A Media Creation And Editing Suite Being Built Solely For The Web

Following a weekend of little time spent on the Web – save for routine email checks – I happened across a certain array of pieces this morning waiting silently in my RSS reader for my perusal. They were all more or less published in the last 48 hours. What they highlight is, well, astonishingly impressive.

In theory, anyhow. The product – actually, “platform” is probably a better word to describe it – is called Aviary. Essentially, it is a suite of Web-based tools (still in development) that will allow for simple to considerably complex media creation and editing to be done in one’s Internet browser.

I know. You want to say “Wow”, but at the same time you’re thinking: “How are they ever going to pull this whole thing off?” All while adding more and more features as things progress on the “platform”, to boot.

I have no answer for you in that respect. But I must say, if you spend a minute of your time and look at the video presentation the team behind Aviary has put together for your viewing pleasure, it really does look like they might just have something that could possibly be, you know…huge.

There are of course individual pieces of Aviary that aren’t so groundbreaking. We do, after all, have several Web-based image editors in existence already, and though Adobe’s Premiere Express isn’t anything to bow reverently to when talking about current video editing solutions, it’s nonetheless true that Aviary’s “Hawk” is not the first “feature-rich” video editor to make its way onto the Net. The same goes for “Penguin,” Aviary’s the word processing tool - also in development.

That said, the construction of an integrated (cross-compatible with one another) suite of media-centric Web apps has definitely not been done before. If Aviary is indeed the genuine article it’s positioned to be, it is no doubt bound to create an incredible amount of buzz in the weeks to come, and it’ll have VC firms aplenty stumbling over themselves to offer multi-million-dollar infusions to the effort.

That, or we’ll simply see Adobe or some other software house snatch the operation up for itself.

Unfortunately, we can’t tell you much more about Aviary. Besides a brief but promising assessment by Webware’s Caroline McCarthy of an in-person demonstration of one of the apps to be included in the suite, we’ve only the video preview put together by the startup to muse over.

Any closer readings will have to wait until we (or some other source of genuine repute) get hand picked to test the beta as it opens its doors selectively to those who place their names in the running for invitations. Hopefully, the picking will commence soon. I myself am very much eager to give the beta a go. For now, though, you and I will need to amuse ourselves with the image at the Aviary’s home page. It’s almost entirely useless, sure, but it’s purty, ain’t it?