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Comment by kabacha | Hacker News Reader

> Video editor in browser

But why? YC takes up a lot of risky ventures but I really don't see video editor in browser taking off beyond a fun little toy so I definitely get why they refused. Could you elaborate more who's your clientele? I'm very curious.

Nevertheless it was a fun read!

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I had a browser based video editor startup (we failed). Video editing on the desktop sucks if you are not a pro. For causal users it's like rocket science. Enabling video editing in the browser is a godsend since it takes out so much from the equation which makes it hard.

There are now successful startups in this space with serious investments.

Huh? How does moving from desktop app to browser remove hard elements from the equation?

Just to name a few:

- installing codecs

- video conversion to the right format the editor can handle

- video export to the right format, size, frame rate that works on the web

- navigating a complex UI with usually the most common features hidden in context menus and shortcuts

The first three are more or less the same thing, and could easily be handled by a native app if there’s internet.

The last one seems completely unrelated to the choice between browser and desktop. If anything it is harder to make nice UI in the browser.

Your point is that a native app is better than a browser app or that current solutions are good enough?

By moving rendering server side, a lot of problems are solved.

Casual users shouldn't install complex solutions and watch tutorials to do simple things.

I didn’t know the rendering was done server-side, but if that saves time then that’s a plus of course.

I don’t agree about installation at all, with mac app store (and probably on the PC as well) installation is a one-click affair.

As to tutorials, I don’t see how the choice of platform would make it any easier to use, how do you mean?

Oh, and my point was that These points don’t really seem to be arguments for a browser app.

I would think that this makes most sense for casual video editing. If you can be bothered paying for a subscription you might as well get adobe or some other established, native app. Installation is trivial.

Which startups?

Kapwing, Animoto, WeVideo, Magisto...

With things like Figma changing the nature of design tools (in the browser) why don't you see a video editor in the browser taking off?

For one, the actual editing industry operates mostly offline. The amount of data is simply too large to rely on cloud apps.

We render 4K video and all files are uploaded in the background.

Well I’m referring to actual, professional editors (which probably aren’t your target customer anyway.) When you’re working with terabytes of video, it’s not practical to rely on an internet connection to get work done.

Let me reverse the question - why would I want something in unstable, resource heavy and non-native environment?

Maybe you own a $150 chromebook and can't run video editing software locally?

I could see this being useful for youtubers without access to decent hardware.

well, the $150 chromebook is not going to help you with figma either way

It’s still run locally isn’t it? Just in a much less optimal environment.

I think it depends on what you're editing. With internet speeds continuing to increase and be widely available, people getting increasingly used to recording themselves/creating their own content, and the influencer marketing wave educating/inspiring them that they too can create, the demand for video will only continue to go up.

I think people also underestimate the collaborative nature/ease of use that comes with creating video, editing it, commenting w/ colleagues, and sharing it seamlessly via a url or uploading to your intended social network. I don't think people will be making full-fledged movies anytime soon, but there's likely a lot of use cases beyond the hardcore power user that absolutely needs a native tool.

Apps like Canva have shown that simplifying power user software and making it accessible in a browser is in fact very much a venture backable project!

Even more specifically for video editor in the browser: https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/24/kapwing/

Eh, it's a bit of a stretch to attribute success to "runs in browser". Students in my college use Canva all the time but not because it runs in the browser - because it gives you a bunch of easy templates and you put things together fast even on their questionably performing software.

Why wouldn't you out it in a browser? Saves tons on OS specific builds, works on any machine you log into.

Google docs, Invision, canva, all browser based.

And then, if you really want to make a desktop version, you take a shortcut and put in in electron. Which is just a browser.

Because it _sucks_

Video Editing in particular is graphically and resource heavy process. Veed doesn't even work on my browser (qutebrowser via webengine).

In general web based apps are just inferior to native ones in every aspect except for "don't need to install" aspect and I don't think that many people who edit videos mind that. If you're spending hours on this might as well spend 10 minutes to install proper software, right?

