YouTube announced a new feature this week which allows you to edit your uploaded videos. Let’s say you have a video on YouTube, and you decide that the color is off. You used to have to download the video, edit it with some video editor, and  re-upload  the video. This would cause your stats to be off because, basically, YouTube would treat it as an entirely new video. All of your likes and comments would be gone. This is no longer a problem. Now, you can go straight to your videos and edit them right in your browser. When you go to your uploaded videos section on YouTube, you will now notice an “edit video” button listed, as pictured below.

When you click the “edit video” button, the first thing you will see is a dual screen view. On the left side of the screen, you will see your video in its current state. As you make edits, the right side of the screen will give you a “quick preview” of how your changes will look.

There is an impressive selection of editing tools offered. There are three tabs with different editing tools from which to choose. There is also a large button in the upper right corner called “Revert to Original” in case you make a mistake. Below, you will see pictures of each of the tabs and their tools with explanations.

Pictured above, you will see the “Quick Fixes” tab. This tab contains tools that will allow you to change the look and feel of the video. One of the nice features is the “Stabilize” button, which will help fix home videos where the camera person had a shaky hand. There is also a one-click “I’m Feeling Lucky” button which will automatically make adjustments to your color and lighting.

The “Effects” tab offers an array of predefined special effects that you can add to your video. Pictured below, you can see their many choices of effects. Here, you can choose anything from old-time movie camera effects to making your video look like a cartoon.

The last tab is the “Audio” tab. In the picture below, you can see that there are a number of free audio files available to add to your YouTube video. You have the ability to search for songs. You can also limit your selection to songs of similar length to your video.

I have to say that I am pretty impressed with these new features added by YouTube. The tools are robust, considering that they are browser based. The interface is very intuitive and simple to use. Having the ability to do all of this in the browser, without having to waste time uploading and downloading, not to mention losing comments and stats, is a well thought out and considerate implementation on YouTube’s part.

What do you think?

In late June we reported that Apple has released a new version of its video editing powerhouse known as Final Cut. Final Cut Pro X was released to mixed reviews, with many professional editors claiming it was useless for their work. It seems as though Apple has heard their cries, and is choosing to ignore them.

Apple held a private briefing for enterprise contact in London about Final Cut Pro X. They addressed a number of concerns, but not really to anyone’s satisfaction. A summary of the briefing was posted to Twitter by @aPostEngineer. Here are the major points:

1. FCP XML in/out is coming via 3rd party soon…no FCP 6/7 support project support coming ever it seems…
2. Ability to buy ADDITIONAL FCP7 licenses for EXISTING enterprise deployments  coming in the next few weeks… 

3. FCPX EDL import/export coming soon…
4. FCPX AJA application coming soon for tape capture and layback…capture straight into FCPX [events].
5. XSAN support for FCPX coming in the next few weeks…
6. FCPX Broadcast video output via #Blackmagic & @AJAVideo coming soon…
7. Additional codec support for FCPX via 3rd Parties coming soon…
8. Customizable sequence TC in FCPX for master exports coming soon…
9. Some FCPX updates will be free some will cost…

Basically, the most desired features are not going to happen. If you want XML import of export, you can only get it through a third-party add-on. As for importing Final Cut Pro 6 or 7 files: It’s never happening. Looks like Apple is officially moving on.

On a positive note, Apple is going to allow current enterprise users to buy additional Final Cut Pro 7 licenses. This should give professional users the ability to wait for FCP X to get the plug-ins needed to make it useful. Then again, it’s possible that will never happen.

YouTube is all set to release a web-based inbuilt video editor. This will be a great news for all the video enthusiasts who are regular up-loaders at the video sharing website. Right now it will be a basic video editor having the most commonly use functions such as trimming and joining with promises of more functionalities in the future.

The feature will surely be light-weight but should suffice for the nominal video editing requirements while uploading videos to the website. The YouTube editor itself is based on JavaScript. The editor will be looking to use the capabilities of cloud computing to the maximum so as to enable users with average computers to edit videos easily. The main task of processing will be left to Google’s own systems.

More features are sure to be added to this innovative tool with time. The YouTube video editor is slated for release later today. This new concept is sure to increase the existing very large user base of YouTube.

