February 16, 2007

Newest Flash Tools on Display at Photobucket

Michael Arrington

47 comments »

The latest Flash photo/video/sound editing tools that we mentioned last week are now enabled at Photobucket for premium users, and will go live for all users in March. Geoff Baum at Adobe confirmed that these tools are not yet available anywhere on the web except for Photobucket.

The new tool allows PhotoBucket users to mash up photos, video and stock music files into a single slide show/video and then display those mashups on any website. The screen shots below help describe some of what they are doing, but the key changes that make the tools better than what Motionbox, JumpCut (acquired by Yahoo), and Cuts are offering on the video side and Slide and RockYou on the photo side are just how fast and easy it is to make one of these. I stopped by the Photobucket offices earlier this week for a run through, and we created a photo and video mashup and added music in a matter of moments. An example:

Users are restricted from uploading their own audio files (copyright concerns drove this), but Photobucket says they may add a record button to allow a narrative of the photo/video stream in the future. For now, a selection of licensed stock music is available. Users can also add transition effects, text bubbles, frames and other effects to the mashup.

Since these tools were created by Adobe they’ll be available to Photobucket’s competitors as well, and I expect similar products to be launched by those competitors in the near future. By being first, though, Photobucket gets a head start over these other companies. How significant that advantage is, is yet to be seen.

Photobucket is based in Colorado and Silicon Valley, and has 60 employees. They’ve raised $15 million over two rounds of financing.

Screenshots below:

Sphere It

This entry was posted on Friday, February 16th, 2007 at 6:28 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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Clarke Scott

February 16th, 2007 at 6:38 pm

Awesome! And i think over the next 12 month we are going to see alot more rich browser based web aplication.

Microsoft regradless of what you think of them is releaseing WFP/E which if they get it right will be a hugr step forward in this area.

Good time

Clarke
http://blogarate.com
Ashish Mohta

February 16th, 2007 at 6:40 pm

Looks like a cool stuff.It will be great to share between friends or may be to generate some idea in blogs!!

BTW…good job at the video u made there…loved the music
tr101

February 16th, 2007 at 6:59 pm

Uhm.. I’m on WinXP Pro IE7 and this flash thingy is blinking like crazy.
Andy

February 16th, 2007 at 7:22 pm

FF on Win2000 has the flashiness also. It looks like a video widget or something, but I don’t care enough to investigate the reason or what exactly it’s supposed to be.
Thomas Linder

February 16th, 2007 at 7:22 pm

With Flash 8 it blinks like f-ing crazy. You have to upgrade to Flash 9 for it to be reasonable.
David Mackey

February 16th, 2007 at 9:25 pm

Looks pretty sweet. Though I couldn’t get the video working. I was watching it through FeedReader, which I believe integrates the IE browser. Ohh, there it goes. Some long buffering time w/out any notifications.
pankaj

February 16th, 2007 at 9:31 pm

Not working on FF + Mac.
BTW Congrats to Photobucket and Pro users.
Flickr???? You guys following this? I need more from my pro account.
FavoTube

February 16th, 2007 at 9:48 pm

That’s an interesting tool…Wont use it
hanamau

February 16th, 2007 at 9:56 pm

cool
good time
welcom to http://www.okbbc.com
Mike Abundo

February 16th, 2007 at 10:26 pm

Photobucket is more of a photo hosting service than a photo sharing service. They’re going in the right direction with these presentation tools. They can create additional revenue by licensing these tools to full-service hosting providers, whose customers wouldn’t use Photobucket anyway.
kyle

February 16th, 2007 at 10:26 pm

video not working on flash9+linux
waruwaru

February 16th, 2007 at 11:03 pm

Haha, appropriately named article. Crazy blinking here as well on XP/IE7

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lc2onts-kU8
Ankit

February 16th, 2007 at 11:54 pm

Looks quite nice there, cant wait till its released to even the free users.
James

February 17th, 2007 at 1:06 am

A product that also presenting at DEMO 07 next to us was Vuvox. This was impressive and has a really sweet UI.

http://www.vuvox.com

I can see this being used for more than the consumer market they seem to be going after. Pretty saturated but they do have a unique offering. I can see creative firms and designers show off their work with Vuvox also instead of the formulaic output that exists now.

