It used to be that making videos was the territory of the few. You needed a high quality and expensive camera, you needed editing capabilities and you needed the knowhow in editing. Of course you needed a platform to display your videos.
With the advances in electronics and miniaturizing, cameras have become better, lighter and cheaper. Not the property of the rich and professionals anymore. First problem solved, sort of, because what you are left with is raw footage.
Editing software appeared on the market as well. What used to be programs for professionals only which were rented out, not sold like Avid and Final Cut became affordable the Adobe premiere, Final cut or Avid for home use. Those still are expensive and need a learning period to make them work properly.
With experience comes improvement. Editing the videos you have shot still takes a long time, even after you’ve learned the programs. Here art comes into the equation.
The platform became available with YouTube. Millions all over the world shot what they thought was funny, interesting or smart and hurried to share it with the world. Careers have been made out of home postings, rarely but it did happen (Justin Beiber is a very good example).
But sharing those videos with specific people was still a problem. The video files are heavy and can’t be sent via e mail. They had to be uploaded on a server and could be accessed by people who had the password to that account.
The new trend in marketing is videos. It appears people would rather hear and see instead of read. We have all become film-makers.
Enter Stroome, a site that facilitates making interesting videos and sharing them with friends. Unlike Youtube where you just post the video to the world and let your friends know that you have posted it there, Stroome enables you to post your videos on the site, edit it and share it with others.
Stroome allows uploading of raw footage and mixing it with pictures, other videos and music. The editing program (based on the same principals as iMovie) is simple and easy to learn. The result can be shared with you partners and have them write up notes on what needs to change or they can go into the file and make changes you can view immediately. After the work is finished, you can share that video with a larger group of people via a form of social network.
Stroome, coming from USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, was launched in a public beta in April 2010 and is based on the Kaltura video editing suite but goes further by adding to the editing suite community tools. It facilitates journalism, they say, by letting a few people collaborate on a story immediately without relying on other sources to move the video file around. In Stroome the file does not leave the site, so there are no problems of loading time, downloading time and things lost in the transfer.
Using their site, a group can work on a school project together, friends can share their latest videos, journalist can communicate and work cheaply and efficiently and every small business owner can become a film-maker.
Their ambition is to turn Stroome into a verb; in the same way Google has evolved to become part of the American language. They want people to say “Stroome me and see…”
But please bear in mind – the content is still the king.
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