July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Popular video-sharing service Vimeo has added a new video-editing tool called “Looks” that add smart effects to your videos to make them appear professionally made.

Vimeo has done a lot to position itself as the go-to place for creative professionals and video-makers. Last year it debuted a paywall option, a “tip jar” to make contributions to people’s work you like, and its cloud-based Enhancer adds licensed music tracks to video. Now it continues that march by adding Looks to Enhancer.

“We’ve had Enhancer for music, but this is the next evolution of the product,” Vimeo president Dae Mellencamp told VentureBeat. “We want to make the experience of adding effects fast and effortless. … We want to make these types of tools accessible to everyone.”

Looks is powered by GenArts’ Vivoom app, which was specifically built to make videos look better with effects and filters. Vimeo is Vivoom’s first partnership, but the service hopes to do more of these down the road.

There are more than 500 Looks that people can select inside the Enhancer to spice up or cool down scenes. Vimeo’s Enhancer actually can scan your video and recommend creative choices based on an analysis and social data. You also can get more control over a Look by adjusting the intensity of it from 0 to 100 percent and trimming it to apply to whatever part of the video you need. Previews of different Looks will be shown in standard definition, but will be applied in high-definition.

Looks will start as a web-only product, but Vimeo is evaluating the prospect of bringing it to mobile. That would make a lot sense because you might record a really great video and want to post it quickly to Vimeo with a certain Look.

Looks will be free to Vimeo’s registered users for the next 90 days. After that, using a Look in a video will cost some scratch. Pricing, however, hasn’t been finalized just yet.

Check out the GIF below to see an example of a Look:

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Popular video-chat application Tango has spiced up its iOS and Android apps with fun (and gimmicky) new features including video filters, avatars, read receipts, and more.

Using an insane 2-week development cycle, Tango has been able to constantly outpace Skype (its biggest competitor) when it comes to app updates, Android and iOS hardware support, and new feature development. It has attracted more than 75 million users across various platforms using this strategy. Now it adds even more features that could keep users coming back for more and monetize them.

“We’re always improving the quality of our apps and calls,” Tango CTO Eric Setton told us. “We want you to use it with all of your family and friends.”

The first big update is filters — an addition that will immediately make you think of photo-sharing phenom Instagram. The difference here is that the filters are for live calls. If you’re having an awful hair day or want to spice up your day, pick one of the four filters while on your call. The filters are “Vintage, Holga, Mafia, or Comic.”

“If people are shy or concerned about their appearance, [filters] can help put them at ease,” Setton said.

Next up is avatars that let you talk as a cartoon cat or dog. These avatars mimic your speech so when your mouth opens, the animal’s mouth opens too. Setton says one of the best reasons to use avatars would be if you are trying to get your children to video-chat with grandparents or other relatives. With the avatars in place, hopefully this engages them more. You could also use the avatars in place of your face when you have yet another awful hair day. (Jeez, buy some gel or something.)

Finally, the Tango app on iOS and Android will offer read receipts and a new Checkers game to play with others via Tango. Read receipts aim to let you know when your texts, pictures, and video messages have been viewed by the party you sent. Checkers adds to the list of games like TicTacToe and ToonTag that “millions” of users are playing inside Tango.

The four filters and two animal avatars are free with today’s app update, but it’s easy to guess that Tango will charge for additional options in the future. That way you could talk to your friends in a old-timey sepia filter or call your mom with a creepy rat avatar.

While Setton would not explicitly confirm that Tango would sell extra filters and avatars in the future, he implied it would eventually happen.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Tango was founded in 2009 and has raised a total of $87 million from investors including Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Qualcomm Ventures, Access Venture Partners, Bill Tai, Len Blavatnik, and Alex Zubillaga. The company has 110 employees.

Photos via Tango

Capitalizing on a successful past few months, Viddy has launched a public API that will allow developers to use the social video service within third-party apps, the company announced today.

Viddy produces an iPhone application for shooting 15-second clips that can be enhanced with video effects called “production packs.” The startup reported massive growth back in May that brings the total number of registered users to more than 27 million, as VentureBeat previously reported. The company, which launched less than a year ago, has a star-studded list of celebrity investors, including Biz Stone, Shakira, Will Smith, and Jay-Z. But the service also has its share of notable users, such as Rihanna, Snoop Dogg, Katie Couric, Mark Zuckerberg, and an often shirtless Justin Bieber.

In addition to the API, Viddy is launching a contest that gives developers a chance to win $10,000 and an interview with Viddy for permanent employment. To gain access to the API, developers need to contact Viddy via the new developer portal.

Some have speculated that Viddy has a good chance at dethroning YouTube as the king of user-generated video, and this very well could be the case for smaller scale clips. YouTube is currently focused on the bigger picture, which includes enhancing the site’s content to the caliber found on cable television. So Viddy, especially with its new API, certainly has an opportunity to become a powerful force if it continues growing.

Founded in 2011, the Venice, Calif.-based startup has previously raised a total of $36 million in funding from Battery Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, Greycroft Partners, and others.