We plan to use this and other visual communication tools for Honeypitch embedded presentations. Keep the cool tools coming, they look great in the pitches!
chingkkay

February 17th, 2007 at 5:06 am

flash really good, i like 3d too.
UNTRUE UNTRUE UNTRUE

February 17th, 2007 at 5:41 am

I first contacted TechCrunch about 3 months ago to announce the launch of FILMATOR.NET and am yet to have any response from Michael Arrington. I was totally baffled as to why this should be since FILMATOR.NET was the first MASHUP tool launched ‘ever’ with control over the time line for video, music, images, text, titles, etc. Moreover, The tools on FILMATOR are free for non commercial usage plus they make it a snap to create Filmations. There are NO restrictions on uploading audio and further we encourage this. Our early adopters are making their own narration’s and together with their own media, are uploading this using a browser based upload tool that accepts very large file sizes, over many platforms for almost for every format. Moreover, we go further to make the process simple, such as we automatically compress images before they are uploaded, thus uncompressed full size images at 3.5 MG are compressed and resized before uploading ready for your Filmation. There is a title generator tool built in which allows creations of titles without any third party software. Oh and lest not forget that the filmations can be embeded into any other site. And finally a feature that we recently added is full screen mode (flash player 9 needed) which crowns our service the creme de la creme of all online presentation tools.

For those interested in is seeing a real Filmation this is the last one in:
http://www.documentary-art.net......php?e=116

THE CONSPIRACY No1
Silence is a something I did not expect from TC especially given the advanced features and the lack of competition. I made a number of efforts to reach MA all to no avail. Then I noticed something that looked like it could be a motive for this wall of silence. Marshall Kirkpatrick has recently been writing TC articles and given Marshall is also employed by the new startup Splashcast (who were the second company in the world to offer a some control over the time line for flash based media) I thought that could be reason enough to explain why efforts were being made to ensure Splashcast enjoyed the stage? I have no evidence to prove this speculation and I hope this is untrue.

THE CONSPIRACY No2
Adobe Macromedia are fully aware of the presence of Fimator.net and even made an effort to bury filmator on Digg. Sources inside Adobe have informed me (privetly) that they were said to be livid at the news of our launch. At that time I did not know what could motivate such a large company to go to the bother of burying us on Digg nor be livid for that matter at our presence, until now. It certainly makes more sense given they were obviously in development of their own tool that would soon be launched and they did not want to be “pipped at the post”. Again I cannot reveal any sources nor substantiate these findings except to say it is not surprising given the money that is at stake in this sector.
Alex Grogan

February 17th, 2007 at 6:07 am

AudioMerge.com - launched OVER one year ago.

Same principle, you upload images and sync up the display of stuff to the timeline of the audio.

No major breakthroughs with this story, they’re just polishing existing stuff.

Keep in mind that people are basically lazy creatures, and even giving them tools which make a task simple - well, once the novelty wears off, they no longer use it.

You can take a swim in the TC DeadPool and find all sorts of interesting technologies and tools, but the companies never made it.

Bottom line is this, in general:
The ’successes’ take something which we ‘already’ do and make it easier for us to do. If you need to change human behavior in order for your product to work, it’s going to fail.
kb

February 17th, 2007 at 6:12 am

XP SP2 + IE6 = crazy blinking
anon-guy

February 17th, 2007 at 7:37 am

So, a quick sample of the first 18 users shows that 8 aren’t working properly with some of the most command browser/version types.

That’s almost a 44% failure rate on users using the tool. Someone needs to go back and do some more testing…
kim

February 17th, 2007 at 8:16 am

This is a wonderful site. I am always behind the curve on these sorts of things. Thank you for offering such great education!
anon-gal

February 17th, 2007 at 9:17 am

The flashing occurs if you don’t have the flash 9 player. When you actually create one on Photobucket it requires you to upgrade. What an amazing tool!
Rank06

February 17th, 2007 at 9:24 am

I love photobucket…i use it for all my online photo sharing needs, but have yet to use it for anything else!

Fred,

http://www.rankmyblog.net
Emma

February 17th, 2007 at 10:07 am

wow, that’s quite a pointless piece of crap!

solution in search of a problem, like a lot of web 2.0!
TECH CRUNCH ME

February 17th, 2007 at 11:23 am

I prefer Jumpcut.
I love TechCrunch but for a different take or should I say Technology news in a not so serious and boring kind of way, visit http://www.techcrunchme.com
Steven

February 17th, 2007 at 12:33 pm

Michael - just to clarify - the songs in the tool are not ’stock music’.

