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Eyespot Sharpens Its Video Editing Toolset

Eyespot, the online video editing site that I previously reviewed with high regard, has released a new set of tools to make personalization and syndication of videos. The tools include the ability to share to a mobile device or to a number of other video platforms with just one click.

Online Video Editing Showdown

User-contributed video has been a champion of the web 2.0 movement, making it possible to "watch the web" on sites like YouTube, Google Video and AOL Uncut Video. With this trend, the need to edit videos online has become increasingly more apparent. This article will highlight a number of online video options to help determine the best offerings. To evaluate the options in action I have taken the same five clips to recreate the video titled Geek vs. Nerd with each of the online video editing options. The clips for Geek vs. Nerd were shot near the AOL booth in the hallway of the CommunityNext conference.

Eyespot offers a surprisingly simple application that makes uploading and editing online video fun. It offers video effects, titling, audio dubbing and transitions. Aside from standard sharing features, Eyespot also offers users the ability to download their edited videos which is a differentiator from other online video editing products.

Eyespot Edited Video

Jumpcut, acquired by Yahoo, offers a feature rich online editing software. It offers an easy to use interface for managing a video time line to pull in video transitions, titling, audio dubbing and effects. It is regarded by many as the best online video editing offering and I find it difficult to disagree.  However, I was annoyed to find that Jumpcut does not allow users to download an edited video to your desktop, thus users cannot place Jumpcut videos on YouTube or other more popular video sites after editing them.

Jumpcut Edited Video

Motionbox makes uploading and sharing videos easy but it is a feature light online video editing product as it only offers simple video trimming and blending of videos. It also offers users the ability to easily add tags to a section of a video.

Motionbox Edited Video

Photobucket offers a Flash video editing suite powered by Adobe that compares well with Jumpcut. It allows users to mix video and audio in addition to pictures, which is something its competitors do not offer. Photobucket also offers transitions, effects, titling and captions which all help to create professional looking videos.

Photobucket Edited Video

Cuts.com offers short clip video editing as videos must already be uploaded to YouTube, MySpace or Google Video to be edited. Unfortunately, this is a barrier for anyone looking to blend together a few videos that are not already in one video clip; therefore, I was unable to use Cuts in this comparison piece to compare it apples to apples with the competition.

For additional video comparisons be sure to check out these articles on TechCrunch and Robin Good's Latest News.

Summary
Jumpcut currently offer the most feature rich and best online video editing application with Photobucket's Adobe powered option coming in a close second. Eyespot also offers similar features but in a simplified fashion and is the only site that offered the ability to download an edited video - this makes it easier to put edited videos on other popular video sites. You can watch the videos above to see the each product's results. However, none of the online video editing applications are robust as professional editing software like Final Cut Pro or Premiere, but the online applications mentioned all are offered for free and it’s tough to argue with free. Happy editing.