Today marks the launch of a new hope in that department. Pixorial is releasing its online collaborative video service with several new twists on the genre coupled with a business model that might just give it the legs to survive.
Put together by former executives from Netscape and Oracle, Pixorial has been in private beta since January of this year. Its mission is to "help people do more with video memories than ever before," and to that end offers an interesting mix of digital and analog video services.
To get footage into the site, you have two options: send in your physical media by UPS, or upload digital video directly. You can ship the following formats to Pixorial, who will do the legwork of digitally transcribing them for you: VHS, VHS-C, Digital8, Hi8, Betamax, miniDV, and 8mm, Super 8 and Super 8 film with sound, DVDs, and even memory cards up to 6 GB. You pay a fee depending on the media and the length, and can choose whether to have the originals sent back to you or recycled.
On the digital side, Pixorial supports .avi, .flv, .mov, .mp4, .mpeg, .dv, .rm, and .wmv uploads, up to 768 MB at a time.
Once the footage is in your account, a handful of easy to use editing tools are at your disposal. Your "Masters" are complete recordings you can then cut into shorter clips called Scenes using the Pixorial Scene Maker. Anyone who's ever done linear editing will find the playhead and scene marker tools intuitive. Those who haven't ever done this sort of editing before will likely have a short learning curve because the interface is uncluttered and easy to understand.
You can edit the metadata for both Scenes and Masters, adding keywords that make your clips easy to find later via the site's search function. In the media browsing window you can also sort your footage by date, title or length.
Once you have your raw collection of Masters and Scenes going you can use the Pixorial Producer to put together Shows, which are essentially your edited versions of the footage. Here too the interface is quite pleasant to use, with simple drag and drop sufficing to add or re-arrange scenes in your show. The transitions tab lets you add segueways in between scenes including adding still or scrolling titles, and though it's still "coming soon" an effects tab promises some tools to help you tweak your videos visually as well.
Where the collaborative aspect of the site comes in is the ability to share a link with friends or family that gives them access to an editable version of your video project. They can then use the Pixorial editing apps to work with your footage and assist in the process of editing it down. Your Masters are never altered in the process, so there's no worry about someone else damaging the original copy of the video.
So what can you do with your Shows once you'd edited something down and want to share it? Here too Pixorial offers both physical media and digital options. You can send out a link, share on Facebook or embed videos for free, and/or have media produced for a fee depending on the format. DVDs, Glamour DVDs (more customization and nicer jewel case), bulk DVD printing and high-resolution downloads are available for purchase.
In other words, Pixorial has a business model than involves something beyond advertising, which seems like a wise idea based on the history in this space and the economy in general. They also have a freemium business model for site accounts, providing up to 10 GB worth of storage for a free account. An annual $24.99 membership nets you unlimited storage, ad-free applications and some other perks.