Most people who want to share personal family videos either have to post them on their own web site or upload them to a site like YouTube. Motionbox hopes to change that.

When a person hears the phrase "video sharing", YouTube is the name that characteristically comes to mind. YouTube has many benefits for those trying to advertise their videos to the whole world but it is hardly a good place to upload and store personal or private family videos.

Motionbox is a new online video sharing site that takes the best parts of YouTube and marries them with security, common sense, and several added features. Combine these things with both their free or premium upgrade packages and Motionbox may be worth a closer look for many families and individuals.

What Makes the Motionbox Video Sharing Service Different?

At first glance, Motionbox will seem very familiar to many people. The interface is cleanly done, and reminiscent of other media sharing sites such as Snapfish or Shutterfly, but it is when viewing and manipulating videos that Motionbox begins to really stand out.

Free account holders can upload up to 300 megabytes of video files and share them with friends and family via email using group lists or individual email addresses. Premium members have unlimited file storage and transfers.

Unlike other video sharing sites, you can share your videos with as many or as few friends and family as you choose. In addition, Motionbox offers the ability to mix pieces of different video clips together in a simple, flash based video editing application.

While the online video stream is compressed, premium members and their friends can download full resolution copies of the videos for storage or playback on their local hard drive.

In the future Motionbox is planning to provide the ability to download high quality footage directly to devices such as iPods and other electronic media players.

Who Would Find Motionbox Video Sharing Useful?

According to Motionbox co-founder Chris O'Brien, Motionbox is intended for families and amateur video enthusiasts. The company has customized Motionbox in many ways to cater directly to this group of prospective clients by providing some of the most requested options that other sites do not.

Primary among these options is that with a paid Premium subscription, users have access to unlimited uploads and downloads. Users can essentially use the Motionbox account as an online backup for all of their precious videos, while also providing the aforementioned sharing capabilities as well.

The company has gone to great lengths to try to provide access to as many different file formats as possible including video from cell phones, digital cameras, raw DV, and even HD footage.

Users of the free and premium services also have the ability to upload videos via email using a special email address provided when the account is created.

Disadvantages of the Motionbox Service

The free Motionbox accounts house only 300mb of video. Depending on the type of video being uploaded, this may or may not be adequate for most users.

On the other hand, for the comparatively low yearly fee associated with the unlimited storage premium Motionbox accounts ($29.99 for the first year), this reviewer was hard pressed to find anything significant that may make a potential customer of the service think twice.

The unlimited file upload and download ability of the premium accounts seems like a great buy, but one has to wonder if people will take excessive advantage of this generosity, causing a potential bandwidth issue in the future.

As long as Motionbox stays on top of any such problems (and there is no reason to believe they should not), then the service as a whole seems to be a win-win alternative to YouTube and a much more personal way to share your memories.