by, Lesa Seibert, President, Xstreme Media
Every day you see another story or blog post about the benefits of online video. We also see new statistics that support the increasing effect video has on website traffic, e-commerce sales and search rankings. Yet, many business owners are reluctant to try this proven business strategy.
There is no time better than now to add video to your marketing mix. Google's YouTube is by far the best known video-sharing site, and the launch of YouTube's new video editor this summer, was an added plus. For editing video, there are dozens of online video editors, that are as simple as YouTube's but have many more useful features. I have defined five editors that will help you implement online video for your business.
Every day you see another story or blog post about the benefits of online video. We also see new statistics that support the increasing effect video has on website traffic, e-commerce sales and search rankings. Yet, many business owners are reluctant to try this proven business strategy.
There is no time better than now to add video to your marketing mix. Google's YouTube is by far the best known video-sharing site, and the launch of YouTube's new video editor this summer, was an added plus. For editing video, there are dozens of online video editors, that are as simple as YouTube's but have many more useful features. I have defined five editors that will help you implement online video for your business.
- Adobe Premiere Express - This free tool is specifically designed for newcomers to online video editing. It allows users to create videos in minutes without investing in Adobe's high-end video products, that can cost thousands of dollars. All you need is a Web browser and Adobe Flash Player to reorder, split and trim video clips, add music, do transitions, add titles and mix in photos, graphics and animations. The drag-and-drop controls are perfect for a beginner in video editing and you can edit videos from any Internet connection.
- JayCut - Business users can create marketing videos or product slideshows quickly and easily with JayCut's online video editor, which is browser based. The editing functionality includes the ability to remix and trim videos, add music, transitions effects, captions and subtitles, automated transcoding and one-click export to YouTube and Facebook. JayCut's video editor is a free tool.
- Movie Masher - Users can go to this site and download free video editing tools that will enable them to trim, composite and timeshift video, mix and fade multiple audio tracks, and add effects, transitions and titles.
- Kaltura - More than 60,000 web professionals use Kaltura's flexible open-source online video platform to enhance their websites and market their businesses. Among the many offerings are two free online video editor tools, the standard and advanced versions. Both include a robust set of editing features, but highlights of the advanced editor not found in the others mentioned above include video and audio layers, timeline-based editing and a library of effects, overlays and transitions.
- Pixorial - Another free, browser-based tool, Pixorial's simple online video editor allows you to assemble the footage in a storyboard and merge clips together with transitions and titles. This gives you 10GB of storage space for your video files and the capability to upload 800MB of files at a time including AVI, FLV, MP4, MPEG, DV and WMV. Users can download the edited videos onto their own sites, post them across social networking sites and order DVD copies form Pixorial for about $10 each.
