One True Media Service

I spent over $1000 on Tivos and the service to go with, plus a subscription to OTM so I could easily share my home movies with my family across the country. Despite what their web site says, if you have bought a HDD camcorder in the last year, they DO NOT have a codex to support the MPEG format that all HDD's record in. I have a Hitachi HDD camcorder and tried to upload the files. It saved to the service just fine, but when I went to play it and when my family got it via Tivo, ANY motion in the video (e.g. people moving or camera panning) causes a horrible "strobe effect". The moving objects literally flash. So...I bought ANOTHER camera that records in Quick Time (.mov). And, yet again, despite what their web site says, .mov DOES NOT work with their service. Every attempt to upload is met with an error message from their site saying that the file is in an "incompatible format". As with any problem, I have emailed their support address multiple times and have been waiting since NOVEMBER for resolution. Each time I get a reply that they will "be in touch soon". WHAT A JOKE!!! Save your money!

Photo sharing/editing works just fine.

Videos DO NOT work with the service...unless you are using a capture device that is 3+ years old.

YouTube

The one and ONLY way to get support from them is via email. I have sent 4 emails to them since NOVEMBER. All of them got a human (or at least they appear to be from an actual person) response. All of them said they would "get back to me soon." Almost 6 months later...still waiting!!!

Want a DVD of your photos that's more than just a sequence of pictures? This service lets you upload and store images and video, then make something from them. You can make either a photo book or a video montage (a.k.a. photo slideshow if you have no video). I was amazed at how much more compelling, not to mention compact, a photo slideshow is than clicking through a bunch of photos! You can also share previews of either your photo books or video montages to your friends. I even take the slideshow previews and include them in my blogs, which I love. I've created many photo book and video montage shares, and actually ordered one video montage from my photos. The case was pretty and as advertised. You can see some of my shared montages here: http://www.onetruemedia.com/otm_site/view_shared?p=f71b9208f0e8142dd45e&tpid=1 http://www.onetruemedia.com/otm_site/view_shared?p=ea6be09f1600a5ce0b42&tpid=1 http://www.onetruemedia.com/otm_site/view_shared?p=f29f61ac1704b99fb265&tpid=1 It's all pretty simple. You just follow the steps, and I like that you can upload items into a collection for posterity or into a project for direct, one-time use. And you can copy your items from one to the other. I've used other vendors like Kodak Easyshare, Yahoo Photos, and Flickr. They're great for just sharing plain pictures and ordering prints or mugs or whatever later. And they all have a slideshow options or associated vendors, which are mostly just your photos in order with plain transitions and no music and no ability to share. I think the key differences with One True Media are that they can do so much with video and mixing your photos with video, and that they can convert old photos and analog home movies to digital which I intend to do right after I steal my home movies from my parents :-). Their photo books look really nice and they have lots of layout choices but I've never bough a hard copy. (I realize this is a photo review site, but I also think that there is a blurry line between these media and you can take your pics to the next level when you mix them up with video.) If you're super-technical and want every bell and whistle, this probably isn't for you. I personally love how easy this is to use. I think this is a great product for busy people who want a nice DVD of their friends, family, hobbies, and more, even people like me who are technically savvy but just to busy to learn the video editing software just so they can add in a few video clips with their photos.

Fast turnaround, generally easy and polished user interface, the fact that they can include VIDEO into a product that's more than just a slideshow, pretty decent-size video montage/photo slideshow preview area that's big enough to include in my blog, lots of music choices and options to upload your own real music, not canned music, the fact that you can crop images to the size you want for both photo books and video montages.

The video editing is not as full-featured as some other products I've heard of, though it suits my needs well enough. Some pages could use clearer back buttons. Would like nicer fonts for the title slide of the video and to be able to enter text slides. Would like more options for photo books.

I've used Yahoo Photos, Kodak Easyshare, slideroll.com, Flickr.com & its photoplayr dvd

I didn't have to speak with customer service since everything worked so well. They turned around my DVD faster than I expected. I think it was actually processed that day or the day after.