DropShots is a free video sharing website aimed primarily at families who want to put their photos and videos online.
You can get a free account, with up to 500 photos and 20 2-minute videos, or for $4.95 a month you can upload an unlimited number of photos and videos up to 10 minutes.
You must be 18 to use DropShots. You retain the rights to your work, although you allow others the right to make prints of the photos you upload. You may not upload work that is obscene, harmful, illegal, or violates copyright.
Also, you agree not to make images hosted by DropShots viewable to the general public via posted links, as the site is meant for sharing only with people you know.
Dropshots asks for your first and last name, email, a username and password, and your birthday.
After signing up, you are taken to your homepage, where you can choose to use a web uploader or download a "DropBox."
The web uploader takes you to a page where you can select up to 10 video or photo files from your computer. Reenter you name and password and click "Upload"; a window opens with a progress bar and lots of other useful information like the upload speed and the estimated time left.
DropShots supports .avi, .mpg, .mov, .wmv, and .3gp formats.
For a simpler way to uploade files, use the DropBox tool. Simply download and install it to your desktop. It opens right away and goes up to 100 times faster than the web upload; a 20MB file took about 10 seconds with the DropBox while the web uploader took more like half an hour. You need to enter your user name and password, but only the first time it opens; it will remember you after that. The DropBox also has drag-and-drop capability, so you can dump files from your desktop right onto it.
DropShots does not have tagging, since it is not meant to be a public video sharing site. You can only search by user, not by title or tags. You can, however, edit the title and caption of your video in the viewer window once it has uploaded.
Videos on DropShots are pretty small and not terribly high quality, but given that it is a site for sharing with people you know, rather than a place to showcase your work, this is not such a huge drawback, especially considering how quick and handy the DropBox tool is. Also, if you sign up for the "Unlimited Sharing" account, you get higher quality in your videos and photos.
On returning to the DropShots site after your first time signing in, do not bother looking for a place to log in. Instead, you need to go to the "Upload" link in the upper right corner, which will take you to the web uploader page, where you enter your user name and password before you can upload anything. Or you can use their "User" search and enter your own name to access your page.
