Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for your patience. We got the blog up and running again so we can now announce the winners of the Snoop Dogg Horror Sweepstakes. The winners are MereMaiden’s HOH [Contest Entry] and Mariposa’s Snoop Dogg’s HOOD of HORROR. Congratulations!

We’re very pleased to announce that our latest release (code named PLAYA) is now live and ready for you to have fun with. We’ve significantly updated the look and feel of the site and we’ve added a bunch of new features. Here are the highlights:

Across the site…

• A completely new header with multi-word search built in
• Bigger, juicier thumbnails for movies, clips and photos
• Significant performance improvements
• The site is wider (960 vs. 760 pixels)

Uploading…

• Fixes to make upload much more reliable
• Significant enhancements to video quality
• You can now add your media to sets on upload

In The Editor…

• Created bigger clippers so it’s easier to trim your video (it’s no longer necessary to zoom in)
• Added a light grey indicator that shows you where you’ve placed titles and effects in the timeline
• Added the ability to edit titles and effects after you insert them into your movie
• Added an actions tab so you can easily take actions on multiple items (including applying styles, setting transitions, setting display duration for photos and sorting by date uploaded & file name)
• Created a Ken Burns effect for better slideshows
• Improved the stability of the Undo function

Playback…

• We made the player a lot smaller. The new dimensions for the embedded player are 408×324
• We fixed a number of issues that caused stuttering on playback
• If you’ve already loved a movie, the heart now says “Loved”
• We created a nicer “full” view. We think it’s a very elegant way to present your movies

Explore…

• A new main Explore section called “The Wall” that includes a Featured Movie, Recently Popular Movies and Active People
• An RSS feed for Recently Popular Movies
• New navigation for Exploring on the left side of the page

Groups…

• A new Groups page that displays Active groups and New Groups
• Views in the left-hand nav that let you see groups with the Most Movies and the Most Members
• Separate views for Events and Contests
• A new layout for the individual Group page
• The ability for moderators to specify a Featured Movie for their group
• New visibility and membership options for moderators
• RSS feeds for each group section

Your Personal Home…

• We greatly improved the recent activity section. It now shows a lot more relevant activity as well as the latest movie from your friends embedded right on the page. If you don’t have any friends yet, you see the most popular movie on the site
• Added a “More activity” page so you can see everything that’s happened in the last month
• Added a tag cloud that contains all of the tags on your media
• Added summary views of your Friends and Fans

Your Public Page (My Page)…

• Cleaned up the layout of the page
• Added a view to display all of your “Works in progress”
• Added a “View as slideshow” function to sets
• Added a date to sets so you can determine their sort order
• Added a link to your tag cloud

If you’d like to get your movie featured on the Wall, be sure you add a short description when you publish. We’re looking for movies that are short, fun to watch, and created on Jumpcut.

We’re very excited about this release and we’re looking forward to your feedback. If you have any difficulties with any of the new features, please send an email to support@jumpcut.com

Be good to your video.