Online Video Editing – Create Your Movies on the Net

Online video editing - how to cut and make your videos online

By Mark R. Shapiro  February 2, 2008

 February 25, 2008

Imagine you are vacation, visiting wonderful destinations and shooting lots of video and digital stills of your travels and adventures. What do you do with the video and pictures? How can you share these memories with your friends and relatives immediately?

You could travel with your laptop loaded with the latest and greatest video and slideshow editing software and, during your hotel room downtime, you could edit together your productions, save and compress them in a web friendly format, and then email them out to associates. Of course, you could post them to one of the many online sites that do free video hosting like Metacafe or YouTube.

But what if you don’t want to lug your laptop from place to place? What if your productions don’t require sophisticated video editing, effects, titling or audio?

There are a bunch of recently launched web sites that enable you to upload your video and stills and then edit them online. There are other online video sites that are similar in concept but are targeted to creating mash-ups that combine existing professional video footage with provided audio and music to create a new and original video from these existing sources.

Lets first take a look at the sites that enable you to do video editing online. Obviously the first step is getting your video out of your camcorder and to the web site. Depending on what kind of camcorder you are using, this might be simple or it might be a bit involved and require a few steps. Some sites require the upload of properly compressed web video in a specific format while others will accept any kind of video files.

Camcorders for Online Video Editing

There are some camcorders that are designed for easy Internet video conversion and upload. For example, the new FlipVideo camcorder includes bundled software for converting their saved avi files into smaller Divx or WMV files suitable for uploading to the web. Just plug the FlipVideo’s USB jack to the USB 2.0 connector on any Windows computer and the bundled software will enable you to easily convert and upload the captured video. The new Sony Net-Sharing Cam also makes it easy to upload your video.

On other camcorders, especially those that save the video as a digital file versus a video file, by using an Internet enabled computer, you can simply transfer the files from the internal DVD or hard drive to the web site you want to use.

If you are shooting DV, you will need to capture and convert the files and then upload them for video editing.

Some of these online sites will accept a variety of video formats while others are a bit pickier. You need to check out their FAQs and instruction pages to figure out what makes them happy. Some of these sites, like Jumpcut, will accept video and still images that you have captured on your mobile phone. You can simply phone them in!

 NEW - We love to mash up video - especially when we can do it online. Check out this new site dedicated to promoting the new Rambo movie - this mash up site allows you to mix and match a bunch of video and still clips from the latest Rambo film, add a bunch of special effects, sound effects, music, slow mo and more- to create your own Rambo Movie trailer. Its a lot of fun. You can even pan the image around, zoom in, add transitions, titles, etc. When you go to the Rambo site, the link to the mash-up is on the far right. When you are all done, you can post it to the site and share it with other Rambo mash up fans. You can also share a link or embed the completed mash-up on your own web page. VERY cool stuff. http://dev.rambofilm.com/mashup/index.html

Adobe Premiere Express is helping to make this happen

One of the most interesting drivers of this movement is the recent introduction of a new program from Adobe called Adobe Premiere Express. Created for online sites, Adobe Premiere Express is a lightweight Flash-based Web application, and does not require plug-ins or special software downloads.

Depending on the application and web site, Adobe Premiere Express enables users to cut and trim their videos, edit them together, add graphics and text, as well as simple effects and transitions. If you want to add this online video editing capability to your site or online business, you will need to contact Adobe and arrange licensing terms with them.

Various sites, like YouTube, PhotoBucket and MTV.com have already licensed the software and use it in different ways.  
 

For example at YouTube, their Remixer application allows you to upload your personal videos and then add text, audio, graphics, overlays, effects, and transitions. This is very cool. And free.

Like YouTube, Photobucket uses the Premiere Express to enable users to upload and mix images and video with graphics, captions, borders, transitions, music, and other effects by dragging and dropping content to a timeline. In comparison to both of those original content creation sites, the MTV site does not allow upload of your personal materials and instead functions as a mash-up – remixer site for existing video and multimedia content. See below for details.

Other Online video editing technologies.