Source : TechCrunch

If you download videos regularly from the Internet, you may not want to keep the entire video and only want to save some part of it to save disk space, however there are not many free tools that allow you to do that.

Free Video Dub is a freeware video tool that will allow you to edit video AVI files (DivX, Xvid, MPEG 4), MPEG 1 and 2 video!

Free Video Dub is the free video editing software that lets you delete unwanted parts from video files without re-encoding. And "without re-encoding" means without loosing original quality. This is a lossless video editing, which is very fast.

Free Video Dub supports many MPEG formats including MPEG 1, MPEG 2 and even MPEG 4 AVI, MOV, MP4, M4V, MPG and FLV files including DivX and XviD.

Free Video Dub is available for download for Windows and Mac OSX.

Download Free Video Dub

The basic problem with distribution of media files is that, they do not follow a set standard. You may download several media files which would then require you to download and use different players in order to be able to play those files. In such cases media converters play a huge role in allowing to convert and store different media files into a format of your choice.

Blaze Media Pro is a all-in-one multimedia application which will allow you to convert media files, rip DVDs, edit them and even record your own video and audio files. Blaze MP provides you with a powerful MOV converter, a video encoder along with several other features that would make managing your media files a easier task.

Most media conversion softwares do not provide you with additional features, but Blaze MP also provides you with a DVD software that allows you to rip DVDs, burn media to DVDs and more. Blaze MP provides users with the ability to edit AVI (uncompressed), AVI (compressed using any available codec), MPEG-1, MPEG-2, WMV, and ASF videos with ease, operations include delete frame, delete selection, crop, resize, rotate, mirror, flip, trim, text overlay, adjust audio volume, etc..

Blaze Media Pro has several features rolled into a single product which include audio cd recording, data cd recording, audio cd converter, DVD ripper, conversion to flash video, audio cd copier, audio recorder, video recorder, video converter, video editor, audio tag editor, lyrics search among others. Blaze MP is available for full use for a trial period of 15 days, after which you will have to purchase a full version for $50. With all the features built in, it definitely looks like a good buy. So go ahead and download the trial version and give it a whirl.

Disclaimer: This is a sponsored review

Recording, editing and converting media may require you to install separate softwares, having a single software to do all these tasks would be great, but unfortunately there are very few softwares that do all these tasks, the creators of Blaze Media Pro ordered a review from us to introduce you to such a all-in-one solution for your everyday media needs.

Blaze Media Pro definitely packs in a lot of features which make this software a definite must have if you work with media files extensively or are looking to start out with complex media tasks like recording, editing and converting one format to another.

Key Features of Blaze Media Pro

• Audio recording, conversion, editing and burning.
• Video Conversion, editing, burning.
• Data CD/DVD Burner.
• CD / DVD Ripper.
• Ability to encode and decode media files.
• Sound and Video Recorder.

These are just some of the features that makes Blaze Media Pro a powerful all-in-one media software. Not only does it come in with video converter and audio converter it also has the ability to function as a DVD Ripper, which would require you to install a separate software altogether.

Blaze Media Pro is a complete solution for your audio and video needs and can save you the hassle of installing several different softwares for different media needs. Formats supported for audio conversion include CD, MP3, WAV, WMA, OGG, MPEG-4, AIFF, M4A, AAC, AC3, FLAC, and ALAC, and two-way conversions among MPEG-1, MPEG-2, AVI, WMV, ASF, Flash (SWF and FLV), iPod, PSP, 3GP, and MOV are available for video. MPEG options are available for VCD, SVCD, and DVD compliant output.

Video editing is available for AVI (uncompressed), AVI (compressed using any available codec), MPEG-1, MPEG-2, WMV, and ASF. Comprehensive video editing operations are provided (delete frame, delete selection, crop, resize, rotate, mirror, flip, trim, text overlay, adjust audio volume, etc). WAV, WMA, and MP3 audio files can be inserted into the video or extracted from the video; and BMP, GIF, JPG, PCX, PNG, RAS, PPM, TGA, and TIF are the supported image formats that can be inserted or extracted.

Blaze Media Pro comes with a $50 price tag, which compared to its features is quite good. You can make the decision to buy the software after you have played around with the 15 day trial they provides users with. The trial software does not have any restrictions so you can explore all the features before you decide to buy it.