The Motionbox Blog

Do you have photos and videos from this past Halloween?

Good news for you! Shutterfly is running a special Halloween promo and all you have to do is create a Share site and/or post a video to a Share site.

What's in it for you? Get up to 60 free 4x6 prints.

This offer ends on November 8th though, so hurry on over and upload a video! Learn more here.

Do you feel safe publicly posting your children's photos and videos online? We know some parents do, and a lot of parents don't.

There was a great piece about this issue in The New York Times last week. Check out Guardians of Their Smiles to see what we're talking about.

Sharing personal information on the net couldn't be easier today, but at the end of the day, we know parents will have to agree to disagree. Some parents would love for their kids' videos to receive thousands of views on Youtube, and others would be horrified. At Motionbox, we're proud to say that our service truly provides an awesome alternative for those parents who prefer to share their family videos with only those people they know and trust. We know that home videos can be personal to you and not something you want out in the public sphere, so Motionbox offers three different privacy settings on both free and Premium accounts, so that you can share exactly what you want with who you want.

We take privacy seriously here at Motionbox, so if you're ever concerned or have any questions regarding your videos' privacy, don't hesitate to get in touch with us. Happy (safe) video sharing!

Motionbox is now sponsoring How Did You Know, MentalFloss.com's monthly 5-day trivia hunt!

What does this mean? Each month, we'll be giving out some pretty awesome prizes to the winners of How Did You Know on MentalFloss.com. Prizes include free 1-year Motionbox Premium memberships and Vado 8GB HD video cameras! There are great benefits to both prizes, including being able to shoot and share your personal video with your friends and family for free.

We're currently already on Day 3 of this month's trivia hunt, so hurry on over!

VCRs are a thing of the past. Don't let your memories fade out with them! Arkiva, a new Motionbox partner, will transfer your home movies from almost any video format to DVD and upload them to Motionbox! Once uploaded to Motionbox, you'll be able to share those personal home videos with all of your friends and family online. As an added bonus, Motionbox members will receive 10% off any Arkiva purchase. Just use coupon code: MOTION at checkout.

Saturday, October 17th has been declared Home Movie Day! We know how talented many of our members are and have surely seen some wonderful home movies from all over the world on Motionbox. This is a great time to share and showcase your family or amateur videos with other home movie enthusiasts!

For more information on Home Movie Day, click here. There are venues all over the world for folks to showcase their own videos. And if you're unable to attend an actual Home Movie Day event, be sure to participate on Motionbox by sending us a link to your video so we can showcase it on the blog.

On a side note, you might also be interested in learning how to preserve your older home movies that are on reels or VHS tapes. If you transfer these films to DVD, you can easily upload them to Motionbox and share them on the web. It's convenient to have your video online so you can easily access and play it back at any time.

If anyone goes to one of these events, we'd love to hear from you. Otherwise, we can't wait to showcase your favorite home movie on our blog!

Things just got better, iPhone users!

A few months ago, we told you that you could watch your Motionbox videos on the go, by accessing our website from your iPhone, remember?

Now, we're happy to let you know that we have a brand new iPhone app which allows you to access all of your folders on Motionbox and play all your videos. This application is definitely at an early stage and we hope our existing users who have iPhones will try it out and send us their feedback!

You'll be able to download it from iTunes here. We'll continue to add features and make improvements, so if you have any comments or suggestions, just send them our way!

Don't let the title fool you -- this is nothing but good news for everyone! There have been some big changes around Motionbox lately, one of which being our new partnership with Shutterfly. Even though that was (and is!) a big deal for us, we'd like to welcome with open arms the newest addition to Motionbox: Viddyou!

"[...]It is with great pride that we are able to join Motionbox to enhance our vision of creating a high-quality easy-to-use destination for the personal video sharing community," said Viddyou founder and CEO Aaron Wadler.

But that's not just it. We definitely appreciate what Viddyou has contributed to the online video-sharing world: "Motionbox has been very impressed by the great user experience and video technology that Viddyou has built, along with a loyal customer base," said Josh Grotstein, Motionbox CEO.

We're happy that the Viddyou community is joining our tried and true customer base and are working to make this transition as smooth as possible for Viddyou customers. This is a time of growth for Motionbox, so all of our customers, both new and old, can expect even greater changes in the future. Stay tuned!

If you're an advanced user and would like to see even better HD playback on your computer, our support team may recommend that you upgrade your video card. Some of the benefits of an upgraded video card on your computer would be smoother playback, true HD viewing, a faster computer, and more.

So if you're considering getting a new video card, this article should help: Best video card for your money: October 2009. Hardware-revolution.com reviewed some of the newest video cards out on the market, as well as what the best deals are for everyone's budgets.

Keep in mind that this article is specifically geared towards video gamers, but a great place to start your search, regardless. Hope this helps!

The nice folks over at FreshBrain recently posted their evaluation of Motionbox on their site. Thanks, FreshBrain!

You can check out what they had to say about us here.

What's FreshBrain.org? At the core of FreshBrain is an open and free web site freshbrain.org that provides teens with the opportunity to explore, engage, and create through activities and projects. FreshBrain takes advantage of the latest technologies, such as web conferencing and social networking, to provide a very progressive environment where teens can complete activities and work together on projects.

