FixMyMovie gets an overhaul, premium service forthcoming

Having recently compared a small handful of video hosting services, it's fun to come back to FixMyMovie, a service I checked out back in September. Since launching at DEMOfall, FixMyMovie has been making tweaks and improvements. With a 15MB file size limit, it's a far cry from some of the heavy duty video file hosting services that let you upload files of nearly half a gigabyte. However, FixMyMovie holds true to its roots of attempting to make crappy camera phone videos look watchable on larger screens.

Earlier this week I got to chat with CEO Sean Varah about the site's new features, which soft launched Monday morning. The most interesting one? Cross pollination to other video sites, starting with YouTube. Users who have uploaded their video either on the Web, or from their phones (using MMS and now e-mail), can push it directly to YouTube without having to do any file jugging on their end. In the months ahead, Varah and company intend to add other video hosting services to the list, including Facebook, MySpace, and Google's Blogger. They also plan to give users the option to automate the entire process for each time they upload.

Speaking of uploads, adding videos to the service has been significantly improved. Uploaded videos are available for viewing right away, including those sent in by e-mail. A new feature that manages to work given the small video limits. The enhanced version then goes up in its place, as soon as it's done. Previously users were only given a small bit of the unenhanced video and had to "order" the full version. Varah says tweaking that bit taxes the servers more, but takes seven steps out of the equation for users who want to put their videos on the service. He also notes the video you see playing in the Flash player is not the true quality of the enhancements, and to really see it in full effect, users should download the H.264 Quicktime version, which is sized to play on iPods and iPhones.

The premium version of FixMyMovie is scheduled to be released in about two months. Premium users will be able to do a little more with their videos, including grabbing super high quality JPEG files from a few seconds of a high-resolution video clip. Varah notes that MotionDSP (parent company of FixMyMovie) has been doing this for a few folks, and it's becoming very popular for filmmakers when they want to blow up a still from an action shot. Varah wouldn't say anything about size limit increases for premium members, or give a price, but Varah wanted to stress that the service isn't a "destination site" like YouTube, and that if enough users are running up against the limit they might increase it later on.

Related: MotionDSP promises better photos and video.

Click the picture to see the full-quality screen capture.