Politics Remixed!
September 2, 2008 – 3:48 pm by Griffin Hammond
I apologize for going so long without a post. A new website, Remix America, has kept me busy. It’s like YouTube for the political realm, but with some advanced features.
You can either upload original video content, or remix other works. The site organizers have amassed a collection of contemporary and historical political video footage, which can be viewed on the site’s “American Playlist.” If you become inspired by what you see, hit the “Remix” button, and a web-based video editor appears. In fact, you can remix any video that any user posts on the site! Designed by Kaltura, the video editing platform offers an abundance of features:
- Importing source material
- Upload almost any kind of video file (under 200 MB), including Flash, Mpeg, Quicktime, Windows Media, Real Video, AVI, and more. (Photos and audio too.)
- Record footage directly from your webcam into the editor.
- Pull in videos from the Remix America site or even YouTube, and search photos from Flickr, Photobucket (videos too), The New York Public Library, or any image you find online!
- Add a soundtrack: Find music on Jamendo or CCMixter from within the video editor!
- Editing your video
- Offers a simple editor (clip, then transition, then clip, etc., all with one soundtrack underneath), or an advanced editor (use a timeline to fine tune audio placement).
- Easily trim and reorganize clips.
- 40 transition choices! And some pretty cool ones too!
- Advanced editor allows text editing, overlays, and color effects.
- Publishing your video
- Like YouTube, provide a title, description, category, and list of tags.
- Unlike YouTube, choose any frame in the video as a thumbnail!
- Videos are easily embeddable on other sites.
Remix America improves upon YouTube by becoming specialized (tailored for the election season), and offering a powerful web-based video editor. For a brief, experimental period, YouTube utilized a video editor of its own - Adobe Premiere Express. While I don’t know why they scrapped the idea, Photobucket and MTV are now using Adobe’s services. Remix America also trumps other online video editors like JumpCut, by giving video production a specific purpose, and integrating useful video sources. (Although Animoto is still cool for hands-off editing.) [Read Nick's article about Animoto]
By the way, be sure to check out my Remix video page!
