Photobucket Offers Free Adobe Video Editing

Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) and Photobucket have teamed up to give the site's 35 million subscribers free access to basic video remixing and editing technology online. With the first-of-its-kind offering, users can incorporate music, effects, transitions and titles into their videos.

"At Photobucket, we're committed to helping our users get the most out of their personal media, and have fun doing so," said Alex Welch, Photobucket chief executive officer. "Collaborating with Adobe gives our millions of users a simple way to create mashups that showcase their personality and creativity. Users can either broadcast these mashups widely, or share with a small group of friends and family."

The technology is currently limited to Photobucket Pro subscribers participating in the public beta, but the companies expect to launch the editing package by early March.

The Cutting Room Floor

Adobe's Web-based technology provides video editing capabilities first seen in Adobe Premiere Pro and Premiere Elements, the two companies said. The application is a Flash-based program designed using Adobe Flex. The technology provides Photobucket users with a simplified interface in order to minimize the intimidation factor and help users quickly master the application.

The video remix and editing technology can be used to combine images and video with captions, bubbles, frames, transitions, music and other effects simply by dragging and dropping desired content to a scene line. Clips and other content can be reordered, trimmed and split as well, directly in the scene line. The editing magic is not only confined to videos created by Photobucket members. Users can access more than 2.5 billion publicly-shared images and videos to work their skills.

Once satisfied with their newly enhanced video, subscribers can embed it into any Web page, blog or social network profile by copying and pasting a bit of HTML code. Built-in sharing tools also enable users to keep it intimate and share the video with only family and friends.

Brand Extension

For Adobe, the partnership with Photobucket is another possible opportunity to distribute its software, Ron Glaz, director at IDC, told TechNewsWorld. The version of its video remix and editing software that Adobe has agreed to provide is the "lite" version.

Photobucket users who want additional functionality will have the opportunity to upgrade to Adobe Premiere Elements and Adobe Photoshop Elements software, both companies said.

"Software vendors tend to give out the lite version pretty quickly as a download on the basis that they are hoping consumers will try it out and realize they need more function and features and go and buy the full package," Glaz explained.

While this is the first time remix and editing software has been offered to users of a social networking site, Glaz said he expects to see other companies in the video enhancement software market to seek out similar partnerships. Adobe said it expects to announce more partnership with other Internet companies and media properties over the next several months.

"Every vendor out there is looking for another avenue to distribute their products. In the past, many of them used to incorporate their software with hardware like a PC, digital camera, camcorder and so forth," he said. "That market has kind of softened up and online social networking gives them a new opportunity.

"I suspect that this is the way of the future and we'll start seeking a lot more vendors partner and provide some sort of solution," he predicted.

"It's a great opportunity for both, and it will be interesting to see how many users from Photobucket actually take advantage of the opportunity and do enhance their video," he concluded.