Not all online sites are using Premiere Express. Many have developed their own software solutions with their own special features and capabilities. For example, one of the most interesting is provided by muvee. Their online editing site www.muveemix, works a lot like muvee's various standalone music video applications for PCs and allows you to easily create music videos that blend together your personal video and digital still files with either their provided music or your favorite audio tracks. Then by picking a specific style, the online program creates an edited music video complete with effects, graphics and titles.

A variety of other companies also play in this area and each does it a bit differently.

One True Media, at www.onetruemedia.com, provides a simple online method to create slide shows or video montages. You can mix and edit videos and still images and add music tracks. The editing GUI page allows you to move and re-arrange your scenes, add and control both transitions and effects, build and add in text and titles, and much more. It’s pretty darn cool. And once you have completed and viewed your project, you can use the One True Media service to burn a high quality copy of your video masterpiece to DVD.

Jumpcut (at www.jumpcut.com) was one of the first sites to get into this space. They offer a selection of different options that include uploading and editing your own videos as well as the ability to “grab” other publicly available videos and images on the net and import them into your own production. Jumpcut is a good example of this type of online site. Current the maximum size file you can upload at one time is 100 MB. If your file is bigger than that, you will have to cut it into smaller clips and upload them separately.

Jumpcut accepts many different types of video formats like mpg, mpeg, mp4, avi, mov, wmv, .flv, .rm, 3GP (mobile) etc. You can also upload many types of image formats including jpg, gif, png, tiff and bmp as well as mp3, aiff, wav and ogg file types.

By using the Jumpcut multi-file uploader you can select multiple files at a time and then automatically upload them Jumpcut also accepts multimedia files by email or from your mobile phone if uploading is too complex.

Mash Up Sites

The mash up sites operate a bit differently and enable you to recut existing video and content in new and different ways. These sites are usually commercial in nature and the provided video and multimedia materials are often outtakes from TV commercials, music videos or other similar materials. For example, at MTV, their Video Remixer site allows you to create new music videos by combining and inter-cutting the music and video from the original artists, as well as ancillary still images and graphics of the musical performer or performers, and related graphics, effects, and frames. Cool stuff. Check out Eyespot.com

Many of these MTV mash-ups are contests that offer prizes to the best and most creative online mash-up.

Adding to the concept are web sites like Ezshow.com and CommercialCreator.com  that are designed for businesses who want to create internet video programming and/or advertising but do not have the technical or video production expertise to shoot, cut and produce their own Internet productions. Instead, they enable businesses to create online mash-ups using commercial stock footage with pre-made advertising templates and formats. You want to sell cars – just add your logo and address to the standard used car sales video template. Minutes later, you are ready to move those vehicles off your lot.

By the way, there are other kinds of online video programs that you might be interested. For example how do you convert video formats? How do change the video format of a cool clip into a format that will play on your mobile device or phone? Movavi Online, http://online.movavi.com, is a web-based service that enables users to download and convert video from one format to another - for sharing, podcasting, cellphones, iPods, and more - for free.  Movavi enables users to download video from YouTube, Google, MySpace, MetaCafe and other video-sharing sites as well as Flash videos, and then convert these video clips AVI, MP4, MPG, 3GP and other formats for use with iPod, iPhone, PSP, cellphone and other devices, and merge several videos into one large movie

If you like the concept offered by Adobe Premiere Express but don’t want to pay the licensing fees, then check out moviemasher. Movie Masher is free open source software that can be installed on any web server to enable advanced video editing features for end users. It enables you to design and create your own movie mash up and online video editing environment. It’s not simple though and requires some technical expertise to set up and use.

Another very interesting site is IBLOKS – 3D. Instead of just creating an online video from your videos and still images, this site lets you create cool looking 3D presentations.  Its not really online video editing per se but it is a lot of fun and is a very interesting way to present your videos and still images. Check it out at http://3d.ibloks.com.

There are a bunch of other sites that also provide video mixing and mash-up capabilities. You ought to check out sites like motionbox.com, eyespot.com, and cuts.com. They are a lot of fun. And even if you are not in the mood to create your own online movies, most of these sites offer gallery sections where you can watch the creative antics and videos created by other movie makers like yourself.