Jumpcut online video editing and publishing

Most video editing programs are rather complex and it takes a while to get accustomed to a program's features before you get a grip on things and start to edit videos like a pro using the software.

Especially the fear of missing an important step in the editing process can be somewhat overwhelming at first if you use professional-grade programs that throw hundreds of options at you.

This is a huge problem for regular users who would like to cut a video that they have taken without having to learn a complex software. There is however a possibility for them: Jumpcut is an online video editing website that lets you upload videos from your computer and edit them online on their website.

There are two major differences between Jumpcut and local video editing programs. The first is that you have to upload the raw video file before you can edit it. This can take some time depending on your upload speed. The second difference is a file size limitation of 100 megabytes which means that you either have to cut your raw video file into 100 Megabyte pieces or forget about editing it online at Jumpcut.

Jumpcut supports most of the commonly used video files including avi, flv, mpg and mov, and supports uploading multiple files at once. It is also possible to upload pictures and audio files or import them from Flickr or Facebook. I tried the service today and somehow was not able to upload videos at all. The videos would stop at about 50-60%. I did try different videos and formats which can only mean that they have some problems at the moment.

The functionality that Jumpcug offers is pretty basic and thus easy to learn. You can slice, cut and duplicate the videos that you have uploaded, add titles and sound to them, apply all kinds of nice effects (butterflies, invert and rain for instance) and apply actions to the video.

One thing is however really bothering me. There is no obvious way to download the created movie. You can publish it (public or private) on the Jumpcut website but I was not able to find a download link for the movie. This means that you have to use a download manager like Orbit, a plugin or extension to download the newly created movie.

Publishing the movie on the web does have some advantages. Instead of burning x movies for everyone who wants a copy you simply send everyone a link that points to the movie on the Internet.

Update: Jumpcut is no longer available. You can try and use an alternative such as We Video or Magisto instead.

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