So much for the idea that YouTube and Hulu aren’t direct competitors. The New York Times reports that Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios will start posting full length movies from its catalog on the popular video sharing service. The partnership will be announced today, and viewers will immediately be able to watch shows such as “American Gladiators,” full-length movies like “Bulletproof Monk” and “The Magnificent Seven,” as well as clips from popular movies like “Legally Blonde.” MGM’s movies and shows will be free to watch with the only hassle being some ads which will run alongside the videos.

While these movies and shows are hardly the latest blockbusters, it’s an important step forward for YouTube, which obviously wants to shrug the reputation of the place to find short, odd, and poorly filmed user generated videos (although there’s nothing wrong with that), and start offering full length features.

Unfortunately, they still have a long way to go, as even MGM is not ready to move their entire catalog to YouTube. “We will have some long-form videos up on YouTube, but I don’t think that’s the platform to have 30 or 40 movies up at once. I feel much more comfortable doing that on a site like Hulu,” says MGM’s co-president Jim Packer. In other words, this is merely an experiment to see how YouTube’s audience will respond to being able to see full length movies; if YouTube passes this test with flying colors, then maybe, maybe the big studios will start offering more material.

It’s a race against time. YouTube can’t afford to wait until Hulu gets too big; it needs to leverage the fact that it’s the biggest video sharing site around without completely giving in to the (often ludicrous) demands of big Hollywood studios. Winning or at least settling that Viacom lawsuit would definitely help, but whether YouTube will manage to achieve this delicate balance before it’s too late remains to be seen.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:YouTube Eyes Full-Length Movies; The TBS of Online Video?YouTube Begins Streaming Full-Length Shows from CBSFancast: Comcast Launches Rival to IMDBSpout Social Network Acquiring Users for $1 EachHabbo, The MovieFour Eyed Monsters: Watch The Full Film on YouTube…100% LegalLycos Cinema Launches - YouTube For Movies

If you own an Apple TV, you’re probably frustrated by the fact that most videos you download from various parts of the Web aren’t compatible with it. If they were, it would be a mere matter of seconds between the time you finished the download and sat down to watch the video in your lounge room.

There is a way around the hassle of constantly converting videos, though, with a bit of software and trickery. We take you through the steps to automating the conversion process and show you how to fix video metadata in iTunes, which is infamous for not allowing you to change the video kind from movie to TV show or music video if you acquired the media from anywhere but the iTunes Store.

Here’s what we’ll do:

- Define a download folder for your videos.

- Monitor this folder for new videos and convert them to an Apple TV-friendly format as soon as OS X sees new files in the folder.

- Automate the process of adding the file to iTunes.

- Make sure the original files are thrown out to prevent wasting disk space.

- Change the video type, show name, and add season and episode numbers and titles.

Thanks to Automator, this becomes a really nice and easy process. Automator is probably one of OS X’s most underrated applications.

1. Get the QuickTime Compression Library for Automator

When I first discovered Automator after switching to the Mac a few years ago, I was (shamefully) giddy with excitement, which I suppose isn’t totally unexpected. I went on a downloading splurge over at Apple’s Automator Actions download section and discovered the QuickTime Compression Actions file that would serve me well several years later. You can get it here, and poke around the other files in the section while you’re at it.

Install the files so the actions are ready for use.

2. Create a New Automator File

Open Automator and start a blank workflow. Save it somewhere you’ll remember.

If you’re not familiar with Automator, you should take some time to get to know it so you don’t get tripped up during the tutorial by a lack of familiarity. I don’t think I’ve missed anything that’ll make it hard for a beginner to follow along, but I always recommend fiddling with the software for a bit just in case!

3. Get Selected Finder Items

Since we’ll be saving this as a folder action, the first step needs to be Get Selected Finder Items. You can find this under the Files & Folders menu in the Library pane to the left.

4. Get Folder Contents

The next step is to tell the workflow to grab the contents of the folder (the folder being the selected finder item in the first step). You can find this action under the same Files & Folders menu.

5. Filter Finder Items

Now, we’ll need to filter out files that are already in a friendly format. No need to waste time converting files that are already good to go! Under the Files & Folders menu, insert the Filter Finder Items action.

The “Whose:” section specifies the filter. Select “Name Extension” and “Contains” under the first two menus, and then time m4v in the empty text area.

Now click on the “+” button next to the text field, and repeat those last steps, but add mp4 instead of m4v.

