Vimeo today unveiled the first of what is to be a suite of cloud-based or downloadable "Enhancer" tools that will help a broader range of Vimeo users put more of a polished finish on their videos. The inaugural Enhancer tool lets users easily search, select and customize soundtracks and just as easily add them to their Vimeo projects. A new collaboration with SmartSound also brings some 4,000 tracks to those already available in the Vimeo Music Store, and as existing SmartSound users might guess, these specific tracks can be tweaked by length, arrangement, mood and instrumental mix.
The soundtrack Enhancer lets users select start and end points and adjust audio levels, compensating for wind and other ambient noise captured with onboard mics. While the Enhancer's click-and-play simplicity will likely appeal to those without video and audio editing software at their fingertips, we asked Dae Mellencamp, Vimeo's president, how seasoned filmmakers who use Vimeo to share their experiements and more complete projects with other users might also benefit from it.
"We really believe that music makes the difference between a good video and a great video," she said. "And affordable price points, particularly for commercial licenses, are really important to a lot of filmmakers on a budget." The personal use price for the newly added SmartSound music is $1.99 a track. It's still a relative bargain, however, for full commercial use of those tracks at $19.99. "We continue to offer commercial licenses for Audiosocket songs to indie filmmakers and for small business use," said Mellencamp. "But I think this new, more attractively priced blanket license for SmartSound tracks, particularly for enthusiasts and pros, is going to be a very compelling proposition."
The Enhancer concept has been in the works at Vimeo for some time. "We've essentially doubled our dev staff in the past year so we can roll out more of these kinds of tools to our users," she said. "There are a lot of additional engineering resources we can now put behind the products and as a result, we'll be able to launch more features more quickly over the course of this year. The ultimate goal is to help people who are in different stages of their creative development over time."
