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Ask HN: Why So Limited Options for Web-Based Video Editing?

3 points by jordanmoconnor ↗ HN
I'd love to be able to do video and/or audio editing on my Chromebook.

I would have thought there would be a decent PWA that deals with offline files so you don't have to 'upload' them to work with them. It would be awesome to render and export in the cloud without having to do any local heavy lifting.

Anyone know of anything that already exists? Or is this not available for a reason?

8 comments

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ddorian43
I.. think the problem is you by having a chromebook ..
jordanmoconnor
I use my Chromebook for 90% of my personal tasks (email, writing, and light web code editing). It'd just be nice to be able to use it for 100% of my tasks!
ddorian43
I use my Laptop for 100% of my tasks ..
polote
first : How could you render and export in the cloud if you don't upload them ?

Second : A browser can't deal with local files easily

Last: There is probably none free because it is very expensive to edit video files

jordanmoconnor
1: Sorry, I wasn't clear. I was thinking the files could be manipulated locally, and then the files + a script could be uploaded and processed remotely.

2: Have you used Google Docs / Other PWAs offline?

3: Yes. Not sure if PWAs have the power to edit locally yet.

codegeek
Why not use a laptop where you can download a good video editing tool and use that ? Video editing on the cloud is not a trivial task and hence you don't see too many options. Also, if you don't want to upload anything, then it defeats the purpose of cloud. We are not quite there yet with PWAs specially for things like video editing.
jordanmoconnor
Yes, obviously you would have to upload at some point to get them into the cloud, but I was thinking the files could be manipulated locally first then the files + a script could be uploaded and processed remotely.

There definitely would be some cost to processing in the cloud, but I think it would be worth it.

I just look at apps like Adobe Photoshop CC that can be run on a Chromebook and I'm wondering why it's not being adopted more widely.

ttoinou
Have you tried WeVideo ? https://www.wevideo.com/ Youtube also have some basic video linear editing tool

Not sure if Chromebook are powerful enough for web based video editing, but I think overall it's a good idea to create this kind of tool.

I actually already thought about that years ago, using GLSL shaders to create visual effects and transitions. One bottleneck would be creating previews of the current editing (precomputing everything so that the preview is realtime and not laggy), Youtube does this by computing the video on their server (not on their clients) and displaying it like a regular video.