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Today marks the first day videos will be hosted by Zenfolio

Over the past six years we’ve come a long way as a company offering services for professional photographers and enthusiasts. As the digital imaging industry has matured, new ways have evolved for photographers to capture their images and market their work, and we now find ourselves capturing video clips with the same equipment we use for photography. Communicating with motion and combining photography with videography are now part of the digital landscape, and we are proud to continue to be the one company you need to serve all your photography (and now video) needs.

Video hosting is heading for every Unlimited, Premium, and Premium Business account on Zenfolio according to the following staged rollout schedule (Basic users will need to upgrade to upload video). And the best part is there will be no extra charge for this functionality, it is included for free.

Staged rollout based on the year you first signed up for Zenfolio: 2006 and 2007 accounts are enabled now

We are rolling out support for video in stages starting with our most loyal customers with accounts opened in 2006 and 2007: these accounts have been enabled with video.

We will be enabling 2008 accounts within a few weeks followed by accounts opened in subsequent years. You will receive an e-mail from us when your account is enabled with video hosting.

UPDATE: accounts from 2008 have been enabled.

Video Hosting up to 1080p HD quality

We are supporting video files up to 2GB in size and up to 15 minutes long. There is no limit on the number of video clips you can upload but keep in mind that, unlike photos, we do not keep the original files once they are converted into multiple streaming formats on Zenfolio.

You can get an embed link to any video at any size, and you can upload your own logo to be used with a video player (under ACCOUNT | Display Name and Logos). You can also select a different Video Thumbnail to represent the video.

Our custom-built video player will default to automatically selecting the best quality supported by your Internet connection (including iPhones and iPads). You can also explicitly select the quality you wish to view and it will be remembered.

We are also introducing new page layouts optimized for navigating and viewing a collection of video clips. You can find these layouts under Photo Page | Layouts while in the Customize Visitor View mode.

Learn more about the video features and see examples.

Introducing Drop-Down Site Menus

By popular request, we have added the ability to create drop-down site menus on your pages. This allows you to create more convenient navigation from any page. To edit the site menu, switch to the Customize Visitor View and select Site Menu from the top toolbar.

Updated Embeddable and Home Page Slide Shows

We have revamped the embeddable slide show and included new features such as:

• creating opening and closing slides
• choice of light or dark controls
• ability to publish password-protected slide shows
• customizing “Visit Gallery” text
• updated navigation controls

The page for configuring the embeddable slide show was completely redesigned.

We have also updated the Home page slide show. It now includes a choice of light or dark color controls and the option to display square thumbnails.

Improved Support for Touch-Devices and Tablets

We went through all visitor pages and greatly improved the usability for touch-navigation including your Shopping Cart and checkout pages. We have created a new HTML5 slideshow that can be used on non-Flash devices such as iPhones and iPads. And for managing your photos, don’t forget about our free iOS app in the Apple store.

Other new features:

• Previews for specialty photo products such as t-shirts, mugs, and magazine covers are now much larger
• Selection of photos has been streamlined for visitors, no more checkboxes over every thumbnail and it now works on an iPad, too
• Free test order is now available from the One Vision Imaging lab. The lab will print 3 color corrected and 3 uncorrected images free of charge as 7” x 5” prints so you can match to and calibrate your display.
• Five new Theme designs: Education, Holidays, Halloween, Silk, and Stripes.
• New photo page layout: Thumbnails on the left, is a mirror of our most popular Thumbnails on the right layout
• New video page layouts: Video Thumbnails on the right and Video Thumbnails on the left. These layouts have been optimized for presenting a directory of video clips to browse and navigate with full size thumbnails and relevant information displayed.
• Photo overlay menu in Visitor View is now smaller and expands on mouse hover
• New Subcategory Detail added: Sports : Water Sports : Water Polo
• Packages have been added to Reports

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