Pages

June 13, 2008

Cool Tools: Fix My Movie


Today’s technology has placed video cameras in all sorts of devices ranging from cell phones to laptops. It’s always great to have a camera on you; after all, who knows when you’ll find something worth filming. The problem is that the videos in cell phones capture in painfully low resolutions. They often come out blurry and unwatchable, with the Gordon’s Fisherman looking more like Big Bird. Now there’s a service that lets you take these videos and increase their quality. Fix My Movie!


It works like this. You transfer the video in your computer or cell phone to the website and within thirty minutes they will have upgraded the quality of the video. Fix My Movie claims that it increases resolution up to four times, brings out new details, gets rid of noise and compressing artifacts, and automatically brightens dark videos.


The examples on the website show definite improvement in the quality of the video clips. The images are brighter, cleaner, and details in the foreground are much sharper. Strangely, some details in the background aren’t quite as sharp in the fixed version. The bottom line is that images are much better after they are processed by Fix My Movie.


Fix My Movie was created by MostionDSP, a company which designs software for improving video from a wide range of sources including forensics. Fix My Movie is a natural extension of their work, with this one being aimed at the consumer market. While the service is currently free, the company will be launching a premium version which lets users do a few more things including grabbing super high quality JPEG files from video.


To get started you can signup for a free account and begin uploading video files. Make sure your videos don’t exceed 15Mb, that’s the maximum file size. The service also has an email feature where you can mail them the video at upload@fixmymovie.com. Once finished, you can download your enhanced video in Windows Media, iPod (Quicktime), and Flash video formats. An embed code is also available for sharing in blogs and social sites. Go fix your movie at http://www.fixmymovie.com/.

0 comments: