Friendly Music was launched with a library of 35,000 pre-cleared soundtracks for YouTube users. Since then, the company has been working to add even more music to choose from. Now the catalog includes more than 750,000 songs altogether. But that means finding the right track is more difficult than ever — which is why Friendly Music has implemented a few new features to enhance soundtrack discovery.

One tool Friendly Music has added is a MoodMap, which lets users search for a soundtrack based on the feeling of the video they’ve created. By clicking within a rainbow-like circle, they can find songs that match a certain mood, which refines things a bit. There’s also a “What’s the Occasion” tab for finding soundtracks relevant to certain holidays and occasions. And finally, Friendly Music has an editorially curated Editor’s Picks, with songs focusing specifically on current events, pop culture or upcoming holidays.

It’s also important for users to be able to test tracks out before they license a song and apply it to their video. As a result, Friendly Music has a new feature that lets users preview any YouTube video with a music track before purchase. They can use the tool to adjust the timing of the video and audio track, or move throughout the video’s timeline with the soundtrack loaded.

If they don’t necessarily want to license the song outright, they can create a “Mash” — which is basically just a combination of any YouTube video and a Friendly Music soundtrack. All Mashes have unique URLs, and users can share or comment on those videos with friends. Other viewers can then remix, or “Remash,” the video with other soundtracks.

For Rumblefish, the hope is that adding more songs and more features will get more YouTube video creators involved, and hopefully boost sales of its soundtracks. It’s pretty vast library should help with that, and the ability to share uncompleted videos through the Mash feature could build awareness of the site and its capabilities.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How consumer media will change in 2013
• Controversy, courtrooms and the cloud in Q1
• Players and Strategies for Real-Time In-Stream Advertising

By putting editing in the cloud, WeVideo is taking advantage of cloud-based processing power to eliminate the need for expensive editing hardware and software. It’s also betting on collaborative editing, which allows multiple editors to make changes and to approve videos before they go live.

The platform offers a suite of tools that match most prosumer video editing software packages, and it comes with a set of royalty-free audio clips, transitions and graphics. Since all editing is done in a web browser, the platform is agnostic to the device it’s being edited on, whether it’s Mac or PC — and it can even be used to edit on smartphones and tablets when connected to the Internet. WeVideo is also agnostic as to the source file or publishing destination.

Once completed, videos can be published on a corporate website, as well as popular destination sites such as YouTube or Vimeo. WeVideo also incorporates social sharing tools to let users publish or embed videos on social networks like Facebook or Twitter.

WeVideo operates on a freemium model, and it already offers a free, consumer-based product, which it launched at the Demo conference in September. It’s also available to YouTube users as a way to edit videos directly on that site. With the launch of WeVideo Commercial, it’s giving enterprise users a much greater amount of storage (50 GB), as well as up to 1080p video resolution and 24-hour support for $79 a month.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How consumer media will change in 2013
• Controversy, courtrooms and the cloud in Q1
• 12 tech leaders’ resolutions for 2012

LaCie’s desktop RAID drives feature either two 500 GB 7200 RPM or two 1 TB 5400 RPM hard disk drives mounted in a single case, and each features two Thunderbolt connectors for attaching to your computer and for daisy-chaining with other Thunderbolt-equipped accessories. Mini DisplayPort monitors can also connect to the LaCie Big Disk Thunderbolt series, but one of those must cap the daisy chain if you plan to use it with other Thunderbolt devices.

The drives are light, at 1.4 lbs each, and can achieve transfer rates of 251 MB/s. If you daisy chain four together, LaCie says you can hit even higher speeds, up to a maximum of 782 MB/s. Note that this would also require four Thunderbolt cables, which Apple sells for $49 each. And the LaCie drives don’t ship with a Thunderbolt cable .

LaCie’s target market with these drives is creative professionals who needs need the speed of Thunderbolt and also a conveniently portable form factor. The Little Big Disk is a much cheaper option than the Promise Pegasus RAID System, which debuted in June and starts at $999 for a 4 TB version. Still, it probably won’t appeal to the average consumer for whom an equivalent 1 TB drive at around $70 or a little more with USB or FireWire connectivity is more than adequate.

If I did just a bit more video and photo editing than I do now, I can see the LaCie being a good option for an external project scratch disk. LaCie also supposedly has an SSD option on the way, but that will likely be even more expensive. Anyone else thinking about grabbing one of these?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• New challenges for the IT organization
• Mobile Q2: Smartphone growth surges; iPad’s rule continues
• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era

Final Cut Pro X 10.0.1, available through the Mac App Store right now, brings Xsan integration for distributed remote collaborative editing; XML support, which will allow project and event info to be imported and exported to external programs; and simplified export of audio, video and graphics with a new “Roles” feature. Other new additions include GPU-accelerated exports and full-screen mode for OS X Lion users, among others.

Still missing are oft-requested features like multi-camera support, but many of those are coming in 2012, according to Apple Director of Pro Video Product Marketing Richard Townhill, who spoke to Macworld about the release. Apple is clearly intent on keeping its earlier promises to disgruntled Final Cut customers, many of whom found the changes in FCP X to be more of a backslide as opposed to forward progress.

In order to convince those customers to take a second look, Apple has also introduced a free 30-day trial version of FCP X. True to the company’s dictum that the Mac App Store shall contain no trial software, the demo is available directly from its website. The trial can live comfortably alongside an existing Final Cut Pro install, so pros who want to give it a shot don’t have to worry about being unable to go back once the 30 days are over.

Apple may have made some serious miscalculations about what its pro customers were looking for with the initial release of FCP X, but version 10.0.1 shows for a fact that it is highly motivated to make amends for that lack of foresight. XML support in particular really unlocks the app’s potential, opening up editing to integration with lots of third-party apps. We’ll see if this update is enough to convince more pro customers to upgrade, or if users wait to see what other changes Apple introduces down the road.

Note that at the time of this writing, the update wasn’t yet live in the Mac App Store, and the Final Cut Pro X trial download link redirects to the Aperture demo. We expect Apple to resolve both of these issues shortly.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Who and what to watch in the new era of the living room
• Is Android broken and if so, will Google fix it?
• New challenges for the IT organization

Magisto works like this: Once a user has signed in with Facebook Connect, he or she can upload a single video or multiple videos, which the site analyzes and cuts and edits into more palatable — and interesting — videos. Users can then share those videos on social networks like Facebook or Twitter or email links to friends.

According to Magisto co-founder and CEO Oren Boiman, the reason most of us don’t make use of all the videos we’ve shot is due to the incredibly time-consuming manual process that comes with picking, arranging and editing clips together. The goal of Magisto is to automate that process, letting users take the great quantity of raw video that they’ve shot over the years and painlessly pretty it up, without having to actually crack open iMovie or some other video editing program.

In a demo, the system worked well enough: Boiman demonstrated how a selection of three or four family videos, each several minutes, would have selections automatically stitched together and a soundtrack added, all with little manual input, other than uploading source files to the site. Once created, the videos live on the Magisto site, but they can be embedded on Facebook or a user’s personal website. For an example, check out the video below:

Like Animoto, Magisto hopes to build a freemium business model, in which users can create videos for free. But premium features like HD or unbranded videos, or the ability to download videos created with the Magisto editor, would be paid for in micropayments. The startup also expects to roll out mobile apps to enable users to upload videos directly from their phones in the future.

In the meantime, Magisto has its Horizons Ventures funding to finance operations. The company, which has 10 employees, is based in Israel, but it is looking to hire some employees in the U.S.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
• Welcome to the New Paradigm: TV Makers Rule
• Connected Consumer 2011: Rise of the Virtual Video Operator

Taking the shaking out of video uploads should go a long way towards making some of the amateur footage captured on mobile phones more watchable, but it can also be resource-intensive — which is why Google’s engineers invented an entirely new approach toward image stabilization.

The new editing functionality will be part of YouTube’s video page, where a new “Edit video” button will offer access to filters and other editing functionality. This type of post-processing is separate from YouTube’s video editor, which allows to produce new videos based on existing clips.

The goal of the new features was to create a less complicated approach for “quick fixes,” said YouTube Product Manager Jason Toff during a phone conversation this week. Toff said users will especially benefit from quick access to image stabilization. Check out a video highlighting the new features below:

Videos can be edited after uploading, and users can also add effects and stabilization to videos they’ve uploaded months or even years ago. The only constraint is that YouTube only allows edits to videos with less than a thousand views. Toff explained that the site wanted to prevent content makers from confusing viewers by editing videos that have already become very popular.

Edited videos will be available under the same video ID, but users can also chose to save a new copy in case they want to preserve the original video. YouTube’s edits are non-destructive, so you can always revert back to the original version — at least as long as your video stays under 1000 views.

YouTube’s image stabilization algorithms were developed as part of a Google research project with the goal of reaching cinematic stabilization levels without overloading Google’s data centers. The team behind the technology published a paper about it earlier this year, in which they explained that traditional stabilization methods only tend to remove quick jerks, but not the slower motion introduced by someone walking while filming.

Newer approaches try to compute the way the camera should have moved without those shakes and jitters through elaborate 3-D models, but that would have meant too much processing to be practical for the billions of videos on YouTube’s servers. That’s why the team came up with a different approach, which it also details in this video:

It’s admittedly pretty technical stuff, which is why Toff summed it up the following way:

“For any video you shoot on the mobile phone, it makes a huge difference.”

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Controversy, courtrooms and the cloud in Q1
• When video gets democratized, who wins and who loses?
• Got a Cable Subscription? There’ll Be an App for That

Apple has apparently decided that the poor reception of Final Cut Pro X by many professional video editors isn’t going away on its own, and has released a special FAQ page to address commonly voiced concerns about its editing software. Arguably, it’s a step Apple should have taken before the FCP X release, not once opinion is starting to galvanize against it.

As digital media consultant and Final Cut expert Larry Jordan notes, Apple botched this launch. It did so by not recognizing that change, especially major change to a platform essential to how people make a living, often isn’t welcomed with open arms. That doesn’t mean Apple should just stick with what’s comfortable and give FCP customers a slightly tweaked version of what they already had. But it does mean it should have done a better job of anticipating sore spots for pros making the move to FCP X, and provided transition aids to make those changes less jarring — like the FAQ that arrived Wednesday, for instance.

The FAQ also reveals where Apple missed the mark with FCP X, and where it still needs to address concerns. It addresses some complaints, like the ability to support multi-cam editing, XML export, and audio track exporting, by promising the features will arrive in future updates. If these are big enough pain points to address now, however, it likely means they would have been relatively easy to anticipate and prepare for prior to release.

The FAQ describes other issues as things third-party add-ons should — and will — handle. It’s true that third-party developers need some time to cope with a new release, but again, it seems like Apple missed a trick by not making better use of its closed beta program to head these complaints off by working more closely with third-party devs.

The biggest issue many editing pros will probably have with this FAQ is that Apple doesn’t plan to offer project importing from FCP 7 to FCP X. It’s the first question Apple addresses, and it’s a complaint I’ve seen often. Apple says “there is no way to ‘translate’ or bring in old projects without changing or losing data,” due to FCP X’s completely redesigned project architecture and trackless editing. This may be one of the biggest problems for editors going forward, even after other issues are addressed with updates and third-party plugins.

I still think the strength of the reaction to FCP X has a lot to do with the shock of encountering a dramatically different program than people are used to, but there’s no doubt that Apple overestimated the willingness of users to jump on board a new way of doing things. If Apple had already identified problems like multi-cam support during the limited beta, it should have delayed the FCP X release until fixes were ready. And if it didn’t, it needs to rethink how it approached pre-release testing and who was included, since it seems like it might have been an excessively approving crowd.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How Wal-Mart could move ahead in the cloud-based storage race
• When video gets democratized, who wins and who loses?
• The Future of TV Can Bet on “Apps Everywhere”

The New York Times‘ David Pogue, using info supplied by Apple itself, posted a Q&A Thursday addressing many complaints emailed him regarding his mostly positive review of FCP X. Pogue contends that many of the shortcomings editors are finding in the new pro video editing software from Apple are either issues that the company plans to address with updates or are features that were introduced via third-party plugins and drivers, which will probably be addressed in the same way again, once people have spent some time with the software.

Pogue’s column doesn’t address every complaint, and as you can see in the video below, the issue has grown big enough that Conan O’Brien skewered it on his show Thursday night. But Apple clearly seems dedicated to making FCP X a more full-featured product, with lots of planned additions in later updates, including multi-camera support, one of the most noteworthy omissions from the latest version.

Here’s the thing: In a time when minor aesthetic updates to Facebook’s home page are greeted with petitions that attract thousands of users, is it any surprise that a radically different Final Cut Pro would be met with resistance? Final Cut Pro is an essential tool for many, and one they use every day. Not many liked Office 2007 when it came out either, and many complaints were the same, with users citing an inability to do things or find features.

