually they're still around, much to our surprise. And today the company launched its most interesting product in ages: an online video site with a social twist.
When you start watching a movie in Lycos Cinema, you can invite friends to watch along with you, no matter where they are. The video will play back on all of your computers at almost exactly the same instant. So users can chat about the movie in real-time as they watch. The person who starts the movie can pause, rewind, and fast forward the video stream. And the controls are almost instantaneous. If you've got a broadband connection, you can skip ahead to the end of a movie in just a matter of seconds, with no buffering.
The site features both free and paid content. When you rent a movie, you can pay one fee for a one person rental, another for "5 seats," and the top price for "10 seats." The prices seem reasonable, topping out at around $6 for 10 seats. But there's one major problem. The content sucks. We're talking, makes Joost, and even Babelgum look good sucks. The most exciting thing we could find in the free content was a Godzilla movie. The rental store content is about as fresh, with titles like Convoy and Monster from a Prehistoric Planet in the featured content section. You can imagine what the non-featured content looks like.
For years TCPMP was the reigning champ of Windows Mobile video players. The program is light weight, customizable, and can handle practically any video codec you can throw at it. But the developers of TCPMP have moved onto the commercial CorePlayer. So when we saw that there was a new version of the DivX Mobile Player, we figured we'd take it for a spin and see how it stacks up.
The application is pretty. Like really pretty. When you load it up, DivX Mobile Player will automatically detect any videos on your device which it can play. It will then create thumbnail images form the files to make your video list easier to navigate. Unfortunately this can take a while and the program doesn't respond to taps very quickly while your phone or PDA is busy grabbing thumbnails.
The video playback screen is sparse, which is a good thing if all you want to look at is the video. You get a black background, a scrollbar, two menu buttons, and your movie. You can watch your videos in fullscreen mode and get rid of the toolbar buttons. And you can adjust your colors and a few other settings. But there are some important features that are missing, like the ability to adjust your aspect ratio. Seeking also takes an excrutiatingly long time.
We're not quite ready to throw away TCPMP yet, but the DivX Mobile Player is worth keeping an eye on. The latest version features improved power management features, which should help improve battery life while watching videos. The DivX Mobile Player is also available or Symbian devices, but the latest version is 0.89. An update shoul be coming soon. You'll need to register for a free DivX account to download the mobile player.
There's no question that it's faster to purchase a movie from the iTunes store than your local video store -- assuming you have a speedy internet connection. But if you want to get the latest releases as son as they're out on video, you're probably better off making the trek to the video store. Or at least that's what we would have told you yesterday, when it could take weeks or months longer for movies to show up on iTunes. But now Apple has announced that many movies will be available on iTunes the same day as they are released n DVD.
Apple has reached deals with Fox, Disney, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Universal, Sony, Lionsgate, Image, and First Look. That covers a lot of territory. New releases will typically set you back $14.99. The press release doesn't make it clear whether this applies to the $2.99 movie rentals, so if you want to rent a video for just a few bucks, you might still better off using Netflix or walking to a bricks and mortar store.
Adobe's Flash player already powers YouTube, Hulu, and roughly 99% of all the video you see on the web. But apparently that isn't good enough for Adobe, because the company has launched the Open Screen Project, with the goal of creating a Flash standard that will work equally well on a variety of devices, including computers, cellphones, and set top boxes.
Adobe will be removing restrictions on the use of SWF and FLV formats, will publish device porting information for the Flash Player, and will remove licensing fees for the next releases of Adobe AIR and the Adobe Flash Player for devices. Currently you can get the computer versions for free, but you have to pay for the mobile versions.
In other words, Adobe is opening up its proprietary formats, releasing technical information, and generally making it a lot easier for developers to write Flash content that will play seamlessly on any device.
YouTube, the mayor of New Orleans, and the governor of Louisiana have publicly invited the presidential candidates to participate in a presidential forum this September. Since this is not an official debate, it is unknown if any of the candidates will actually show up. Either way, the event should prove successful -- here's why.
It's been quite some time since New Orleans was hit by Hurricane Katrina, but the city is not done suffering. There's about 86,000 evacuees stuck in Houston, Atlanta and 40 other cities, and there the government currently has no plan on how it will bring these people home (not to mention the city's other 921,332,437,208 problems). So even if the candidates don't show up to the debate, the publicity stunt should help to remind government officials that it's not over yet. In other words, it's a giant call for help.
Despite that many may dismiss YouTube as a time-waster, this isn't the site's first dive into the presidential race. Last year, YouTube allowed its users to record and send in questions, which would be answered by the candidates on TV. And though we know the Google owned site gets a lot of great publicity out stuff like this, we can't help but tip our hat for the good work.
