We covered FlipTrack last November when they launched a beta version of their desktop client, which syncs a photo slide show to music. They’re back, with a $1.5 million first round of financing and a new web client. The financing comes from a group angels and Mohr Davidow Ventures. The new investment included some investors in FlipTrack’s former parent company, iPlay, makers of music tutorial software for Mac.
Photo slide shows are a crowded space which includes the well established Photobucket and two newer players RockYou and Slide bringing in tens of millions in financing. FlipTrack, however, keeps a distinct niche by focusing on syncing photos with music.
Their new web editor makes creating the slide shows significantly easier by automating most of the work. To make a FlipTrack now, all you need to do is pick any one of their 350 songs and upload a group of photos from your computer, URL, MySpace, Friendster, Flickr, or PhotoBucket. The editor then automatically syncs the photos up to key transitions in the song, known as a song map (see the sync to “Eye of the Tiger” below). The system is pretty smart about how to space the time delays between photos and won’t take up an entire song if there are too few photos.
The online editor is not as detailed as the desktop client, which lets you plan your transitions down to the song’s individual beats, but it doesn’t need to be. Instead the online version focuses on the ordering of the photos (drag-n-drop), effects, and transitions. Each of the photos can be captioned, cropped, rotated, and panned. FlipTrack transitions between photos with zooms, dissolves, and a variety of special shapes (flowers, cats, dogs).
The new editor, with its key frames and effects looks a lot like a video editor, and for good reason. FiipTack is also planning on adding video to its editing repertoire (See our previous comparison of online video editors). The photo slide show serves as a rudimentary version that is already being used to create simple music videos for independent bands. FlipTrack is working with labels like Nettwerk and music publisher EMI to encourage more bands to allow fans to mix together photo videos. They are currently running a BareNaked Ladies video contest.
What is the song that is played during the slide show?
It’s “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor
This is a scam. This example is not using simple pictures that are being manipulated in their custom Flash player. The fades are not Flash fades. Instead they have used video editing software to make this example in what is clearly an attempt to cheat the investors and users of their compilers capabilities!
If I was an investor I would be demanding to see this live example recreated before my own eyes… Or I would want my money back!
Not sure why you think it’s a scam Filmator. I don’t see how you could make such speculations.
The service seems interesting, though the pictures seemed to jump too much during quicker parts of the song. Services like these need to hit the ‘tipping point’ to become successful, and I don’t see that happening for fliptrack.
If you new flash, its possibilities and its limitations you would know that the fades are not being made in flash. These are video fades/zooms. Clearly done in an attempt to trick some people…
Filmator, all it does is either resize, move, or fade various images. Are these not all possible in flash? I’ve created some animations with flash and to my knowledge it’s certainly possible.
@Filmator – the service does store the final movie in an FLV video format. The meta data for the project remains on FlipTrack’s server so that users can come back and remix them later.
I don’t see what the problem is finished product being in a movie format, except for resizing. In that case FlipTrack will probably just encode multiple sizes.
Yes this is possible in flash but flash transitions on pictures are a little grainy / animated and there is no sign of that on this example. These are video’s. I am trying their system now, however it has definitely crashed (after 25 minutes of processing). I have made an example and at the end of choosing the settings it goes into a processing mode? from which it has not yet recovered after 25 minutes or so. So maybe what they are doing is actually using flash to compile video’s but the processor is video based not flash. If that’s the case, that explains the need for the processing mode.
It’s a good idea mind and my filmator does something like this, though our output is pure flash, and thus the pictures are not converted into video. As such we retain the original quality of the images so that they can be displayed in full screen mode and they look perfect on output. Clearly when you convert images into video you will loose much of the quality and at the same time add huge amount of bandwidth to your final product.
So what this looks like is yet another video editing tool but this time for images with stock music that you select (they have 300 songs to choose from). So if I were to review this I would say it was a little limited in its performance and rather expensive (considering I made filmator for next to nothing) compared to their millions that they will be unlikely to make back IMO.
Shouldn’t that be “FlipTrack Gets”?
- 1.5mm is a reasonable investment for the amount of footprint it could have on Myspace…
Also the debate; on rather or not this video is a scam; is a lame one.
– If it is the company is cheating itself more than the customers; becuase they are not”Under promising and over delivering..”
-rb
wow, another one!?
I think I saw some of those girls in the example in some porn movies.
Interesting… always a new spin…always a new angle.
RockYou blew to the top because they had a super cool slideshow widget… now FlipTrack comes along with “music sync-ing” AND a cool slideshow widget.
I love Web2.0
Registered and downloaded the FlipTrack software this morning. Made a quick video and tried to “share” it. The uploading worked without any errors, however the video hasn’t showed up on the site yet. Techcrunch effect? Anybody know how long it takes for the videos to actually show up?
I emailed them at support this morning. No response back yet. Hmm …
Still waiting for the business model, let alone why a company like this needs $1.5 million.
Re: Drama2.0
$1.5M is not a lot of money if you’re paying salaries and rent
A lot of us can afford to build something like this for 20-30K only because we work out of our garage and eat ramen every day.
Does this mean I can sell this:
http://ajaxwidgets.com/nnug/
for $2.5 MILL…??
I held it once and people thought it was PPT until the very last slide…
(__45 minutes!! __)
U can still do Ok if yer not first out the Door but have a better Product right??
I’m gonna have to Speed UWayCoolr up*
Cheers! Billy
)