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The online video site formerly known as Grouper — the one purchased by Sony for $65 million last August — has a new name and a new direction.

Now Crackle, it will be a Sony Pictures-backed online talent studio (our previous coverage here).

The hope is that in between Hollywood and YouTube, there is an opportunity to bring together nascent actors and film-makers and turn them into tomorrow’s silver-screen stars. A “pathway to Hollywood,” according to Crackle/Grouper co-founder Josh Felser.

If Crackle goes according to plan — if production quality starts to drive more traffic — it could turn into an online version of TV contest shows like American Idol, where stars are born out of a combination of judges’ decisions and popular vote. Its site is live as of Monday morning. Check out Handshake, a somewhat disturbing video on the front-page, for example (screenshot below).

YouTube, though, appears to be growing faster and at a larger scale than any of its competitors. In fact, stars are already being born out of it, just like what Crackle is trying to do now. Just about everyone else is doing something similar from Metacafe to 60 Frames.

Crackle has been evolving steadily over the last three and a half years. Now, it will keep its existing features, such as sharing and viewing video clips online. Helped with Sony backing, Crackle will also fund production, sign deals with promising artists, and market videos across the web.

For example, Sony’s Imageworks studio will work with animators creating videos for Crackle. Every three months, the best animated video — as selected by users and Crackle editors — will receive a cash prize and fly to LA to pitch Sony executives on a theatrical release. Under Sony’s umbrella, the best animations will also be eligible for an academy award in the category (among thousands of others, of course).

Crackle editors and selected “cultural tastemakers” will also help decide what videos get featured most prominently. Still, a “people’s choice” award will also help new videos get featured — but based on how many times the video gets emailed, streamed, favored on user profiles, not just on pageviews on the site.

As part of the re-launch, Crackle is introducing 12 branded channels with unique foci; four, including the one for animation, will be “pathways.” Every channel will be open for user submissions. Another question: Will more top Hollywood stars move into open, online video distribution, like what Will Ferrell is already doing? Will they want to work with Sony/Crackle, or go their own way?

Besides funneling talent to other Sony (and Hollywood) properties, the channels are also open for sponsorship by advertisers.

Crackle will also try to distinguish itself by a better user experience: displaying videos in a larger format, where users can keep one video playing while searching through others on the site.

These days, it’s hard to build an online video-sharing property with compelling content, and even harder to monetize with advertising, Felser said. The site has grown to 25 million unique visitors in June from 7 million last August, he says, but notes that its ad-based revenue model isn’t a big business.

Other partners include Sony’s Television and Imageworks studios, Columbia Pictures and IMPROV Comedy Lab. Videos will be distributed across the web and Sony devices (including the PSP, VAIO and BRAVIA).

Is Google a threat here? Would it try to buy its way into Hollywood, taking YouTube upmarket? Felser thinks that it would be hard even for Google to buy its way in. We’ve also covering how private equity, venture capitalists — and really, anyone with money — are buying in.

The bigger question: Can talented, aspiring actors, animators and producers get more out of a site like Crackle than out of Hollywood and YouTube today? And, will users care about Crackle’s higher-quality video technology?

Bonus: Varying VC thoughts on the Sony purchase of Grouper.

The latest action:

Grouper sends “cease & desist” letter to Searchles, but it may backfire — Grouper, the online video sharing site now owned by Sony, sends a C&D letter to Searchles to demand it stop taking Grouper videos and placing them in Searchles’ own player skin. Grouper says the practice removes things like copyright protection technology, as well as buttons such as “flag as inappropriate.” The controversy is recorded at Searchles’ blog, which, incidentally, provides a witty defense. The ruckus only serves to give more publicity to Searchles’ new TV feature Grouper is so protesting. Indeed, we found ourselves reading up on Searchles, checking out its TV feature (see video), and being impressed. It lets users run multiple back-to-back videos on one player, allowing them to import the videos from anywhere, including MySpace, YouTube, Google Video, Blip.tv or Grouper. Users can then post those players to their own blog or elsewhere. There are other companies doing similar things (stripping video from other sites, and then putting their own players around it), but much of this has been untested in the courts. Speaking of video controversy, turns out Viacom, which is suing Google for copyright violation, has its own video-pirate subsidiary, iFilm.

