Lately, I have been playing with a new service that actually allows anyone to upload video, mix videos together with audio, and then share them with anyone online. It’s called Eyespot, “Home of the mixer.” It’s free, very easy to use, and is a lot of fun. I’ve seen similar services that allow for mixing before, but Eyespot is more then that because it is also a social service allowing users to tag, join groups, and even create blogs for their videos. Everything is also executed very well in a nice and easy to use interface using Ajax and Flash with drag and drop functionality. I’ve uploaded a few files, created a few mixes, and overall, I am very impressed. Now, lets take a look at what Eyespot has to offer.

What makes Eyespot so different in comparison to a video sharing service like YouTube is that not only can you upload and share videos, but you can create mixes with multiple videos on a timeline and add background music to it. Say you went on a trip and you have multiple videos or parts of a video that you want to share to your friends. You can easily upload each clip and mix them in the order that you want, save, and share. The above screenshot is of the “Mixer” section of Eyespot where you can sort through videos and drag them onto a timeline. You are given nine slots for video clips and one slot for audio. Simply find a video and drag it right onto the timeline in the slot you want it to play. Then click on the “Mix” button and view your new video in action. If you like it, name it and save. You can then share with friends, groups, or even on your own Eyespot blog.

Eyespot also allows every member to have their own blog where they can select a video and write a post to go along with it. They aren’t full fledged blogs, but they definitely get the job done and gives more life to the service. You simply select a video, write your post with a few formatting options, add a title, and publish. Your post can then be seen by others on your blog and they can save your video to their media library to use them for mixing. One feature that I was sad to not find was feed subscriptions. You can view user blogs, but to keep up with them, you have to remember to keep checking back. I also felt that the blogs don’t get enough attention. I think it would be great to have a section dedicated to users or blogs that allows you to view recently updated blogs or most active users to give a little more exposure to users and their videos. Other then that, the blogging works great and makes the service even more enjoyable to use.

Another feature that I like are Eyespot groups. These are just basic groups that you can join or create for posting videos on a specific topic. It’s functionality is much like the blogging, except with groups, multiple users can contribute. For example, I wanted to go to the SXSW conference this year and unfortunately could not go. But I saw a group on Eyespot for SXSW and can now keep track of user posting of SXSW related videos. That’s about all to it. The main page for groups is what I would like to see for blogs. Top 10 blogs, recently updated blogs, and blog of the day. I think this would help get users noticed better because right now, there isn’t much you can do to find Eyespot users.

Uploading files also works quite well, but I feel there is room for improvement. First, you are able to upload seven files at once up to a max file size of 15MB, which is great. You can then select is you want the videos to be public or private and what tags to assign to them. But the problem is that you can’t set seperate tags or permissions to each file you are uploading, just as a group. Although you can easily go back to each video later on and set tags and permissions to them. I was also surprised to see that you can track upload progress in real-time using Ajax, but it seems to bring up an JavaScript error in Internet Explorer. This error doesn’t cause any problems with the uploading though and everything seemed to work fine. Lastly, if you aren’t satisfied with uploading from your computer, you can also easily send your file to Eyespot from your mobile phone through MMS Messaging to your_username @ eyespot.com. I haven’t been able to test any of the mobile functionality though, so If you have, please let me know how it went.

Being able to mix and share videos is a lot of fun and overall, I’m excited about Eyespot. But, I do feel it still has some ways to go. It’s in beta and has recently released and so far I am pretty impressed with what Eyespot has to offer. There are a few features that I would like to see though. I would love to be able to upload not only videos and music, but images as well so I can add an image to a mix if at all possible. I’ve always loved still photo mix tapes and think it would make for more mixes. I think it would also be great to allow for more slots on the timeline, but understand if it isn’t possible because bandwidth usage must be crazy as is. Also, I am assuming they are working on it, but I would like to change my profile and the image associated with my profile. And lastly, I personally feel that a section dedicated to blogs, much like the groups section, would be great and will help give exposure to more videos and users of Eyespot. That about covers it. Eyespot is a lot of fun and hope it takes off. It has a beautiful design, great functionality, and just being able to mix and share videos is really neat.

View Eyespot - Shoot, Mix, and Share Your Video.