6. Compress With QuickTime

Under the Movies menu in the Library pane, select “Compress QuickTime Using Most Recent Settings” and, under “Choose directory for converted files,” select a location for the Apple TV compatible movies.

7. Get Specified Finder Items

Now, from the Files & Folders action menu, insert Get Specified Finder Items into your workflow. In the action pane, click the “Add” button and find the folder you’ve specified for the converted movies.

Now go and grab Get Folder Contents, the same as in step four, and place it after the Get Specified Finder Items action.

8. Add Any File to iTunes

Under the Movies library menu, add the Add Any File to iTunes action. This will take the contents of the specified folder—your converted files—and throw them into your iTunes Library. You’ll need to ensure that iTunes is set up to copy files when they are added to your library so this folder can be safely emptied into the trash later.

9. Create the Drop Box Folder

Create the Drop Box folder you intend to use to put raw, unconverted movies in—if you want you can always add an alias on the desktop or in the dock to make it easy to drop things in.

10. Send the Redundant Files to the Trash

This is obviously optional if you want to keep the videos in their original format for some reason, or keep the converted files that were created before iTunes made copies in its own folders, but I recommend it as a nice and easy way to prevent your hard drive from filling up too quickly.

Add the Get Specified Finder Items and, using the “Add” button, find both your original drop box folder and the converted files folder.

Then add the Get Folder Contents action, just like we did earlier, and finally, throw in Move Finder Items to Trash which is in the Files & Folder menu as well.

11. Save as plug-in

Go to the File menu and select “Save as plug-in.” Give the action a name, and under “Plug-in for,” select Folder Actions. Under Attached to Folder, select your drop box.

12. Set Up QuickTime Conversion Parameters

Since the workflow grabs the last used conversion parameters from QuickTime, before you run this you’ll need to go and convert a test file with your desired settings. There is an Apple TV conversion preset, so if you don’t want to customize anything to your personal tastes I suggest using this one. If you do convert anything else via QuickTime for other reasons, remember that you’ll have to run a test file using Apple TV parameters before converting videos again.

This works fine for me because I only ever convert videos so they can be viewed from the Apple TV, but it may not be very convenient if you work with video from QuickTime frequently.

13. Set Metadata Correctly

So now you have some cleanly converted files in your iTunes library. My biggest pet peeve is seeing these appear under the “Movies” section; I like them to be found under TV Shows, correctly organized by season and episode number, with the correct episode name.

Grab Set Video Kind of Selected from Doug’s Applescripts for iTunes, and install it as per the provided instructions. Now, head to iTunes and select a video. If you’ve imported several episodes of a television show and all episodes are in order and in the same season (say you have episodes 1 through 5 from season 3), you can select them all so that you don’t have to set the details one by one.

Now go to the AppleScript menu in iTunes and choose Set Video Kind of Selected. Specify the video as a TV Show under Video Kind, and add the show’s name. If you have selected just one video, set its season number and episode number. If you’ve got multiple episodes, set the season number, then under episode number, type in the number of the first episode in the selection (episode 1 using our example). The script will automatically add the rest of the episode numbers.

Flick down to the TV Shows section of iTunes. Go into the series listing, and right click the first episode, click Get Info and flick over to the Video tab. Here you can add the Episode ID—the name of the episode. The other details should be filled in. If you’re really anal about metadata, you can add the episode description as well, which will show up on your Apple TV. Now, you can simply rinse and repeat for the rest of the videos you added.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:iPhone to Offer YouTube VideosComing Soon: Personal HD Downloads for Apple TVYouTube on Your Tube through Apple TV1 Million iPhones. 74 Days.Eminem Sues Apple for Music Rights800 Apple Employees Lose their iEmploymentApple’s iWeb Gets Google AdSense and Maps Integration

I can’t figure this out. This video, from MTV’s video site, has been bleeped by MTV in an effort to hide file sharing system names in Weird Al Yankovic “Don’t Download This Song.” The original lyrics:

Once in a while maybe you will feel the urge
To break international copyright law
By downloading MP3s from file-sharing sites
Like Morpheus or Grokster or Limewire or KaZaA

Strangley, all of those file-sharing sites are bleeped out. Is it a conspiracy?

Election night in the U.S. is less than a week away and Web startups are all jockeying for position in an attempt to get traffic and more importantly new users. Today we’ve learned that 12seconds, Current TV and Flixwagon have partnered together on election coverage.

Here’s how it will work… live mobile video will be captured on Flixwagon. Assuming you are a 12seconds user, the first 12 seconds of the Flixwagon video will be sent to your 12seconds account. Current TV will receive a feed of all election-related videos on 12seconds and pick the best ones for broadcast.