We often have users asking us how to upload videos they have on a DVD onto Motionbox. And of course, we're talking about family videos, not copyright-protected videos (film, television, etc), which obviously aren't allowed on Motionbox.

With a little bit of effort though, you can have home videos from your DVDs up online and ready to share with your friends and family. Here's what you need to know:

First, you'll need to convert the video on the DVD into an actual video file that you can upload to Motionbox. You can see all the video formats we accept here.

There are some free programs out there that enable you to copy a DVD to your computer (sometimes called "ripping" a DVD). This is legal, free, and easy, despite the hard-sound word "rip" :). If you have a PC, check out this tutorial, which walks you through the process and advises you on what software you'll need.

The tutorial recommends a program called DVDx, but we prefer one called HandBrake, which does the same thing, and works on both PC and Mac. You can specify the size you want the final movie to be. Just make you sure you select the proper "chapter" of the DVD - presumably it will be the longest one, but you can always preview it using the "Picture Settings..." button. You can download HandBrake here.

Also, you might wanna check out this Help article on the best compression settings to use for your videos before uploading to Motionbox.

Once you have the video files on your computer, all you have to do is upload!

Not really sure how you can use the Motionbox mixer?

Check out this great mix that user BrewKahuna put together. Use the mixer to join a few interesting clips together, and you have a pretty fun (and cute) video to share with friends! The mixer is a free feature we offer so both Basic and Premium members can try this!

Facebook addicts, rejoice!

If you're already a Motionbox member, you can now connect your Motionbox account to your existing Facebook account. Simply click on the "Facebook Connect" button on the right hand side of your Motionbox Profile page.

Once your Motionbox account is connected to your Facebook account, you can set your Facebook Application settings so that all of your new Open Access videos on Motionbox immediately get posted to your Facebook wall and show up in your friends' news feeds. This free Motionbox app will be a great way for you to share some videos with your Facebook friends, without having to send them e-mails or manually posting the videos to Facebook. And if you have any personal videos you wouldn't want to share with your Facebook friends, all you have to do is mark them as Private instead of Open Access.

This feature is still in Beta, so your feedback is greatly appreciated. We've got a lot more coming in the future, so stay tuned!

Video Sorting

For a while now, your videos on Motionbox wouldn't retain new sort order once you left your folder's page, and the only way to permanently re-order videos was to do it manually. Now, we finally have a way to easily (and "permanently") re-order your videos inside of a folder. Give it a try:

1. Go inside the folder containing the videos you want to re-order.
2. Click on the "Reorder By" link above the list of videos.
3. You'll have five different options from the drop-down menu: Newest First, Oldest First, Title A-Z, Title Z-A, or Reorder Manually. Choose your preference.

Now, the order of your videos won't change until you re-order them again.

Folder Sorting

You'll be able to change the order of your folders on your Folders Page too! Many users didn't like seeing their oldest folders at the top of the page, so they'll be able to easily change that.

Just click the "Reorder By" link above your list of folders and you'll see the same five options in the drop down menu. Motionbox will retain the folder order for you even after you leave your folders page or log out.

Your Friends and Family

Now, even your viewers will be able to sort your folders and videos, so watching your videos will be easier for them. They'll see a "Sort By" link instead of the "Reorder By" link that you see though, and their sorting changes will be temporary and only seen by them.

We hope these new sorting methods will not only make storing your personal videos on Motionbox easier, but sharing too! Have any questions or comments? Let us know.

Dadjunk.com, a blog about things for dads who like things, recently posted up a review about Chad's experience on Motionbox.

Nowadays, all of the main video sites have strong privacy settings, high-quality HD players, and easy handling of multiple formats. Lifehacker recently did an excellent roundup of the best known services. But missing from their list was my favorite family-friendly video sharing site: Motionbox.

As someone who uses Vimeo, Revver, Youtube, Blip.tv, Daily Motion, and other video sharing sites as well, Chad lets his readers know why he thinks Motionbox is different. Check out his review here.

Good news! You'll now see a "Trim" icon on all of your video play pages on Motionbox. Our new Trim feature lets you trim your personal video quickly and easily, without having to go to the Mixer to clip off the boring parts that you don't want in your video.

To trim your video, here's all you have to do:

1. Click on the "Trim" button on your video's play page (It's next to the Delete, Rotate, Email and Favorite icons). You'll be taken to our new Trim Video (Beta) page.

2. Drag the handles to the start and end of your selection. Whatever is within the green bar is what will stay in your video.

3. Click the "Play" button to preview your edits.

4. You'll then have two choices: "Save" and "Save As New Video." If you click "Save," your edits will save over your old video and replace it. Don't do this if you don't want to lose the original! If you click "Save As New Video" though, we'll save this cut for you as a new video in your account, without replacing the old one.

Your edited video will then start optimizing for playback on the web. You don't have to stay on this page at all - feel free to come back to it later once the video has finished processing, and enjoy! You can then start sharing your new, trimmed with all your friends and family to enjoy too.

PS: This is a free new feature we've added to Motionbox, so both Basic and Premium members will get to enjoy it.

PPS: Please note that this feature is still in Beta. If you experience anything that doesn't seem right, feel free to let us know! We'd definitely love to hear your feedback as we work on this new feature.