WeVideo Offers Free Online Video Editing

WeVideo is free for a basic account. This gets you (as of November 2011) 1 GB of monthly video uploads, and 15 minutes of monthly video exports.You can invite other users to collaborate on editing your video, and you get access to a large library of free music.

With a free account, exported videos are 360p resolution, and include a WeVideo watermark. For a fee, though, you can upgrade and turn WeVideo into a professional, commercial grade editing tool. For more information, check out current WeVideo plans and pricing.

A basic version of WeVideo is also available as a YouTube plug-in, so you can access it through there without needing to create a separate account.

Because WeVideo is cloud-based, you can use it on a Mac or a PC, and with any kind of internet browser. This makes is easy to access and edit your project, no matter where you are.

Another advantage of WeVideo is that multiple users can access the same project. So you can invite other users to share footage, see your project, and make their own edits.

WeVideo offers more features than any other online editor I've seen. There's a huge music and sound effects library, which is a boon to any producer. There are also numerous graphics, transitions and video effects, as well as a color correction tool. Many of the graphics are cheesy, and unfortunately the effects can't really be edited or altered, but there are so many choices that you'll be able to find something that works for your project.

The WeVideo editing interface looks like most other nonlinear video editing programs, with a media library, a preview window and a timeline with multiple tracks. For an experienced editor, it's easy and intuitive to navigate.

For beginning editors, WeVideo offers a "Video Wizard" drag-and-drop tool that makes it simple to arrange your clips and add effects and transitions.

One of the drawbacks of online editing is the slowness. You have to upload all of your raw footage, which can take forever, and if you don't have a super-fast internet connection, making edits and changes to your project can also be a crawl.

With WeVideo, though, I found that my footage uploaded quickly, and there weren't big delays during editing. In fact, because everything is being processed in the cloud, you get real-time effects and don't have to wait for anything to render. Some users may actually find that editing online with WeVideo is smoother than editing on their desktop.

Having everything online means that WeVideo is also speedier when it's time to export videos. When you hit "export," your finished projects will be published almost immediately.

WeVideo is one of the most advanced online video editing programs that I've seen yet. It looks and acts like a professional non-linear editing program, and has most of the features and tools that advanced editors are looking for. But it also offers advantages that can only come from a web-based program, like the ability to collaborate with other editors and access your footage and projects from any internet-connected computer at any time.

While I'm very impressed with WeVideo overall, I don't think it will really work for professional film editors. It doesn't offer the fine-tuning details that high-end projects need. However, I can see how this would be useful to many businesses and organizations that produce basic, straightforward videos.

No other online tool comes close to offering so many features, and the price (free for a basic account) makes it hard to beat.