There are two things that make FLV.To absolutel amazing. The first is the sheer number of Google AdSense and referral ads that the developer managed to cram into a small space. But we're willing to overlook that because the other remarkable thing about FLV.To is how easy the site makes it to save YouTube videos as MP3 files.
No, you're not going crazy. YouTube deals in videos, and MP3 files are audio only. But there's a huge number of music videos on YouTube, and FLV.To will let you save the audio from those videos in a matter of seconds. Just pop in the URL of any YouTube video and the site will proces the file and spit out an MP3 which you can download and listen to. If you've already gone through the process of downloading YouTube videos as FLV files, you can also upload Flash videos from your desktop for easy conversion.
SeeqPod is a search engine for finding music on the web. But it's much more than that. Enter an artist or song title in SeeqPod and it will look for MP3s, video files, or web sites related to you term and present them in a nice clean list -- with links to play the files on the site. You can use SeeqPod without registering for an account, but if you want to save playlists you'll want to sign up for a free account.
SeeqPod has been around since last year, but we're having one of those days where we keep thinking of cool things we've never shared with you before. This morning it was the K-Meleon web browser, and now we bring you SeeqPod.
There are a few other nifty things you can do with SeeqPod, like embed audio clips on your web page or find lyrics or tour dates from an artist. Or you can even embed an audio search and playback widget on your web site.
Bear in mind, many of the songs that SeeqPod finds on the web are not exactly being legally distributed. But since SeeqPod isn't actually hosting the files itself, the company is sort of gray market and may be able to stand up against any future legal challenges. Or it may not.
Debut could be one of the easiest to use video capture tools we've come across. You can use it to record videos or take screenshots from your webcam. You can use it to record screencasts. And you can save your files in a variety of formats including AVI, WMV, MP4, MPG, 3GP, and MOV. And best of all, Debut is free.
Here are just a few of Debut's features:
Record audio and video
Adjust resolution, framerate, and colors of the output video
Setup timed recordings by hour, minute, and second
Mirror recordings to a network or local hard drive
Automatically send videos via email once a recording is finished, or upload to an FTP site.
There are a ton of configuration options. In addition to recording your screen or from a webcam, you can record from any video input capture device on your computer. So if you've got a TV tuner, you can record live TV. If you want to record home movies from your video camera, you can do that too.
Remember that Stage6 clone called DivXit we told you about yesterday? Apparently the folks at DivX didn't really like its name too much. Because today the site has a new name: Vreel. There's also a new Q&A which makes it clear that while the site was inspired by DivX's defunct Stage6 video sharing service, Vreel will build a brand new video database.
Vreel will, however, use the DivX codec and webplayer which are pretty much the things that made Stage6 special. Stage6 was one of the first sites to offer high definition video streams. While many other video sharing sites have since caught up, the DivX webplayer is still one of the best looking HD video streaming applications we've seen.
The launch date for Vreel has been pushed back a week to May 6th. Vreel says when the site goes live users will be able to upload files up to 800MB, with an eye toward enabling 1GB uploads eventually.
Vreel will eventually offer video downloads in addition to online video streams.
There's not much information available about DivXit.net yet, other than the fact that the site should launch next week. We're going to go out on a limb and guess that the folks behind the site plan to implement a DivX web video player and set up online conversion tools that let users upload various video types to share on the service.
No word on how DivXit will be able to make a Stage6 clone profitable when DivX was unable to do so. The company shut down Stage6 because it was spending too much time and energy on the bandwidth-heavy site instead of focusing on its core mission of working with hardware manufacturers to deliver DivX-certified devices.
Want to watch TV on your iPhone? Yesterday we would have said the best way to do this is to purchase TV shows from the iTunes store or transfer recordings (or downloads) from your computer to your iPhone the old fashioned way. But now Chris Carey has released a MythTV FrontEnd for the iPhone.
The application lets you browse recorded shows, check out program information, and stream videos from your Linux PC with MythTV BackEnd installed.
While Sling Media is considering developing a version of its SlingPlayer software for the iPhone that will let Slingbox owners stream content from their home TV or PVR to a handset, Carey's MythTV FrontEnd application is the first tool I'm aware of that actually lets you stream recorded TV to an iPhone.
You can check out a video of MythTV for the iPhone after the jump.
Vidnik is a new Mac application that lets you quickly record video from your Mac's iSight camera and then upload it to YouTube. Simply run Vidnik, set your YouTube account username and password, record some video, crop it, add some tags and a description, choose the video category, and then click "Upload."
Flashforward2008
