This is a re-published article from Web User Magazine's July 2014 issue.
WeVideo | From free | www.wevideo.com | 5 stars
What we liked:
It’s not often a web app works so well that you can barely distinguish it from the software it’s intended to replace. WeVideo pulls this off by providing a stunning web-based video editor that rivals paid-for software.
You can upload clips to the service from your PC or via a selection of cloud-storage and video-streaming sites, including YouTube, Flickr, Google Drive and Dropbox. There are three levels of editing to choose from – a storyboard, a basic timeline and an advanced timeline. The storyboard is great for quickly splicing together clips, while the advanced timeline provides a wealth of tools and options. You also get automatic themes, which you can use to quickly drop in transitions and apply a range of filtered effects to make your videos look snazzy.
WeVideo lets you rotate clips, flip them horizontally or vertically, and zoom in on wrongly oriented clips to force them to fit the frame. We didn’t even have to do this with our badly shot footage because the software automatically recognized the problem and corrected the orientation. It also lets us import still photos into our video.
The most complicated aspect of WeVideo is working out what you get for free and what costs extra. With a free account, you can only publish 15 minutes of video per month; it has to stay on WeVideo’s site (though you can link to it to share it with others); the maximum resolution is 480p; and you get 5GB of storage. The Premium account lets you publish 60 minutes of video per month; use 720p resolution; and export the video to your PC or direct to other sites (YouTube, Vimeo, Dropbox or Google Drive). You can also buy more uploads and increase the resolution with one-off payments. Thirty minutes at 720p costs $0.99 (around 58p) and 30 minutes at 1,080p is $1.99 (£1.16).
How it can be improved:
Depending on your Internet connection, you might find WeVideo a bit slow when uploading your footage, particularly if it’s high resolution. The software teases you about the extra features you get in the paid-for version, which might be enough to make you upgrade, but is otherwise annoying.
Our verdict
This superb online video editor has everything you’d expect paid-for software to have, with levels of complexity to suit both quick edits and sophisticated productions. The free version includes essential editing tools, but limits what you can do with your video afterwards.
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