All the songs provided are real songs by real independent artists licensed legally through Pump Audio.

Thank you.
Om

February 17th, 2007 at 2:13 pm

Mike, can you please stop this blinking thing?? It’s driving us crazy……

If you wish to drive away the traffic to our site, then you have achieved.
Levi

February 17th, 2007 at 2:16 pm

I’m getting seizures from the blinking. Make it stop!
detection

February 17th, 2007 at 3:09 pm

The editor is for Flash Player 9 so users with Flash Player 8 will see the blinking. If detection were set up correctly on photobucket, users with FP8 would get an upgrade message rather than the blinking.
detection

February 17th, 2007 at 3:09 pm

Ack, photobucket appears to be using a debug swf for the editor.
Michael Arrington

February 17th, 2007 at 3:29 pm

Arg.
lemon obrien

February 17th, 2007 at 4:53 pm

i don’t get it…i clicked the button and nothing happened.
tr101

February 17th, 2007 at 6:12 pm

#16. I saw the presentation and it does not use AJAX.

No AJAX = Not Web2.0 = No TechCrunch coverage. LOL
Targeted Web Traffic

February 17th, 2007 at 11:05 pm

Interesting, thanks for the post Mike!
Filmator.net

February 18th, 2007 at 3:36 am

In referring to this presentation @ Filmator.net:
http://www.documentary-art.net.....mp;ref=116

TR101 says:
“#16. I saw the presentation and it does not use AJAX.

No AJAX = Not Web2.0 = No TechCrunch coverage. LOL”
___________________________________________________________

TR101

Actionscript 3.0 IS a language, Actionscript 3.0 (an advanced form of Java) is a method of creating dynamic websites that display server-side data without a page refresh. Actionscript 3.0 != Web2.0.

(Filmator.net uses, Java, Actionscript 3.0, PHP, Pear, Perl, and a few others.)

if ($Web2.0 != ‘a language’ && $Web2.0 != ‘Ajax’) {$Web2.0 = ‘a loose term that describes a new generation of devices where users generate most if not all of the content!’};

FYI:
TechCrunch uses Wordpress with a few plug-ins, and there is little (if any) dedicated programming involved. MA is a lawyer (as far as I understand) and is not a programmer. TC is not an authority on Web2.0 and does not ‘only’ cover sites that use Ajax! TC mostly covers sites that have been funded by VC because that’s what lawyers are interested in!
Mike Dee

February 18th, 2007 at 9:02 am

ugh that filmator website is horrible.

I don’t care what language you’ve used it’s a piece of unstylish clunky shitty UNARTISTIC rubbish.

Stop wasting peoples time spamming techcrunch digg etc with your disgraceful website. Its crap and nobody is interested. I think you should go see a psychiatrist /stop smoking so much weed cos you’re obviously disturbed and full of conspiracy BS. stfu.
Kyle L

February 18th, 2007 at 10:02 am

Why did they give it to Photobucket first? They should have given it to Flickr!
Mike Dee

February 18th, 2007 at 12:03 pm

Kyle L don’t be so stupid, Flikr are total UNARTISTIC rubbish and full of crap, you should just be pleased that Photobucket has developed this great new flashy gadget (BTW the flashing stops if you upgrade to to flashy 9).
Ray/MillionReurn.Com

February 19th, 2007 at 12:51 am

I like this! It is very cool and convenient!

http://www.MillionReturn.Com — See me how to return $1m from 1 single page!
tr101

February 19th, 2007 at 11:04 am

Adobe = new Microsoft?

All your browsers are belong to us.

We will flash (da dum) at you until you upgrade!
Scythe

February 19th, 2007 at 12:46 pm

That widget nearly gave me a seizure. Dear lord.
Kyle L

February 20th, 2007 at 8:43 am

@Mike Dee
Flickr is far superior to Photobucket. You know what would please me? If you were to grow half a brain and learn proper English.

Just because you don’t agree with my opinion doesn’t mean you should spam TechCrunch with your worthless comments. In my opinion, your more of a spammer than Filmator.net. Go take your idiocy somewhere else.
Peter

February 22nd, 2007 at 10:20 am

We fixed it and users should now get an auto upgrade to flash 9 now, so no more flashing…

Sorry about that

Peter
Rich

March 1st, 2007 at 12:59 pm

Was this made through Actionscript with some Serverside Video Codec’s or are all of the functions part of some Adobe API?