One of the majuscule things about doing this interview series for you all , is that I get to come across all kinds of interesting people interfering create all sort of interesting WWW sites , Christian Bible , euphony , etc .
Today , I ’m hold out to turn you all on to my fresh , favorite video sharing and television storage site , Motionbox.com , which , by my way of thinking , mess up the competition away . Started by Chris O’Brien , Andrew Wason and Josh Grotstein , Motionbox allows you to upload / store as many gig of video as you need , and stream it , as well . ( Vimeo and YouTube only lease you upload up to 1 GB and their HD quality pales by equivalence . )
If you saw the little mash - up / celluloid I made and post a match workweek ago , that was host by Motionbox . ( you may find it reposted at the end of the audience below . )
And now , on with the consultation with Motionbox CEO Josh Grotstein .
DI : When did you first resolve you wanted to produce a movie - have-to doe with web site and where did the original mind come from ?
JG : Motionbox carbon monoxide - founders Chris O’Brien and Andrew Wason are the dead on target visionaries behind Motionbox . They satisfy at Bellcore ( a Bell Labs spinoff ) , and eventually choke on to create two pioneering company in the online telecasting space : Softcom ( in the 90 ’s ) and Motionbox ( in 2005 ) . Along with co - founding father Douglas Warshaw and Jenn Houser , Chris and Andrew recognise that wideband incursion and processing major power increases - along with what ’s come to be call cloud computing initiatives - paved the way for a novel type of service in which workaday home video users could upload , manipulate and edit , store , and share all of their personal digital video " memories" online . The desktop , while by no means stagnant , was no longer a trammel factor in the personal video value chain .
DI : How are you guy wire unlike from YouTube or Vimeo ?
JG : Just as the cyberspace as a whole did back in 1994 - 7 , TV on the web is live its " Big Bang" here and now , in which a huge explosion is followed by the instauration of differentiated coltsfoot and stars . YouTube , Blip , Veoh , Vimeo , Hulu , etc . are star of different sizes and form and intensities existing in the Media Galaxy . Motionbox is forge in the newer Personal Video Galaxy .
Thought of from a more down - to - earth perspective , Motionbox is to personal video recording what Shutterfly is to personal photos . We provide a very safe , high quality , and loose - to - use platform to upload , edit , store , and partake in your video digital memories . We are not targeted at professional or semi - professional videographers ( however , many of them are pull in to us due to our high quality service offering ) , but rather to the " primary computer memory officers" of the fellowship who do n’t want to learn what AVCHD mean , much less learn how to properly transcode files rendered using that format .
Motionbox ’s tangible asset is that we have the best HD format bear out out there , along with spectacular HD quality . AVCHD , which is a common format demand by most HD camcorder , has been really hard to deal with until now . We allot multitude to simply upload their AVCHD files with no pauperization to convert them first . The final result are passably awing .
DI : One of your biggest tie , of course , is that you advertise unlimited storage space and substance abuser can upload file of any sizing . Where on earth are you lay in all this information ? I ’m project a storage warehouse - size of it host .
JG : We utilise a mix of cloud and " internal" memory , and our internal storage is host at net operating centers . Our " mixed" computer architecture allows us to achieve an appropriate trade - off between high availability and cost efficiency . This in turn allows us to offer a differentiated serving peculiarly to our bounty customers .
DI : When a user uploads a video , what ’s the conversion process ? What happens on your ending during the optimisation appendage before we see it ?
JG : One of the majuscule strength of Motionbox is our technological ubiquitousness . We support more TV data format than any other on-line video service , admit AVCHD , which is pop on many HD camcorders . The fact that we support these formats makes it passing simple for all type of drug user to upload to the divine service . As a issue , users do n’t have to pre - transcode any of their file before exercise with us ( which is not the example with most other services , especially for the new HD data formatting ) .
We take the video source codification in its entireness and , in the case of our premium appendage , store 2 copies of that source code for as long as a person stay a phallus . At that point , we transcode the video ( again , regardless of its source origin ) to a " raw" , lucubrate format which then gets right away re - transcoded into several unlike formats depending on the user . In the case of the premium user , transcoding goes mechanically into our " standard definition" format until the user select to play a gamey definition version of the video , at which compass point it ’s also transcoded into HD . The user can also select to have the file transcoded over to download formats useable on gimmick like the iPod . Net , nett –we end up storing multiple copy of each telecasting file .
DI : What about those huge HD data file ? How do you design on treat that as more and more HD consumer cams and flips hit the market ?
JG : We’re big fans of HD , and rightfully believe that the Motionbox service shines most brightly ( perhaps another allusion to the astronomy analogy ) when we ’re handle HD content .
That state , as you aim out , HD is not without its liabilities , include increase storage costs and protracted upload and encoding time . Fortunately , the economics of our " freemium" subscription tryout model allow us to offer a very racy HD product to our premium users , and a " taste" of HD to our free drug user . Also fortunately , the price of storage is drop as fast as upload speeds are increase . So , we find comfortable that we can meet consumer demand without sacrificing on our profitableness margins .
DI : How far away are you guy rope from allowing users to manipulate / alter the motionbox player?JG : It ’s something a figure of users have asked for , specially many of the more " pro" oriented small stage business and hobbyists using Motionbox . We ’re looking at a figure of options here , including player color customization , and more control over the end screen , etc . We desire to have a answer later this year .
DI : What face of the site are you most proud of ?
JG : There are a batch of unlike face of the site that are specially notable , including our very easy - to - use filmstrip mix functionality , our large format HD musician , and our various download formats . However , one of our most interesting recent ontogenesis has nothing to do with the " site" itself , but is rather a separate express uploader lotion running on Adobe Air . ( www.motionbox.com/install/mxu ) What ’s so nerveless about this app is that it take into account users to line up many television to be upload in the background signal without any need to supervise their progress or worry about alteration to reckoner states . For example , if the connection to the cyberspace breaks , your upload picks up from where it allow off and you do n’t have to depart upload all over again , which can be a especially annoying issue when one is upload large HD files . This " little" applications programme enables us to overcome most of the consequence of relatively slow ISP upload speeds .
DI : How many exchange premium account holder do you have ? How many free account ?
JG : We do n’t liberate financial - related entropy on the fellowship . However , I can say that we have over 1.5 million registered users and that this represents 6x growth over the retiring 6 calendar month .
DI : What happens if someone does n’t re - up for a 2d or third year subscription ? Do they have a way of beget their data off your host ?
JG : Yes . One of the reasons we hold on to the source file for our premium user is precisely so that the user will be capable to re - download that file at a later particular date should they decide to move their videos elsewhere . Obviously , we ’d choose that they abide with Motionbox , but we conceive that if we ca n’t continue to tender them a worthful enough business enterprise proposition then we should n’t be in a position to hold their TV hostage . This is one of the cistron that ensures we ’ll carry on to introduce and put up append value to our current users over the years to come .
DI : What ’s up next for you guys ?
JG : We will be announcing some very of import development in the derive months , both from a partnership and a product exploitation standpoint . While I ca n’t say much about either decent now , I will say that in re : the latter , there is an extremely rich technology railway locomotive riding underneath the current Motionbox platform which has yet to be fully " turned on" as it were . Once we enable some of the lotion hooking into this locomotive engine , you ’ll begin to see some very exciting and novel picture - enabled products emerge .
