Review: Motionbox – Video Sharing Site.

Nowadays, all of the main video sites have strong privacy settings, high-quality HD players, and easy handling of multiple formats. Lifehacker recently did an excellent roundup of the best known services. But missing from their list was my favorite family-friendly video sharing site: Motionbox.  Full review here.

I’ve been using Motionbox now for over three years for all of my family video sharing and storing as a Premium Member ($39.95/year). For unlimited uploads, no ads, an excellent HD player, the fee is well worth it.

But there are two key differentiators for me.

1. PRIVACY. You can share private videos with family and friends without the nagging feeling that you are sending your family pictures to the YouTube hoards. In fairness, you can make YouTube videos private, but if YouTube is the Washington Square Park playground of video sharing, Motionbox feels like a hush hush private key park: cleaner, quieter, less crowded.

2. ONLINE EDITOR. The browser based video editing tool is dead easy to use.  You can trim clips, edit them together, and create a new video. You can’t separate audio tracks, but for sticking together a bunch of clips, then sharing, its perfect. You can also send a DVD right from the site to grandma. Or, as a fun gift idea, make flipbook from a short clip.

They don’t incorporate stills into the video, which would be cool.

When you shoot a lot of HD videos like I do, hard drive space gets eaten up quickly.  With unlimited storage of a premium memberships, I archive my videos on Motionbox instead of on my hard drive. You can also download the original quality of your video –  a nice option, though not unique to Motionbox.

Though the browser upload is great, their downloadable “Express Uploader” (an Adobe Air application) makes it even easier and faster to upload large files.  I’ve been using that lately.

I use Vimeo, Revver, YouTube, Blip.tv, Daily Motion, and others for work-related video sharing. But Motionbox has become my go-to production hub for all the family video.