Recently I have been playing around a lot with Eyespot , the video shaing/editing/mixing application by David Dudas and company. Eyespot was created in 2005 and is really a cool application. Although it has only a fraction of YouTube‘s juggernaut of a user base, Eyespot is definitely worth a visit. You can dump all of your videos online just like YouTube but (unlike YouTube) you can also edit them together to create mixes. These mixes can then either be published to the web or downloaded. Photos and audio tracks can also be uploaded. This is the first browser-based video editing tool that I have come across (if anyone else has found other such services please let me know). It is quite easy to use and extremely slick.

Some restrictions:

  • 50 MB video clip limit – pretty restrictive
  • you can only mix one audio track together per mix
  • only one effect per clip/photo

These restrictions are far outweighed by the innovative and cool features:

  • Magnatune music available within Eyespot for your mixing pleasure
  • can mix photos and clips together
  • can cue up multiple downloads – great when uploading many small clips
  • much simpler titling/categorizing system than YouTube

The site is made with Perl and Ajax and is very slick and straightforward to use. This kind of system will obviously never be nearly as robust as Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere, but it has enough features to accomplish basic video editing (titling, fade in/out, effects) and is great for creating videos to embed in blogs. I would like to be able to add more than one effect per clip and more than one audio track per mix, but this is a great start. Since Eyespot is still in Beta is is likely that some more features will be coming soon.

Eyespot is a site that seems at first very much like YouTube (only without the huge user base). The video editing and (especially) mixing features are what really set it apart. You can mix your clips, photos, and audio tracks together with anybody else’s public material. This is really addictive and fun once you start exploring. I have created several mixes using my clips and stock footage. The Eyespot mixing program puts some credits at the end of your mix citing everyone from whom you used material. This is a really great feature and is not something have seen in other Web 2.0 applications.

There are also many interesting promotional opportunities for musicians with Eyespot. Put your music up on any mix and you will automatically be credited at the end of that mix. Becoming a participating artist could be a very smart move for an independent band/artist. Contact Eyespot to find out more on becoming a collaborator.

Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur of TWiT.TV interviewed David Dudas of Eyespot a couple of months ago on their podcast Inside the Net. Here is a link to that podcast. I hope that Eyespot succeeds as a viable service–I really haven’t come across anything else exactly like it.

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