Grassroots Collaborative Online Video Editing: TheWeblogProject Open-Source Movie Opens Up To Everyone For Remixing

The time has finally arrived to let everyone join in to the next phase of TheWeblogProject: grassroots online video editing and remixing.

If you have yet not heard about it, TheWeblogProject is my own independent, open-source online movie dedicated to evangelize and explain what blogs really are.

Photo credit: Jumpcut video editing interface

Started in March 2005, TheWeblogProject has published a glorious collection of over 140 mini video interviews, both with highy popular bloggers such as Robert Scoble, Chris Pirillo, Marc Canter, Loic Le Meur as well as with thought leaders (Howard Rheingold), first class online pioneers (Leonardo Chariglione, Dave Sifry) and street people of all creeds and nationalities.

I honestly would have never been able to anticipate that within one year's time from the original conception of this open video documentary, the first of its kind, I would have been served with new technology and free online services capable of allowing just about anyone to join into the project and to start editing and remixing the interesting video archive colection with the ease of playing a game.

But thanks to the great guys behind Jumpcut, Eyespot and soon a few more other companies, online video editing and remixing has become a reality, and one, for what I see, that is set to become more pervasive and more disruptive than the now rather mature desktop video revolution.

 

 

The new web-based online video editing services I mentioned above and which I recently covered in more detail open a true universe of new opportunities and applications that range from education and training to marketing, independent news reporting, small scale documentary production, and avant-garde videomaking and more.

The ease with which these services make it possible to archive, trim, select, dub, edit and remix video material of all kinds is nothing short of impressive. If you write or study the new media phenomenon, take note that this is something that changes further and deeper the de facto rules of online media comunication while amrking the evolution of parallel and concurrent new forms of digital, internet-based video-tv productions.

But back to TheWeblogProject.

Start Remixing!

Today I am officially opening the remixing gates and inviting all to take a stab at creating their own mini-movie for TheweblogProject by editing to their liking their selected sets from the over 140 video clips that I am gradually uploading and making available on Eyespot and Jumpcut.

This is a marvellous opportunity to experiment with these new online video editing technologies while having at hand some decent video material. The clips are all short and easy to preview (most clips are around 1' minute) and you are certainly free to include, add and mix-in all other kinds of extra video and audio material in any way you like.

So if you want to experiment, have some fun and want to find out how difficult, effective and really mature these new online video editing technologies are for prime time, feel welcome to come and give it a try right now.

Signing-up at Eyespot and Jumpcut is a no-brainer, and here below you can find the reference URLs to access and start remixing all of TheWeblogProject video clips in either place. Both video editing services have their pros and cons, and both are improving on a daily basis their features and capabilities, so while Jumpcut may have for now a few more extras and some slicker interface tools, both offer pretty much all that you need to edit and remix your videos from start to end (including adding music, titles and effects).

All of your new video remixes will be showcased at TheWeblogProject without you needing to do anything extra but remembering to tag your mini-movies with the keyword "theweblogproject" so that I can easily spot them.

Check out this great early remix by "Lando", who wrote me that it took him only 15 minutes or so to edit this one out on Jumpcut:

Here above is the direct preview if you have broadband (just click play to watch it - if the video starts stuttering just click pause and wait a bit more - then restart it):

All of the TheWeblogProject video clips ready for being edited into mini-movies are reachable here:

on Jumpcut:
Jumpcut collection of TheWeblogProject clips.

on Eyespot:
Eyespot Group - TheWeblogProject - collection of available and remixable clips hosted on Eyespot

Go remix!

All of the original published video clips of TheWeblogProject are publicly available online and accessible for full re-use and re-editing under a share-alike Creative Commons license. Until now I have also published all of the video clips both in Quicktime .mov as well as in .wmv Windows Media formats (The Quicktimes are directly accessible at www.TheWeblogProject.com while all of the .wmv clips are accessible on the Internet Archive.)