It’s interesting to see how many distribution and discovery deals 12seconds is signing. I can only wonder if Seesmic is planning something for election night.

Adam Ostrow is reporting that Current TV is partnering with Digg and Twitter for election night coverage as well.

CN Sponsor: CloudContacts - make your business cards work for you!
Other CenterNetworks Coverage: iminlikewithyou, FriendFeed, Web Jobs

Source:CenterNetworks

Diet.com has announced that they have partnered with Graspr on distribution of Diet.com’s video content. Graspr offers a collection of how-to and instructional videos and allows content creators to share in revenues from ads displayed in the videos. The Diet.com videos will be featured on the Graspr Web site along with the 2,000+ Graspr partners. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Graspr launched a year ago and has raised a Series A round to-date. As we’ve written before, a strong distribution strategy is so important for both consumption and discovery. For video content, distribution is even more important since videos can be viewed anywhere.

Other how-to video startups include Howcast, 5min and Wonder How To.

Company Name

ViewBug

20-Word Description

A fun environment where members can win daily and weekly cash prizes based on creativity and originality of their media.

CEO’s Pitch

We are a small team of young and creative individuals who are committed to offering a collaborative online environment that allows our members to win cash prizes. We promote creativity and award originality. Share your art in a fun and rewarding way.

We offer many opportunities to win money. We pride ourselves on keeping a close relationship with our members; we want them to: be creative, have fun, learn from others, share their creations with the world & be rewarded! Our mission is to give back to the community and our members, who are the ones that keep us going.

Mashable’s Take

Sharing your creative output with the world is pretty much natural. You put photos up on Flickr, Photobucket, Facebook, PBase, or elsewhere. You upload videos to YouTube, DailyMotion, Vimeo, etc. You might even publish your music to the Web for all to hear. ViewBug just so happens to mash all these areas of artistry into one venue. And it puts an interesting, competitive spin on it all.

If you simply want to post content to ViewBug for the sake of posting content, you may. You don’t have to seriously compete for prizes if you don’t feel so inclined. But if you do want to battle the user base for props and cash, ViewBug can make that happen. Just take the current crop of challenges as examples.

There are four currently in play. One has to do with “Color,” another is about “Light and Shadow,” a third labeled “Architecture,” and the fourth for “Halloween.” With two days left to play, the Color Challenge has a pot of $200 up for grabs, with $100, $150, and $150 going to each subsequent title, respectively. As you might expect, photography is by far the biggest draw. More than 500 images are vying for the money, whereas videos count at 13, and music a mere single. There are also “doodles” and “twitbugs” to consider.

Suffice it to say that ViewBug is a real treat for those keep up with the Joneses, so to speak. The more you contribute, the better your chances at some real returns. And when I say returns, that doesn’t just go for cash promised. The ViewBug environment and interface is quite slick, and while you can take it to be a place simply meant for challenges to be waged, the roundup of communities alone looks attractive. The potential financial rewards are more of a bonus, a cherry on top, rather than the bread and the butter for the service.

On the whole, ViewBug looks like a really fun time for all. It’s a haven for the creative class, and it just so happens to trumpet tangible benefits to keep things buzzing and interesting. Which is something to appreciate. It won’t interest all visitors, of course. But it’s garnered enough movement to make it something to keep coming back to - again and again and again.

Editor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Sponsored By: Sun Startup Essentials

A person with money; a person who spends it; a person who is easily influenced: an Advertiser’s dream is to reach those individuals with targeted messages on the go. Mobile application advertising is extending the mobile advertising paradigm with new inventory, larger audiences, and more advertiser budgets to reach exactly those users.

Within the social media space, in-app advertising on Facebook has a higher eCPM than Facebook advertising. Following that model, a new breed of applications is now available for Smartphones such as the iPhone, which, at close to ten million sold, is becoming the must-have gadget of the decade. Google’s Android OS gadgets also push mobile application execution to its limits – the key will be seeing how viral the actual devices become.

A Huge Opportunity for Advertisers

According to industry reports, iPhone users have downloaded more than 100 million applications since the App Store opened in July 2008, and the Android platform is predicted to significantly raise the marketshare of Smartphones by allowing more device makers into the marketplace.

A recent forecast by Magna Global predicts that mobile media will be one of the fastest growing of the emerging media channels, estimating it to grow by 43% to approximately $300 million in 2009. That reach provides advertisers with a huge market opportunity to reach and engage with consumers in a new and scalable way by staying ahead of the curve in advertising innovation – reaching people when and where a decision is most likely to occur.

