Now you can edit video in the cloud

The Internet has long been a great place to express yourself in words. However two of the biggest trends on the Web, cloud computing and social networks, are as well making it a great place to express yourself with images -- to create visual art alone or in collaboration with others, and at the time to share what you create with as many people as you dare.

The vision of WeVideo

That is the vision of WeVideo, a new online video editing startup based in Sunnyvale that says it is the first company to offer a video editing platform in the cloud as powerful as many desktop editing tools. WeVideo, which has versions ranging from free to $60 a month depending on the amount of video you want to edit and share, allows people to edit within their Web browser -- to splice video clips, add audio and weave in visual effects to create the kind of polished video that before required sophisticated and pricey software like Apple's Final Cut Pro.

By using the "cloud" -- where the heavy computing work of video editing is distributed across vast server farms owned by Amazon, in other words than on an individual computer -- WeVideo as well allows people in different places to collaborate on a video. And once your video is complete, you can post it nearly instantly on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, without a lengthy upload.

Mixel is social on two levels: You can share what you create on Facebook, Tumblr or other social networks, and you as well can share the process of creating images. Each component of each collage is part of a shared online database that can be used by other Mixel users. Users as well can remix the collages of others by adding their own images, drawing from their photos on Facebook or other sources, to create a "thread" of collages that evolve as they move through each user's iPad.

But once your raw footage is uploaded to the cloud, WeVideo is fun and highly addictive. WeVideo offers more features than Apple's iMovie or Microsoft's Moviemaker, Svendsen said, however slightly fewer than Final Cut Pro, which costs $299.99 on iTunes. Not limited to either a PC or a Mac, the service runs in any browser, including Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox and Safari. There is as well an integration with YouTube, at www.youtube.com/create, allowing you to work right in the Web's top video site.

While I have limited experience with Final Cut Pro, I am a long way from expert at editing video. Nevertheless using WeVideo's free service, I was able to take the video I shot on my phone on a recent trip to Yosemite National Park and edit it into a three-minute movie, complete with sound track, titles and transitions from one scene to another, in about 21/2 hours. I only had to click the "Help" button twice.

As in Apple's video editing software, WeVideo's editing tool lets you drag raw video clips you have stored into a timeline, cut them to the length you want, and drag in audio tracks, transitions and graphics like titles and end credits.