Clipstart is a newly released application that is designed to complement Photo applications such as iPhoto or Picasa. It offers a streamlined interface that lets you import video footage from video cameras, tag them and then upload them to either Vimeo or Flickr.
That’s Clipstart’s features summed up in one paragraph but the application does what it does really well. There’s been a growing need for applications like these to manage the ever increasing amount of consumer video that many people have on their computers these days. iMovie is great for editing video and iPhoto can import video into it’s library but neither of them are up to the task of file managing the quantity of video files that users of digital video devices (e.g. Flip, Kodak Z series and mobile phones such as the Nokia N series etc) tend to produce.
Clipstart lets you manage all these files simply and easily and lets you upload either whole clips or only specific sections of clips directly to both Vimeo and Flickr. There’s currently no YouTube support though, I’m not sure if this is because Apple’s iPhoto already supports YouTube directly but I could see YouTube being another location that users would like to publish too so perhaps this will come in future versions. Update: I remembered that the upcoming Snow Leopard Mac OSX 10.6 also features an updated version of Quicktime Player which can upload straight to YouTube, perhaps this is one reason why Clipstart doesn’t include it?
You can find out more about it over at the Clipstart website where there is a screencast that takes you through the workflow and features as well as a demo version that you can use to try it out for yourself. It costs $29 for a single user licence.
Working with HD video on Mac OSX? FlamingoHD is another good option to check out…
If you’re working with HD video then you’ll want to check out FlamingoHD which is a similar application to Clipstart but is more specifically focused on HD workflow and in particular providing support for the AVCHD format of HD video used on many hard disk based cameras. FlamingoHD does also support all other video formats supported by Quicktime so video from Flip and Kodak Z series cameras can be imported as well as digital stills.