So why not just mobile advertising? Why mobile application advertising? By integrating into an application, you have much more control over the type of advertisement and the level of interaction available with users, as opposed to the mobile Web where ads are generally static banners. This mobile application platform provides an infinitely engaging and accessible device for targeted advertising, but if social networks are still untested waters, advertisers are still wary of this new environment. And just like social media, when you get past the education, advertisers really just want to know - “How can we make money there and how much is it costing me for a new customer?”

Creating Revenue

The good news is: many of the tenets of social media and mobile marketing apply to Smartphone application marketing, and there are several ways to approach it to ensure you walk away with some real value.

Smartphone application marketing connects brands with their target audiences no matter where they are. Ads on iPhones, Android-enabled devices and other Smartphones have the ability to deliver high-impact interactive rich media to an engaged, targeted, self-selected audience and the new breed of application analytics companies help measure the success of campaigns, interaction and brand recognition.

More visibility. Brand awareness. High impact creatives. Mobile applications and Smartphone technology allow advertisers to extend their imagination to the path of reaching targeted audiences. Users can interact with a brand by tilting the phone and using the built in accelerometers, poking and playing with the product, or getting location-based advertising. Essentially, for the first time consumers become a part of the advertisement springing open the advertiser wallets.

Mobile Application Analytics

Applications only drive higher revenues if advertisers can identify the users consuming those apps. This has opened the door for many mobile application companies focused on identifying who the users are, what they do in the application, and what devices they are using.

Analytics provide application developers with granular insight into how users interact with applications, helping them identify user experience challenges and improve the overall performance of their applications.

What Are You Waiting for?

Smartphone applications are starting to make waves in the digital advertising world, but advertisers need not be daunted by a new platform. These apps operate in essentially the same ways as social media, targeted display and mobile marketing models. However, they offer deeper engagement, more sophisticated analytics, and a great way to broaden reach beyond the computer — significant opportunities for advertisers to boost revenue and build consumer relationships in a unique personal way.

Mobile advertising has the potential to exceed not only Internet advertising, but also the four traditional pillars of advertising as well: TV, radio, print and billboards. We are only in the first phase of the real mobile application market and this is a significant player that’s here to stay.

Former BlueLithium co-founder and general manager Krishna Subramanian has spent a 10-year career on the forefront of emerging technology. He is currently focusing on creative and inventory optimization, predictive targeting as well as scaling and monetizing social applications. Prior to BlueLithium’s acquisition by Yahoo!, Krishna led corporate and product marketing initiatives, positioning BlueLithium as the leading behavioral ad network; launched the first national online/offline social network, MingleNow, and led BlueLithium’s strategic acquisition of 123out.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Frengo’s Mobile Toolkit Makes Your OpenSocial Apps MobileGoogle Search Now on Windows Mobiles, TooGet Your Celebrity Gossip To-Go: TMZ Now on AOL MobileiZoho - Office Apps for your iPhoneLOLz on All Networks and Your Mobile, with FrengoWebwag Widgets Go MobileFlurry Offers Free Analytics for iPhone, Android, and JAVA ME App Developers

Source:Mashable!

Animoto is a mashup tool that allows users to make movies from the images and music they already have on their hard drive. Over the last year they have introduced a variety of features and functions. The latest of these is Animoto for Photography.

Animoto takes the pictures as slide show concept a bit further than most by incorporating a kind of artificial intelligence into the process. This twist means that the movies you get often seem more like trailers than home videos. Over the last few months they’ve applied this approach to a variety of things, from creative music mixing to business videos and everything in between.

This new feature, Animoto for Photography, enables photographers to use Animoto’s interesting technique to make their photography into a video. Animoto makes it easy to create these photography-based videos, freeing up a photographer’s time by reducing the amount of time spent futzing with the computer.

How is this different from the existing Animoto mashups for music, business and more? The company has added adjustable speed to the image display. Formerly the “intelligent” Animoto program would match the images to the tempo of the song they were being displayed with, now photographers can make the images appear at the intervals they design. they can also let Animoto match images to the song tempo still, if that’s what they want. Animoto for Photography gives them the choice.

