Tool of the Day: YouTube Video Editor

You may remember earlier when we reported on YouTube's new content creation feature which allows users to make and upload their own animated videos. Now YouTube has augmented their video services with a robust set of free video editing tools called YouTube Video Editor. While the service soft launched in 2010, it has been tweaked and refined over the past few months and includes several useful features. Let's take a look at a few of them. Once you have uploaded a video to your YouTube account, just click over to your videos and playlists, and you will see a link in the top navigation called Video Editor. The editor's interface is similar to other video editing programs like iMovie, including a media picker to select your videos, a preview player for your video as you make edits, and a filmstrip stage to construct your video. To begin, just drag your video(s) from the media picker down to the filmstrip stage. Once placed on the stage, these videos can can be rotated, trimmed (within 1/15 of second), and you can adjust the brightness, contrast, or add stabilization (in case your original video is a bit shaky). Multiple versions of a video can be added included on the filmstrip stage, which makes construction easy if you need to pre-roll or post-roll content to your video. With your newly constructed and edited video, you can add audio overlays from 20 different genres ranging from acoustic to world, and you can add several different transitions between clips, such as a crossfade or a star wipe. When you are finished with adding music and transitions, you will be able to view the finished product and publish it directly to you YouTube channel. If you get lost at any point through the editing process, there is also a helpful tour that's just a click away from the main interface. While YouTube Video Editor joins a number of other free online video editing services (JayCut, One True, Media, etc.), it stands out among the pack by letting current users keep their videos on YouTube without transferring files between multiple web services, and the learning curve is extremely low. Try it out today at www.youtube.com/editor.

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Tool of the Day: YouTube Video Editor

Maurice Cherry

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Maurice Cherry