StashSpace to take Full-length Video Editing
to the Masses
 Online video sharing, video storage,
video editing and management
service StashSpace will make a
full public launch and media press on
Wednesday. Unlike the many services we see
focused on short form video, such as Jumpcut
(a Yahoo! acquisition) for editing and
VideoEgg for online capture, StashSpace lets
users work with long movies in the browser.
It’s easy to use, has a good pricing
structure and targets a clear pain point in
a large market. Shutterfly's $87 million IPO
last week was further evidence that easy
online multimedia storage for non technical
users is a market ready to take flight.
Users upload video of any length through the StashSpace website, then select clips they
want to save with a workspace built as an
ActiveX plugin. Saved footage can be edited,
shared and viewed through the site. It may
not be the flashiest company online, but I
think StashSpace’s strategy is smart given
the direction the consumer video market is
going.
Founded by John Larsen, Lars Krumme and
Steve Smallman, Stashspace is based outside
of Seattle. The company is self funded from
the co-founders tech work in the late 90’s
and the last 7 years of revenue from their
related site,
homemovie.com.
StashSpace is the fourth major iteration of
the company’s software, now updated and
rebranded for an era of ubiquitous broadband
and inexpensive online storage.
One of the key differentiators is that
the company will digitize, transcode and put
online video tapes for $5 each. This is much
less expensive that most of the company’s
competitors - they say it’s an unusually
automated process for them. DVDs can be
purchased for $15 with personalized covers
made for an extra $4.
Krumme told me that they believe there is
a huge market in analog video that non
technical users would like to digitize, put
online, edit and share. Making this easy and
cheap sounds like a great strategy to me.
Prior to this launch targeting consumer
users, the company’s primary distribution
channel has been through wedding
videographers and newlyweds. Consumer video
creation is becoming popular enough now that
it makes a lot of sense to expand that user
base and most services are still focused on
short form. Making themselves known will
probably be the company’s biggest challenge.
The StashSpace editing function is very
nice, 100 screen caps are created for each
video upload from the web, users then clip
sections from timeline marked by those
screen shots. The clippings can be dragged
onto a clip board, a new screenshot and
title can be selected from each selection.
It’s easy to copy video segments from one
file into another, add photos and captions.
It’s a very smooth online editor that’s
suitable for big files. The software
supports tagging, which I believe is great
for navigation even for non-technical users.
Storage is paid with through tokens that
cost between 25 and 40 cents per 5 minutes.
That means that online storage of an hour’s
worth of video comes to at most $8 per year.
Users get free tokens for doing things like
sharing video and trying new features;
downloading video to iPod format costs 1
token. Serving up unlimited video files in
Windows Media format is free. There’s also a
widget that can be used to display your
videos on social networking sites.
The service is primarily for Windows/IE
right now, though there is some basic Mac
and Firefox support and full features are
scheduled for early next year. I’ll be much
more interested in using the service when
this is the case, but the world is as it is
and Windows only isn’t going to stop them
from doing well in sales.
There are a number of competitors for
this sort of function, but the primary one
targeting users interested in easy, long
form online video editing is probably One
True Media. OneTrueMedia’s interface is
quite different, their prices are higher,
they have venture backing and more
commercial partnerships online with sites
like Johnson and Johnson’s BabyCenter.com. I
think the analog to digital conversion,
editing and DVD making market is probably
more than large enough for both companies to
do well. StashSpace’s pricing may pressure
its competitors though and that would be
good.
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