The other feature Animoto has added is a button at the end that can call viewers to action. This makes Animoto a new way for photographers to market their work and services. Photographers who have tested the software seem to love it as a sharing and marketing tool:

“Animoto is a perfect fit for professional photographers,” said award-winning wedding photographer, Linda Jennings. “I can quickly upload my photos, pick just the right song, and Animoto automatically creates a show-stopping video. And when the video is complete, I can easily share it in more ways than ever before: email, blogs, my own website, Facebook, iPhone. The possibilities are endless with Animoto.”

Animoto for Photography is not free. It will run you $99 for three months or $249 a year. The subscription does allow photographers access to a library of music that is licensed for public use, which is a great benefit in addition to the other features subscribers get access to. Animoto’s claim to fame is that its artificial intelligence (aka Cinematic Artificial Intelligence) ensures that no two videos are ever the same, even if you use the exact same images and music.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Animoto: When Using Amazon Web Services Gets You FundingAnimoto Mashups Promote Artists with New ProgramAnimoto Officially Launches Video Mashup ToolAnimoto: Turn your Images Into a Movie TrailerDownload Animotos Directly to Your PCImage Animation App ‘Animoto’ Announces DVD Quality VideoAnimoto Emerges from Beta with 4M Videos

NY-based For Your Imagination has launched a new vertical video network named Axis of Comedy. They descibe the new comedy network as, "Finally, no more troling through heaps of bad videos with the small hope of finding something remotely funny. You’re here, that means everything is funny. We’ve searched and found the best of the very best online comedy out there and rounded up the greatest web series."

Some of the shows on the Axis of Comedy network include: The Burg, Break a Leg, The Patrice Oneal Show, Goodnight Burbank, Kyle Piccolo: Comic Shop Therapist and Abigail’s X-Rated Teen Diary. It looks like the network shows off some of the For Your Imagination shows plus others from across the Web. If they can draw in good comedy content from across the Web, the Axis of Comedy could become a destination for episodic comedy content.

I also note that they are using NY-based Squarespace for the publishing platform. It’s great to see NY supporting NY! Here’s an example show from the network which seems to feature a lot of burping:

Special Alert: CenterNetworks Conference Coverage:
– DEMO
– Techcrunch50
– Event and Interview Videos

NY-based Magnify.net has announced the launch of their new MVP video player today. The MVP player (multi-view player) allows site publishers to bring together content created by their community with other Internet shared videos into one player. The player (example displayed below) can be set to a variety of sizes and themes.

Magnify’s MVP player includes a 50/50 split on ads displayed. One interesting note regarding the ads — site publishers can select to serve pre- or post-roll ads in the videos that originate on their network. The video ads are served by DoubleClick’s DART service.

The new Magnify player seems a bit similar to Kyte’s player in terms of customization and options. Kyte offers chat within the video player along with more media options (e.g. images, live video, etc.) while the injected ad on Magnify’s player allows Web publishers to generate additional revenue from ads that are served below the video channel.

Magnify self-reports over 5 million videos added to the social networks they serve each month. Check out all of our Magnify.net coverage.

Special Alert: CenterNetworks Conference Coverage:
– DEMO
– Techcrunch50
– Event and Interview Videos

Source:CenterNetworks

Boston-based MyPunchbowl has announced they have raised a $2.1 million Series A round of venture capital funding. The funding was led by NY-based Contour Venture Partners and included participating from current investors Intel Capital and eCoast Angels. Punchbowl Software notes that the funding will be used to pursue strategic opportunities and grow the Punchbowl Software development team. MyPunchbowl is an end-to-end party planning tool rather than just an invite service such as eVite. Their mission is to, "make the event host look good". The company notes that their traffic has gone up 20 percent month over month.

MyPunchbowl recently launched a Facebook application and integrated Kayak trip planning services.

Check out all of our MyPunchbowl coverage including my interview with founder and CEO Matt Douglas.

Source:CenterNetworks

Last week in California, one of the most popular discussions I engaged in was comparing mobile video broadcasting services Flixwagon and Qik. In my opinion, Qik appears to be going for the consumer market while Flixwagon is going after media and entertainment.

Today Flixwagon is announcing a white label service for mobile carriers and media organizations to allow both groups to use the Flixwagon mobile broadcasting service under their own branding. Flixwagon notes that by allowing customers of mobile carriers to use their service, increased customer satisfaction and loyalty will result. On the media organization side, the Flixwagon service could power live video for media outlets across the world. This could be very powerful for Flixwagon as more news outlets move to a "you report" method of news gathering.

It would be interesting to see the results of a partnership between Flixwagon and a social networking service — KickApps or Magnify.net. Check out all of our Flixwagon coverage including why we included the mobile service in our "3 apps that will change 2008".