The music video for the surreal folk song I got a bunny, written and performed by Juanito Moore, is not something you will see on VH1. But the video, shot on a rainy sidewalk in front of Moore’s home in Michigan, US, has another distinction: it was assembled, not in a traditional cutting room or with PC-based editing software, but entirely on the Web, using an online service called Jumpcut. The minute-and-a-half video was shot with a digital still camera. While sites like YouTube and Veoh have lately become popular for allowing users to share their self-produced videos, Jumpcut (jumpcut.com) is part of a new class of sites that also offer simple tools for stringing together video clips and then adding soundtracks, titles, transitions and unusual visual effects. All the sites, which include Jumpcut, Eyespot, Grouper and VideoEgg, have been introduced within the last year. This summer, they will be joined by another site, Motionbox.Their shared objective, the founders of the sites say, is to reduce the complexity of video editing and to reduce the cost to zero. “We wanted to make video editing over the Internet faster than desktop editing,” said Jim Kaskade, co-founder and chief executive of Eyespot. “We think it will broaden the base of people who are creative, but may not have thought they were, by creating this tool kit for them. Editing video is eventually going to be as simple as sending e-mail.” Kaskade refers to the process as “mixing,” however, saying he believes that the term “editing” may sound labour-intensive to the amateur videographer. Some of that software is packaged free with new computers or sold for about $100. The analyst firm Parks Associates estimated last year that about four million people regularly use such software for video editing.People who have experience with both desktop software and the new online editing services say the desktop software offers a wider range of features and enables them to manipulate the video more precisely, but they appreciate the speed and simplicity of online editing. GK Parish-Philp, a product manager at a San Diego software company, said that he used Pinnacle Studio to assemble a video of his daughter’s birth. The video “came out really well, but it took forever”, he said. Parish-Philp now uses video clips taken with his digital still camera and edited on the Eyespot site (eyespot.com) to provide weekly video updates to his mother in Texas. Many of the early users of online video editing are new parents like Parish-Philp, or pet owners, said Kevin Sladek, co-founder of VideoEgg (videoegg.com).All of the sites, except Grouper, require that video clips be uploaded to their servers before they can be manipulated. That can take a long time, and there are limits to the size of the files that can be sent. (For Jumpcut, the limit is 50 MB per clip.) Users of Grouper (grouper.com) must first download a free piece of Windows-only software that works in tandem with the website. It permits users to trim and rearrange clips on their computer and upload only the finished product, in compressed form. The sites make possible new kinds of collaborative editing. A group of parents attending a school play can upload all their video, and then edit a single version of the play that makes use of the best shots. Many of the earliest users of the online editing services report two changes in the way they capture and assemble video. First, they tend not to use their camcorders as much, because the tendency with a camcorder is to record long, meandering stretches of birthday parties and parades, which are time-consuming to import to a computer and edit.Jan McLaughlin of New Jersey makes three or four short movies a week, often using her Nokia cellphone. She spends only about 10 minutes, on average, refining her video with Eyespot. “It’s the difference between making a gourmet meal that takes days, or throwing something in the microwave,” McLaughlin said. “Ultimately, sometimes you just need to separate the good footage from the bad and stick it together.” SCOTT KIRSNER
