How is the situation of online video editor?
-
Nowadays most video editors are desktop-based application and there are just a few that's run online, like WeVideo. While it seems that there isn't one that's used for professional movie editing team like Industrial Light & Magic to produce a large-scale commercial movie. Actually I'm interested in doing researches on this area in my MPhi/PhD study. I want to know what's the main challenge of implementing such kind of online video editors. Is there some possible solutions to it?
-
Nowadays most video editors are desktop-based application and there are just a few that's run online, like WeVideo. While it seems that there isn't one that's used for professional movie editing team like Industrial Light & Magic to produce a large-scale commercial movie. Actually I'm interested in doing researches on this area in my MPhi/PhD study. I want to know what's the main challenge of implementing such kind of online video editors. Is there some possible solutions to it?
I would think the biggest obstacle to an online video editor would be the huge demands on bandwidth, especially for uploading the raw footage to be edited. I've shot a lot of standard definition DV over the years, and it runs to about 13GB/hour. For a 20 minute video I'll use, on average, maybe 3 or 4 hours of raw footage (and sometimes much more). Uploading over 50GB of data on a typical home connection is going to take a very long time. I've also recently moved up to HD recording, which requires considerably more space, and would require even longer uploads. Editing is also a very interactive process, which would require not only very high performance servers, but very good downstream connections to see the results as you edit. When editing, I'm continually zipping back and forward on the timeline, adjusting clips, moving things, changing audio streams etc. etc., and I want instant feedback with no stuttering or "buffering...". The 'WeVideo' site looks interesting, but even on the 'Professional HD' level it provides virtually no storage, and a very limited amount of published video. What little they show of the editing tools doesn't impress either. It's probably not going to be useable for anything other than very simple, very short features. Some day, when we all have fibre-to-the-home, it might be possible, but currently I'd say it's not practical.
Days spent at sea are not deducted from one's alloted span - Phoenician proverb
-
Nowadays most video editors are desktop-based application and there are just a few that's run online, like WeVideo. While it seems that there isn't one that's used for professional movie editing team like Industrial Light & Magic to produce a large-scale commercial movie. Actually I'm interested in doing researches on this area in my MPhi/PhD study. I want to know what's the main challenge of implementing such kind of online video editors. Is there some possible solutions to it?
The problem is bandwidth. If you can separate the presentation from the actual editing, then you will make progress. Almost all (video) editing is done interactively. Create a server that can process "edit" commands from any source. The file to be edited would need to be uploaded to the server and downloaded when complete; you may still be running a "desktop editor", but now it is running on a server. Any "terminal server" (e.g. Team Viewer; remote desktop) will do; the "editing software" can be anything the user prefers (Movie Maker; Nero). I have a quad-core development machine in my office running Windows 8.1. I also have single-core 7 year old laptop (running Vista) that is almost useless except when I use it to "remote" into my development machine. When connected, I can run the latest Photoshop, Visual Studio, etc. without any issues. So, while the Vista laptop won't support the latest releases of IE and Visual Studio (and would grind if it did), it does work very effectively via a remote connection to my development machine. Terminal servers have come a long way since the days of Norton's PCAnywhere.
-
I would think the biggest obstacle to an online video editor would be the huge demands on bandwidth, especially for uploading the raw footage to be edited. I've shot a lot of standard definition DV over the years, and it runs to about 13GB/hour. For a 20 minute video I'll use, on average, maybe 3 or 4 hours of raw footage (and sometimes much more). Uploading over 50GB of data on a typical home connection is going to take a very long time. I've also recently moved up to HD recording, which requires considerably more space, and would require even longer uploads. Editing is also a very interactive process, which would require not only very high performance servers, but very good downstream connections to see the results as you edit. When editing, I'm continually zipping back and forward on the timeline, adjusting clips, moving things, changing audio streams etc. etc., and I want instant feedback with no stuttering or "buffering...". The 'WeVideo' site looks interesting, but even on the 'Professional HD' level it provides virtually no storage, and a very limited amount of published video. What little they show of the editing tools doesn't impress either. It's probably not going to be useable for anything other than very simple, very short features. Some day, when we all have fibre-to-the-home, it might be possible, but currently I'd say it's not practical.
Days spent at sea are not deducted from one's alloted span - Phoenician proverb
molesworth wrote:
Some day, when we all have fibre-to-the-home
Perhaps, on that day, we would also have a new definition of HD, practically resulting in a similar scenario as today.