Dailymotion Blog

We noticed that you, our users, have taken a shine to the VideoWall since we released it almost a year ago. Some of you suggested it would be a great way to control a video player - and we couldn’t agree more.

This is why today we are happy to announce the release of VideoZap. Think of it as a lightweight, image-based remote control - a “zapper”, as they called remotes back in the day.

To create your VideoZap, visit the factory page and choose your settings in the grey panel on the right of the page. Select the list of videos you want - it could be featured videos, a user’s videos, even search results (just drop the desired URL into the correct field) -  decide where you want the remote to appear, how big it should be, and how the tiles are spaced. Click “Generate code”, copy the chunk of code that appears in the box above your VideoZap, and paste it wherever you want it to appear on your website or blog (keep in mind that the destination site must support iframes).

We really like this new tool and hope you will too. As always, please leave us feedback in the comments of this post.

Enjoy!

You will now have access to the subtitling interface while editing your video, which will give you the opportunity to create your own subtitles online and propose them in different languages. To do so, you just need to press pause, type your text and add it!

A new navigation is then created through the dynamic subtitles redirecting to other videos on Dailymotion.
This new functionality offers a great opportunity to open videos to the whole community whatever the language! Access the available subtitles by click on the menu tab on the player.

Let’s try it!

The OLPC foundation [1] develops and distributes the XO computer, better known as the “$100 laptop” [2]. It is designed to be an affordable educational tool for children in developing countries.

Beneath its toylike exterior, the XO is a very advanced device with a rotating screen, dual laptop-tablet modes, a regular color display for photos and videos and a high-contrast black-and-white mode for daylight visibility. It sports wifi, is capable of creating local computer-to-computer networks, can be charged using a ripcord or solar panel, has a durable rubberized keyboard, webcam, microphone, and speakers. Above all else, however, it has a robust Linux-based OS and an user interface, named “Sugar”, designed specifically for children.

With all the bells and whistles above, the OLPC is not, unfortunately, compatible with the Adobe Flash player that Dailymotion and other video sharing sites rely on.

Dailymotion has therefore partnered with the OLPC foundation to
consider new projects involving video, and to create a dedicated space to save the videos created by XO users: olpc.dailymotion.com [3]. This page begins with the content of the Dailymotion OLPC group and hopes to bring together fun and educational videos for children from 6 to 16 years-old. If you produce videos for this audience, [4] we encourage you to contribute to and help animate this group.

Hello Children of the World!

[1] More info on the laptop and the foundation at laptop.org
[2] Yes, it costs more than $100 for the moment, but that should change…
[3] The videos are encoded in ogg, Vorbis Theora
[4] The should be appropriate for children, of course.

Yesterday we released customizable embed players. Shortly afterwards we discovered a bug that caused all the embed players to play automatically. The problem was fixed immediately - sorry for the inconvenience.

If you embedded any players within the past 24 hours, and they continue to auto-play, please re-embed them to fix the issue.

You may have noticed something missing up in the right corner of the header - the Inbox. Unfortunately, the Inbox has been having some issues recently, so we have had to temporarily take it off the site. It’s in the shop now, and the mechanics tell us it should be running smoothly, back where you normally find it, and with all your old messages, by early next week. We apologize for this inconvenience and thank you for your patience.

Below is a message from Loren Bouchard, judge of the animation contest….

Dear MotionMakers:

Well done. And thank you for sharing your work. In a contest with as modest a prize as this one, I wouldn’t have been surprised if entries were few and far between, but that’s not the case here at all. Besides the quantity, I’m impressed with the high level of originality. This is not a bunch of knock-offs - there are people taking real creative risks here. I’d like to recognize a few people/pieces for honorable mentions: stecker_show, happyfatties, MovingBoxStudio, and todd_spicer – thank you, great job.

jkenwks - “Mick the Mighty Miner” is really something. Keep doing stuff like that.

PSSTpassiton is a collective. So points right there, just for teaming up. That is key in this industry. I especially liked “Sparkle Esperantumor Stimulation”. Love 2D/3D mixed together.

And fugazi77: “Sunny Day All is Well” - another trippy piece, and another example of INCREDIBLY high quality animation and execution.

And now the winner…

The winner is Slothvision, who entered “The Sloth Life, It Can Changes”, “John Wolfington:Shotgun” and “PlanetX”. They all appealed to me immediately, but “The Sloth Life”, in particular, felt approachable and funny. The voice of the character came through (even though it was written), and there was a mature storytelling ability at work, with ups and downs and a bittersweet final beat that tied the whole thing together. A great short.

Thanks again everyone, for entering and for checking out each other’s work. I had a great time looking at all of these, and I had a great time working on our own little call-for-upload pieces. (Thank you, Nora.)
- Loren BouchardP.S. I can’t resist also sharing this - If you’re in the mood to hear a completely different (mean, nasty) perspective about this contest, check out this guy’s blogpost:
http://www.cartoonbrew.com/internet-blogs/a-new-low-for-online-animation-contests

We recently added an “Avatar Webcam Upload” function to the site, which lets you take a photo with your webcam and use it as your profile avatar.

All you have to do is:

• plug in your webcam
• strike a pose
• click “Shoot”, and
• click “Save” to publish your new avatar

You can access the new function by clicking the “my account” tab on the navigation bar within “my profile”, and then accessing the “Avatar” section from the account settings sidebar.

Enjoy!

Today we launched our new player in public beta. You can test the player by clicking this button on any player page:

Below is an example of the new player in action:

Next week we will give a more detailed explanation of this player’s new functions. In the meantime, please give it a spin and leave any feedback (or reports any bugs) in the comments of this post. Enjoy!

Dailymotion is teaming up with the dopest animator in the business to find the next great animated series. From November 21st- January 4th we invite our users to enter their animated pilots, demos and concept tests into the contest group found at http://animationprocreation.dailymotion.com.

The winner will receive a four-month development deal with Loren Bouchard (producer of the current Adult Swim hit, “Lucy, the Daughter of the Devil”, and such acclaimed animated series as “Home Movies,” “Science Court” and “Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist.”)

Check out the amazing call-for-upload video Loren created:

Dailymotion and VANS Shoes congratulate MotionMaker destin777 for his winning submission to the Halloween Trick-for-Treat skateboarding contest!

The three runner-up vids are:
1. Zombie Adventures for Dailymotion by user: mikedvideo

2. Best Thing Since Sliced Bread by user: dlakes

3. Vans Contest Vid by user: williecrespo.

And, of course, we thank MotionMaker stecker_show for making the awesome call-for-upload vids.

To check out all the Halloween Trick-for-Treat skateboarding videos, visit the contest homepage. There is some great stuff in there—thanks for all your uploads!