Photobucket, Adobe ‘Remix’ Online Video

A year or two ago, you could be forgiven for thinking that the whole web app fad was just that, a fad. This new blooming market would amuse us for a little while, but in the end, the trusty stuff installed in our own systems would win out. Forward to today, and we’re seeing even the largest of localized software businesses showing concern over what Google, 37signals, Yahoo!, ThinkFree, Netvibes, and others have managed to do: stick around and thrive. Microsoft got the picture a little late, but the progress it’s made with Live shows that the company realizes where things are going. We aren’t seeing MS Office being moved over to the web just yet; that’ll likely happen either with the next iteration or the one following it.

But we’re not going to talk about Microsoft - or Yahoo!, or Google – right now. Instead we’re going to look at one of the essential software suppliers for online visual media distribution, Adobe, and one of the premier hosts of visual media online, Photobucket to see what the two have come up with.

Photobucket is known for its catalogue of millions of stills, but the company has also expanded to become a video host. It remains far behind the likes of YouTube, but it’s showing steady growth nonetheless. In order to further entice its incredibly large user base, Photobucket decided it would bode well for business to team up with Adobe and embed a video mixer into the website. What resulted (announced in a press release two weeks ago) was Adobe Remix.

If you’re familiar with Adobe Premier Elements, you’ll recognize the company’s Web-based Remix software. If you’re a fan of the former, you’ll probably take to the latter, but there’ll be quite a few things about the “dumbed down” version of Premier Elements that won’t sit well with you.

The drag-and-drop functionality is there, as are fade transitions, a clipping tool, digital overlays, and the option to include music clips. But there are limits to what you can do with some of those utilities and features, and you probably won’t like the rules all that much.

As you might expect, you’re able to string together clips stored in Photobucket, but you’re only offered a total of three transitions to tie them together. All transitions are of the “fade” variety. Some will make out well with the three provided, and it would make sense for Adobe to expand the number in the future, but if you’re coming to Remix with some Premier Elements and/or iMovie experience, you’ll be disappointed.

With Remix, you’re able to include nifty things like digital image overlays and chat bubbles. But you may only use the digital images offered in Remix, and your use of chat bubbles is limited to one per video clip. With the clipping utility provided in Remix you can cut up a clip while retaining seamless flow to affix chat/thought bubbles to the resulting pieces. However, performing this task over and over again to create a well-edited final “script” can be tedious, and if you imagine you’ll be doing these extra steps often, you’ll be holding a grudge against Adobe’s Remix fairly soon into “production”.

Like the lock you’ll find on the digital image catalogue, Remix’s proprietary music clips are the only audio files available for use in one digital video mix(es). This is definitely meant to ensure Adobe doesn’t fall victim to an RIAA lawsuit, but they should at least open Remix to allow imports of music (and images) that don Creative Commons tags.

Despite all of the closed doors found inside Remix, it can still be fun to use. If you want to show a menagerie of video clips to your social network without having to forward a dozen individual links to everyone, this isn’t a bad tool to simplify things. You’ll certainly be better off with a desktop-based program like Premier Elements or iMovie, but if you don’t want to spend money on software, Remix isn’t an altogether bad alternative.

It’s clear that Remix is an experiment, something neither Photobucket nor Adobe feel is more than just something simple to toss out to the public to see if it catches. Putting out a Web-based version of Premier Elements for the masses to enjoy for free wouldn’t be in Adobe’s interest right off the bat. As more video editing services sprout up online, Adobe will up the ante with revisions of Remix. The company expects to announce more partnerships with Web-based companies in the near future, so it wouldn’t surprise us to see it eventually become king of its kind. Adobe’s already dominated the scene with Flash, haven’t they?