Apple seems committed to listening to user feedback, and it has always iterated its software products with one eye to addressing outstanding issues, including through iOS and OS X updates. Also, Final Cut Pro 7 isn’t being banished from use. I still know many professional video editors working for large media companies that are now two versions behind, in fact, and so aren’t terribly concerned about what the newest version has or doesn’t have to offer. But I’d love to hear from other video professionals what they think about FCP X. Is this just a case of users requiring an adjustment period for a new product that doesn’t look all that familiar, or is it an example of Apple dropping the ball in a much more serious way?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How consumer media will change in 2013
• Connected Consumer 2012: A year of consolidation and integration
• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution

Apple explains that in addition to it video editing features, Final Cut Pro X now also contains the key sound editing and color grading components once found in Color 1.5 and Compressor 3.5, allowing you to “use a single application for the entire post-production workflow.” Motion and Compressor remain distinct apps because of their unique functions, and basic DVD and Blu-ray authoring abilities are now contained in the main Final Cut product.

$300 may seem steep for a single program, but the revamped Final Cut Pro X actually does the work of about four programs from the original suite, which sold for $1,000. Final Cut Pro X also brings a lot of great new features, as shown off at NAB, an industry event for digital video audio and film professionals in April, including background rendering, which will allow editors to continue editing while video rendering takes place in the background. Other noteworthy new features include the new Magnetic Timeline, which lets you drag and drop clips wherever without breaking up existing elements, Smart Collections that analyze and scan your clip library and group like elements together (like close shots or group shots, for example).

Motion 5 brings new smart templates that allow you to use effects, transitions titles and more as you edit, and the interface is redesigned to make it easier to spot subtle color variations and effects in your content. Compressor 4 brings boosted export options, including HTTP live streaming support, and one-step streaming web playback output options designed for iOS device compatibility.

At $400 total for Final Cut Pro X, Motion 5 and Compressor 4, this represents a steep price drop from Final Cut Studio 3. Apple may have simplified its video editing product, but it doesn’t look like it cut too many corners in doing so, and it brings some exciting new features. Video editors: will you be taking the plunge or waiting to see how this new approach pans out?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How consumer media will change in 2013
• Apple’s Path to the Living Room
• TV Apps: Evolution from Novelty to Mainstream

The refresh seems to be an evolutionary update, as reports only assert that second-gen Core i (aka Sandy Bridge) chips are on their way to the all-in-one, along with the high-speed Thunderbolt port that handles both DisplayPort duties and low-latency simultaneous dual-channel data transfer. Big changes to the looks or other components haven’t been mentioned, and AppleInsider couldn’t get any info regarding earlier rumors that iMac screen sizes would change, or that the 6000-series AMD Radeon HD graphics chips would be making their way into the Macs.

But even if Apple’s next iMac isn’t a show-stopper, it should have all the ingredients it needs to spark another leap forward in desktop computing. That’s thanks mostly to Thunderbolt, which so far holds a lot of promise but hasn’t really yet begun to make its presence felt. But it’s a technology that makes the most sense when thought of in the context of stationary workspaces, and that’s why the introduction of Thunderbolt to the iMac line (Apple’s strongest desktop holdout in a market that’s moving further toward mobile and portable paradigms) should result in much wider uptake and use of the tech by third-party device and accessory makers.

Daisy-chained storage, display/storage/USB combo devices, and HD video and photo capture devices all make much more sense combined with a stationary desktop workflow than they do with a mobile workstation. And with iMacs populating creative agencies and development studios worldwide, Thunderbolt will have a much wider reach with an ideal target audience once it gets baked into the iMac. The MacBook Pro is a strong seller, but most accessory makers will be shy about using the spec until it has a wider potential audience. Thunderbolt on more machines should help bring the cost of accessories that use the spec down, too, as manufacturers can count on higher sales volume of those devices.

I may or may not actually end up purchasing a new iMac (my current desktop workhorse is about three years old and starting to show its age) but I’m still excited for them to arrive, if only because of it what it will mean for Apple’s biggest little tech introduction this year: Thunderbolt.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Who and what to watch in the new era of the living room
• Mobile Q2: Smartphone growth surges; iPad’s rule continues
• TV Apps: Evolution from Novelty to Mainstream