A new online HD service is around, MotionBox. I tried it earlier today, and it’s really nice to see more services trying to make HD video more approachable to normal people rather than film geeks. Uploading videos was effortless and fast. You can attach your videos to collections, like Groups and playlists. They offer two kinds of accounts, Basic and Premium. The Basic account allows for a limited number of videos, while the Premium account does not even have a limit into the amount you upload!

Its more impressive feature is its online video editor. You upload your clips, you go to the “remix” area, and then you cut the way you want it to. There is no ability to add an additional audio track though, or other niceties, it’s just a straight forward “cut and glue” editor. MotionBox told me that the videos used in the editor are the original clips and not any re-encoded versions.

MotionBox is undoubtedly going to be compared to Vimeo, the darling of the filmmaking community. The first difference is that MotionBox is more about families rather than filmmakers. So I don’t think that the two sites compete directly. The second difference is that Vimeo already has a vibrant community, while MotionBox has limited ways of creating such communities. Additionally, MotionBox only required ~30 seconds to re-encode to 720p my 17-second Golden Gate Bridge video, while it took Vimeo about 2 minutes. MotionBox also supports AVCHD uploading via Adobe AIR, while Vimeo doesn’t. Finally, the embedded videos on web pages serve the HD version, while Vimeo limits embeds to SD.

Quality is better than Vimeo’s. Their SD re-encodings are clearly better, and their HD versions edge out Vimeo again albeit the difference is not as glaring as in the SD re-encodings. Additionally, MotionBox re-encodes HD video at 30fps, while Vimeo had to go back to 24p as maximum, because many users could not play it back smoothly on their computers. And this is true for MotionBox too. While it’s an answer to the prayers of Vimeo users who don’t want the 24p limitation, it does require a faster PC decoding these files.

A few things need to be fixed though. For example, Motionbox allows you to download an MP4 h.264/AAC re-encoded file in the native resolution of the uploaded video, but the bitrate used is weird. For example, I got a 4.5 mbps for a 720p video re-encoding, and a 5.5 mbps re-encoding for a wide-VGA video. In the case of the VGA video, this is waste of bandwidth (it shouldn’t have been more than 1.5mbps). Plus, the video is encoded in some really high-level h.264, that even the VGA video doesn’t playback smoothly on my Quicktime! I believe that Motionbox should export a maximum of 720/25p video (just because AppleTV doesn’t do more), at low-complexity Baseline h.264, with a bitrate that’s variable depending on the resolution, so it’s compatible with the XBoX360, PS3 and AppleTV, in addition to Quicktime PC/Mac viewing. Their iPod export seems to be better in terms of bitrate/complexity. The original file is also download-able, if you have a free account with the service.

Another thing that irks me very badly at MotionBox is the fact that videos are downloading when you hit a page, even if you haven’t requested a play. This is really bad for Comcast users who use online video too much (like myself). The last thing I want is having Comcast closing down my internet account (don’t forget that from Oct 1st, Comcast is not unlimited).

Security needs tightening as well. The service did not request my current password to either change my password, or my email address.

I think that MotionBox can become a hit with families. It offers a way to burn and order DVDs, to “cut and glue” online, and share it with friends and family in a variety of ways. I think it has a nice future as a “family video sharing” service. To win some of Vimeo’s filmmaking crowd though, it needs to be more “hip”.