The Motionbox Blog - Motionbox makes it easy for you to share your videos with friends, family, or anyone you like. It's a personal video service that gives you a safe, friendly, private place to share your personal memories in vivid HD quality.
I've spent the last eight months transferring all my tapes onto a 2-terabyte hard drive...And what I discovered has nothing to do with technology, and everything to do with emotion, family and memory. I'm telling you, these tapes are INCREDIBLE. My wife and children wander up to my attic office, spot whatever movie is currently importing, and they're just goggle-eyed. We'd completely forgotten what we used to look like, how we used to talk. Our lives are so full, we barely recognize some of the places we've been and the experiences we've had.
All that time, spent behind the video camera - is it worth it? We have to agree with David here; it definitely is.
Read the article here, and let us know your thoughts, too.
With our latest press release from earlier today, I wanted to remind you about a great package Motionbox and Creative Labs are offering for a limited time: get a Vado HD 8GB Pocket Video Cam, plus a free one-year Motionbox Premium subscription, for just $129.99 (yes, that's saving you $150).
Learn more about the Vado HD 8GB Pocket Video Cam package here and check out our press release here. If you're looking for a great video camera to buy and need a place to store and share your personal videos, this bundle is nothing short of awesome.
Hi, I'm Andrew, a manager in the engineering group at Motionbox. In my family, one of the "Dad jobs" is to take pictures and videos of the kids, (Nate, 4 and Julia, 7). I don't do this enough. I really wish I did it more often. I also try and convince my wife to take more now that she has an iPhone, but that's a whole separate topic.
I take video and pictures together and in bursts. The bursts generally happen every month or two. Halloween, Birthdays, ice skating, or a new karate belt are all obvious examples, though generally it's the random "dance party" on a Saturday afternoon, or explanation of the "cheese touch" game at school, that make the best videos.
For some events, I just capture and then offload the files to my laptop a month or even more later. Sometimes I don't even look at the results when I offload them but just make room for more. Even when I capture something and don't look at for some time, a year or two later I am glad I did it and they take on some magic with time.
Occasionally I am on the stick and capture, upload, edit, and then share them shortly afterward. Whenever I do the entire cycle I get huge "Thank You"s from Grandparents and friends. It feels good to share and then even better a year or two later to have these cleaned up, organized little batches to look through. I would imagine those organized sets feel a lot like the scrapbooks some people get so involved in building.
Each of those steps I mentioned, "capture", "upload", "edit," and "share" have habits and tricks that make for better results. Over the next few weeks I want to work on each of those steps. I want to figure out how to make them work better and discuss them with anyone that wants to share their own tips. I would love to hear from people what their workflow (ick, that makes it sound like work) is. What works for you as well as what stops you from doing it more.
One last thought, I have often wished "if only I had videoed that" and I have yet to think "wow that was a waste!" The most important step is the first one, right?
In light of that fact, I thought I'd share this excellent article on *why* you would ever want to add video to your business website and how to measure its success. Learn about viral videos, conversion videos, and educational videos, and what they'll do for your business. Then determine what's best for you.
Check out the article and tell us what you think. And if you have any questions about hosting your videos on a Motionbox PRO account, don't hesitate to let us know as well!
Cell phones are a unique creature in the world of videos. Their ability to record video might be overshadowed by the quality offered by ultra-compact camcorders. However, the cell phone’s ability to instantly send videos to video sharing sites such as Motionbox allows for arguably the smoothest and most rapid way to get your personal videos seen by the outside world. In the spirit of recognizing this avenue of video distribution, here are five phones that offer exceptional possibilities to the cell shooter:
We've sent you a direct message on Twitter with directions on how to get your free Motionbox Premium account. We're excited for you to start enjoying all the benefits of it, including virtually unlimited upload space, HD playback, secure personal video sharing, and much more!
If you have any questions, just leave a comment or shoot us an email. Congrats again.
Once in a while, our support team receives emails from users wanting to know how they should compress their videos so that they can upload them faster. Here is a recent blog post by one of our users too, requesting a pre-upload compression feature on Motionbox.
While it's true that smaller videos mean faster uploads, here's our advice to you: do *not* compress/transcode/convert/re-size your videos before uploading them!
Always upload the original source files. Whether you're uploading videos to Motionbox as a backup or because you love sharing them with friends and family, we want your personal videos to look their absolute best, and the less they're transcoded, the better. When you upload your videos, we already have to transcode them once to prepare them for web playback, so transcoding them once before our transcode will greatly affect video quality once your videos are on Motionbox. Our uploaders accept a huge variety of video formats for just this reason - so you won't have to convert your videos at all before uploading them.
I know uploading can be a pain sometimes. Videos are usually very big files, and who has all day? That's why we're proud to offer our desktop uploader, the MXU. Set your videos to upload before you sleep at night, or before leaving for work in the morning. If your Internet connection drops in the middle of an upload, the MXU is designed to pickup where it left off as soon as the connection is working again. So you never have to worry about your video not fully uploading! And this is a free feature on Motionbox - you don't need to be a Premium member to use it.
No excuses now; don't compress your videos if you don't have to. It's less work for you this way, anyway!
