Socialcam 4.0: Instagram For Video Adds Themes And Soundtracks

Yesterday, Y Combinator double alum and video sharing app Socialcam debuted its new and improved wares at Demo Day. Today, the startup is following up with the official announcement of Socialcam 4.0 — the biggest release for the video sharing tool since it released its filters — that brings themes and soundtracks to the so-called “Instagram for video.”

Since Socialcam spun out of Justin.tv last year, it’s been on a mission to bring video creation to the mainstream. As Eric wrote in January, the app passed 3 million downloads in December, and had begun sending 3 million notifications per day. The reason for this was largely its sharing feed and filter that are now so often associated with Instagram and Hipstagram.

But the Socialcam team thinks that the release today brings it closer to a video creation tool for the mainstream, as it complements the ability to take videos with custom filters with themes and soundtracks, all in one app, making it into a mobile, filter-improved YouTube. Just to give you another analogy, not that you need one.

More importantly, how does it work? Well look at it this way, if you weren’t on Socialcam 4.0, you’d have to go through a process like this: Upload a video with your iPhone’s camera, download another app to add video filters, or maybe purchase iMovie for iOS to add the title. The app would then put you through a bunch of licensing-related stuff so that videos would avoid being blocked on video sites and social networks. Then you would upload that puppy to YouTube, and share the link with your fans, followers, and groupies.

But with Socialcam, you can shoot, share, and edit a video in seconds. And that, my friends, is gold. Aside from making the process of creating mobile video easier, Socialcam is adding a whole mess of themes that allow you to customize your videos to make them reflect the content, or maybe even your mood. For example, the “Journal” theme makes your video look like a journal entry, “Casual” gives your video a handwritten title, “MTV” gives your video the music video “metadata” on the bottom left. There are nine themes in total, each of them with a different quirk.

On top of that, Socialcam now includes a simple tool to add instrumental background music to your videos, with the ability to adjust levels of the music and microphone. The new release includes 10 featured tracks, including Breezy, March, Deep, Happy, Action, etc., which the startup is offering in partnership with Friendly Music, the product of music licensing firm Rumblefish.

Socialcam Co-founder Michael Seibel says that the team is working on adding more tracks soon, and the next big focus for the startup will be on speed improvement.

But in the meantime, users can take solace in its other updates, like notifications when Facebook friends view your video, Facebook open graph integration, Twitter account creation, and, Seibel says, a 50 percent increase in video quality.

For those interested in checking out the app, you can find it on the App Store here.

Will be updating…