Determining a video’s relevance — These legal fights will intensify when there’s actual advertising running alongside and inside of the videos. Now there’s a company, Visible Measures, that says it has technology to analyze a video’s various characteristics, to help publishers and advertisers know when and how users are likely to engage with a video. The company looks at which users are forwarding the video, where they are embedding it, and whether they are rewinding to a specific part. This gives publishers and advertisers a way to rate a video’s worth, and to target specific individuals. The Cambridge, Mass. Visible Measures has just raised $5 million in a first round of financing from General Catalyst Partners, according to VentureWire (sub required). Now, this technology may not yet be the video equivalent of Page Rank — which, as you’ll recall, is the technology (based on incoming links and other factors) that Google uses to rank Web pages in its results. Google is still looking for a way to rank videos, though this technology may bring it closer. Indeed, Visible Measures says it has received an “endorsement” from YouTube.

Lycos releases Jubii in the U.S. — The NYT has the details. But the NYT apparently didn’t try out the service. We did, and didn’t like it.

Obama’s California campaign being run of Kleiner’s office — Former Democratic controller Steve Westly, as reported, has taken an office at the respected Silicon Valley venture firm, Kleiner Perkins. Now we learn he is co-chair for Sen. Barack Obama’s Democratic presidential run. Also, Westly’s new venture fund has already invested in a local solar company.

Tello, launches and crashes within a year — Tello emerged with great acclaim last year with a service that allowed companies to detect the “presence” of employees, such as whether they are best available on landline, cellphones or IM. We wrote about them here. The company has just gone belly up. It raised $10 million in July.

Ouch, Scoble says Microsoft’s web initiatives “suck” — Former lead Microsoft blogger, Robert Scoble, has turned on his former employer: “Microsoft’s Internet execution sucks (on whole). Its search sucks. Its advertising sucks (look at that last post again). If that’s in it to win then I don’t get it.”

More confirmation of Google phone — This time, the Google executive in Spain and Portugal spills the beans, and the Google PR folks are somewhat more forthcoming than when we asked them about it earlier this month.

FeedYes throwing in towel — FeedYes, the company that created RSS feeds for sites that don’t have any, which we first wrote about here, is now up for auction. It has many competitors, including Feed43.com and Nooked.com

Grouper has just released a bunch of 30-second or so clips of famous film and TV content from the library of its new owner, Sony.

It has released the first 100 of these clips under a separate channel, called ScreenBites. This is something that Grouper can do now that is owned by a studio.

This a great idea, because there are always scenes or lines you remember and carry with you in life, but which are hard to find because you often can’t find them without watching the whole move.

Grouper’s chief exec Josh Felser says Grouper has looked for the clips that have resonated with our culture in some way. For example, you may remember the “Hear what I’m saying?” scene from Jerry Maguire; click on image at left for the ScreenBite.

The idea, of course, is to make money. You’ll fall in love with the scene again, and want to buy the movie online — and Grouper gives you a way to do that. Secondly, Felser thinks people will want to add these clips to their home pages at MySpace or other sites — where they’ll get additional exposure, and perhaps draw more customers.

Universal Music Group, whose artists include U2, Mary J Blige and Mariah Carey has finally made good on its threat to sue — filing against online video sharing sites Grouper and Bolt for allowing users to swap pirated versions of its musicians’ videos.

These companies are smaller than YouTube, and thus are easier targets for Universal, which might be seeking to use these cases as precedents for a wider fight– regardless of any short-term licensing agreements it may have signed with YouTube after that site got the huge resources of Google behind it. (Or, Universal may be happy with the copyright filtering technology agreed to in its deal with YouTube and Google, and so is now going after the renegades).

Bolt and Grouper say the Digital Millennium Copyright Act gives them protection, because it suggests that a site is in the clear if it takes down copyrighted content. The question is whether a site should be required to use proactive means to avoid such content, and whether its technology promotes sharing afterward.

UMG lawyers argue the sites are copying, reformatting, distributing and creating derivative works from Universal’s musicians. So Universal is testing a narrow definition of DMCA for the first time. In this way, Bolt and Grouper make for interesting case examples.

Grouper, in particular, is significant. Grouper users can download the videos to their computer, iPod, or PSP — and once they have a physical copy, they can view it and share it with whom they please (similar to the old Napster with music), Steve Poland points out.

Bolt, however, operates much like YouTube, allowing users to view only Flash versions of the videos in their web browser without any ability to copy the video to their physical computer.

Thus, these suits are a great way for Universal to test these two models under the DMCA.

Gill Sperlein, general counsel of adult-entertainment company Io Group, which filed a complaint against another video-sharing site Veoh Networks, told the WSJ (sub required): “They’re making a copy, so that’s direct copyright infringement. Then they’re posting it on their Web sites and financially benefiting.”

Bolt.com had 8.1 million unique visitors in August, according to online measurement company, Comscore, while Grouper had 1.8 million visitors — a fraction of YouTube’s 72.1 million visitors.