A few weeks ago, we announced Motionbox's new channel on Roku. We also ran a contest from November 11th - November 30th, offering new Motionbox members a chance to win one of three brand new Roku HD digital players.
Here's a great, big congratulations to the official Roku Giveaway winners:
Jeff K., Milwaukee, WI
Trevor M., Boca Raton, FL
Bryan M., Cerro Cordo, IL
Thanks for entering Motionbox's Roku Giveaway! We're thrilled you'll now be able to upload and share your personal home videos on Motionbox and view them on your TV, for free!
It's holiday time and you have loved ones living far away. Do something this year and use Motionbox to send a holiday greeting video!
Check out the first holiday video greeting user cruble, from DadJunk.com, sent out to his friends and family:
Was that cute, or what? We're thrilled to see our users utilizing Motionbox to stay in touch with their loved ones in such a fun way. Have a wild holiday, from us here at Motionbox, too!
Looking for more Motionbox prizes this month? Win a Vado 8GB HD video camera or a free Motionbox Premium subscription to share your personal videos by checking out this month's HDYK Trivia Hunt on MentalFloss.com.
Still stuck on gift ideas? Here's another idea. This holiday season, give your friends and family something they’ll love AND use.
For a limited time, you can get a Vado HD 8GB Pocket Video Cam, plus a one-year Motionbox Premium subscription, for just $129.99. That’s $120 OFF the suggested retail price!
Capture your personal memories with the Vado 8GB Pocket Video Cam....
Shoot up to 2 hours of HD or 8 hours of Standard Definition video
Get in close with 2x digital zoom
Stay green with a removable, rechargeable battery
Accessories included (HDMI cable, silicone skin, and USB cable)
and share them securely with Motionbox Premium:
Upload a virtually unlimited number of videos
Watch, share, and embed in true HD quality
Trim, rotate, and edit your videos online
Download videos back to your computer
Learn more here. And if you have any questions, just let us know!
The internet has changed the face of video forever. With sites like Motionbox making personal video sharing easier than ever, it’s not hard to see why everyone wants in on the action, as would-be internet sensations turn to cameras emphasizing portability, ease of use, and rapid uploading to the internet. Budding videographers aren’t the only people aware of the web video craze. Camera makers have raced to meet the demand for web friendly cameras, releasing a multitude of easy to use camcorders small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, yet able to pack an HD punch. With this in mind, here’s a rundown of some of the leading ultra-compact camcorders on the market today that’ll get you on the Internet in record time.
Flip Mino HD -The Flip camera was arguably the first serious hit in the ultra-compact web-friendly camcorder craze. Though its 720p HD sensor still needs to catch up with some of its competitors, the Flip MinoHD continues to up the ante with a smaller, yet sturdier metal frame, stereo audio, and internal memory (up to 8GB) that’s perfect for those who don’t want the hassle of managing memory cards.
Sony Webbie HD Camera MHS-PM1 - Sony’s foray into web cameras boasts a useful swiveling lens head, allowing for greater flexibility while filming. Its suite of features includes an audio recorder function, Memory-Stick PRO Duo slot for upgradable storage space, and an impressive 1080p HD resolution.
Kodak Zi8 - In addition to offering one of the sleeker designs of camcorders in its class, Kodak utilizes many features in the 1080p Kodak Zi8 normally seen in still cameras. Image stabilization, face tracking, and a macro focus setting add up to a camera that puts visual control in the hands of the user.
AIPTEK PenCam HD - For when your camera can’t possibly get any smaller, turn to the aptly named AIPTEK PenCam HD. Its small size (though more highlighter than pen) is clearly the PenCam HD’s primary draw, as its technical features are fairly standard: 720p HD video stored in 4GB of internal memory. It does hold one unusual perk, however, in an MP3 player.
iPod Nano - Yes, it shoots video too. The latest incarnation of the iPod Nano now includes video recording. The Nano’s still an MP3 player first and foremost, offering 640 x 480 resolution video with few bells and whistles outside of some filters. However, unlike other camcorders pictured here, you are getting an iPod with your camcorder, making an enticing offer for those who want an all-in-one electronic solution.
We have a lot of users asking our Support team how they can share all their personal videos with their friends and family at once.
One of the easiest ways you can do this is by giving them this URL: http://www.motionbox.com/profiles/USERNAME. All you have to do is replace the word "USERNAME" with your specific Motionbox username.
Easy enough, right? Your friends and family members can even bookmark this URL so that they can easily go to it whenever they want to catch up with your life and see the newest videos you've uploaded.
We'll be posting a few promotions on our Twitter profile throughout this month. All you have to do is re-tweet (RT) our tweet on your own Twitter account, include "#Motionbox" in your tweet, and you'll get 1 entry into the sweepstakes (for details, check out our Rules page). In January, we'll randomly choose one winner from among all the RT'ers to get a free Motionbox Premium membership for one year to host and share all their videos (that would normally cost you $39.99...). Not bad, huh?
Here is the first tweet you can RT:http://twitter.com/motionbox/statuses/6276327391.
PS: If the whole tweet is too long to RT, make sure not to omit the first part of the tweet (the link we want you to share with others).
A few weeks ago, we announced 
