Ever since the social video market boomed through 2006, some video services have sought to differentiate themselves by adding online editors. Jumpcut and Motionbox launched their editors last April and Jumpcut was acquired by Yahoo! 5 months later. Eyespot launched its editor a month before Jumpcut, last March. Last December Gotuit launched their SceneMaker video mashup app. Photobucket recently coming launched its own video/audio/photo editor for premium members (full release next month). Today, Cuts is launching its editor into public beta.
If you’re already working with video on the web, an online editor is fast, easy and free. In theory, these services could bring video editing to people who would otherwise never engage in it. People already engaging in video editing can benefit from automatic software updates and the sharing made possible by online communities.
Here’s a look at each of the services, followed by a more in depth chart comparing features.
Cuts
“Simple and easy, when you need edits now”
Cuts is the new kid on the block and is all about remixing viral video. They don’t host content, but instead take videos from other sites (YouTube, Google, Myspace). With Cuts you can trim, loop, add preloaded sound effects, and insert captions to enhance the original. Editing is straightforward, consisting of changes to the sound, caption, and navigation levels for the video. Every edit can be re-cut, embedded, and emailed. In the future, Cuts will be expanding into simple editing for digital movies and TV shows. See also our early look at Cuts a few weeks ago.
Gotuit
“For slicing and dicing scenes”
Gotuit Scenemaker is for slicing out scenes from videos on other networks. After importing a video into the program via URL, you can select a start and end for one or more scenes on the video, title, tag, and email the scenes to friends. Unfortunately I couldn’t use it to slice up Gotuit content.
Eyespot
“Mashups with effects, transitions, and titles”
Eyespot is a solid editor that lets you mix together your own Motionbox content or scenes from their promotional media packs. It has a simple drag and drop interface that lets you manage a wide variety of effects and transitions for both the audio and video layers. Eyespot lets you add your own audio and mix in photos as well. While you can’t grab video from other networks, Eyespot’s white label editor is becoming available on more and more sites. The NBA is one of the most recent additions.
JumpCut
“When desktop software is too expensive”
Jumpcut is the most developed of the editors, allowing you to add a long list of effects, transitions, and captions to the videos. It also incorporates fine grained control of trimming and audio levels (uploaded background audio and voice). The complexity of the interface makes it great for detailed edits and mashups, but borders on being too heavy an application for the internet.
Photobucket
“Cutting edge tools”
Photobucket just released a new video editing product that leverages the most recent Adobe Flash tools. Unlike any of the other services, users can “mash up” video clips with audio files and photos, and add effects and transitions.
Motionbox
“For trimming and joining”
Motionbox is best known for deep tagging videos, but they also have an editor that is ideal for trimming your Motionbox content and joining the videos together.
As a professional video editor these ’services’ make me want to hit someone with a shovel. Basically you take a piece of dodgy video, from YouTube or Google, and make it even more dodgy with some lame Flash tool.
I imagine $20million in venture capital from Gullible Investor Inc. is right around the corner
Look like Eyespot wins slightly on features?
Youtube will come out with their own little video editor and wipe out all the startups. Why wouldn’t they?
I’d say it can be somewhat hard to pick a winner in the category, because it’s about choosing the right tool for the job. Eyespot is a nice middle of the road between Cuts and Jumpcut.
Next time TechCrunch does an update on online editing, or even on this post, can someone take a look at http://www.clesh.com http://www.forscene.net , and see how it compares.
It seems to be the oldest web-based editor / hoster, but not present itself in a public youtube type of way.
Kind regards,
Shakir Razak
Next time TechCrunch does an update on online editing, or even on this post, can someone take a look at http://www.clesh.comhttp:// http://www.forscene.net , and see how it compares.
It seems to be the oldest web-based editor / hoster, but not present itself in a public youtube type of way.
Kind regards,
Shakir Razak
Why is Photobucket mentioned in this article, they are nothing like the others?
On Photobucket “Unlike any of the other services, users can “mash up” video clips with audio files and photos, and add effects and transitions.”
Oh Yea and filmator does that best!
These sites are all cool!
I agree with first post however about video quality. I’m guessing everytime someone ‘mashes’ up a vid, it is being re-encoded and losing more info each time.
Depends on the mashup. Some services are simply a meta layer directing the player to stop here, overlay that, and so don’t actually re-encode the video. I’m not familiar with any data loss due to re-encoding. I’m assuming it’s not the same as your VHS machine.
They can lose all the quality they like these ’services’ are pointless. Give me one practical use other than entertaining kids for about 5 minutes?
Flickr has a purpose, Upcoming has a purpose, video ‘editing’ rubbish from YouTube is a pointless as 99.9% of the crap on YouTube.
I don’t quite get Emma’s empathy on this.
These tools are the early efforts in making media editing/remixing tools that are web enabled (i.e. can work with media that reside on line). Criticising the quality of the content one can find online is completely irrelevant (as if Adobe Premier enforces you to edit only quality video).
What would be interesting to me is a study on whether these tools serve their business purpose (increase added value and stickiness of hosting/sharing services) and the adoption they get.
@Emma - I believe the point is to entertain the “kids.”…
this is just the natural evolution of the democratization of media production and publishing… from the printing press on forward technology has been evolving to allow more and more people to imagine, create, publish, broadcast, and advertise their media. *most* of this media will appear terrible to *most* people; but *some* of it will appear beautiful to *some* people. that’s the glory of this progression.
we are all but storytellers seeking to tell stories. that’s one of the things that makes us human.
Thanks to SomeGuy for saying exactly what I was thinking. This is the next evolution and it allows people to be creative - I think it’s great. I have also found a use for Cuts for personal videos - sending videos of my children along with comments to family members.
I was going to get involved in this space before I had heard of all the competition. I’d say it’s not as hot as it seems. You could have a site that does exactly what eyespot does in a couple of days. The problem is this is an extraordinarily costly space.
The real deal here isn’t to compete with desktop applications, it’s to make video editing easy enough that anyone can do it. If you can already edit video, this isn’t for you. It’s for people who want to feel clever with a minimum of effort.
I’m shopping for a very lightweight videoblogging solution. I choose to not own a car, so a web-app like one of these could be the way to vlog “as it happens” from my MP4 camcorder, when time is tight. I don’t want to pack a notebook or tablet pc, but I want to do more than just upload. I want to watermark or brand it with my domain URL before I post it. I can trim and join in camera, so now I need something like, maybe, a Nokia N800 internet tablet to accept my SD card to upload Mp4 from wifi access, and then add my branding and style elements through web-apps like these before blogging it. That would be cool!
Another player in ths market that should be considered and evaluated is stashSpace (www.spacespace.com).
Lets try that again with the correct spelling (www.stashspace.com)