This reads very similar to the classic Dropbox response. You seem pretty unaware of the technical expertise of average people.

Average people who edit videos are already doing so with existing native apps or Youtube's in-browser editing capabilities.

The ones who aren't _yet_ editing videos aren't.

What if you don't want to put it on YouTube?

Most people who are editing video online are uploading it to some social media sites, and most of those are uploading to YouTube.

And there are free editing apps for every platform, and every digital camera probably comes with one.

Also a search for "online video editor" returned plenty of results. I don't know about the quality of capability of those sites, but it doesn't seem like "video editing for amateurs" or "video editing in the browser" were unsolved problems until veed.io came along.

I don't know anything about video editing, but if they are at $5k/MRR, doesn't that serve as a proof of concept?

Clearly there are people who are willing to pay for what Veed is offering.

A proof of concept? Yes. A viable business? probably.

A revolutionary, industry disrupting, potential billion-dollar concept? Something worth injecting VC money into? I don't think so.

> If you're going to be sharing files seriously, just install an ftp server.

> Less serious people should just use email.

Almost the exact same response. No concept of the prosumer / intermediate user.

> qutebrowser via webengine

So you're an edge case?

Modern chrome/ium has ever improving GPU acceleration.

And this isn't for people who spend hours, it's for those who want some editing power better than adding a star wipe and filter, but don't need full blown color grading and multichannel layering.

Webengine _is_ chromium. I'm just trying to illustrate that the main advantage of "being crossplatform" is a bunch of bs if you can only run it on _some_ versions of chrome or firefox, _sometimes_ with _some_ addons. Such complex apps fail too often - there's no "crossplatform" benefit here.

Its main purpose is probably video editing for social media videos. I doubt anyone would use it for their actual time-consuming, resource-heavy work.

Just guessing here. I haven't used the service nor do I have any use for it.

This strikes me as the main difficult proposition of this business, at least for the VC model—people aren’t going to pay much for this if they perceive it as being only for ‘casual’ use. That can be ok if you can get tons (millions) of users, but otherwise it’s a really hard road.

While it’s a huge achievement for an entrepreneur, investors aren’t interested in a 10k MRR business except for the potential it demonstrates to be 1000x bigger. This seems like the part of the story that the OP is missing.

>people aren’t going to pay much for this if they perceive it as being only for ‘casual’ use.

You don't need people paying much for this to be monetarily successful. You just need many people paying a little bit.

I honestly believe that if GarageBand was multiplatform, browser-based, and priced at something around $10-15/mo (as opposed to being free, but native and limited to apple devices only), it would make a lot of money, despite not being a full replacement for software targeted at people who are professionally making music (like Bitwig, Ableton, Logic Pro, etc.). A simplified video editing service would make way more than that, because the number of casual users who need to make simple changes to a video is way larger than the number of casual users who want to mix or edit a simple track.

"Many people paying a little bit" certainly works but it's really hard to pull off without funding, an extremely compelling product, or some kind of brilliant viral growth strategy because you have very little room to spend on user acquisition. That's why investors in a product like this want to see early growth metrics that are on fire. They are looking for something that can rocket up into millions of users, so if your growth slows down too much as you reach 100k users or whatever, investors will start questioning whether the market is big enough or whether the product is appealing enough to go the distance.

If you make something people will pay more for, it's just a very different calculation because you then have the potential to sustainably convert capital into growth. It allows you to grow more under your own power through sales and marketing rather than relying so much on virality.

For this reason, the GarageBand comparison isn't really helpful. Sure Apple could make a lot of money with that strategy because they could easily market it to millions of people. A new unfunded startup doesn't have that ability.

> Veed doesn't even work on my browser (qutebrowser via webengine).

FWIW it seems to work fine for me in qutebrowser.

I've been sitting on bit of an older version, will update it and see if anything changes.

They can just do the heavy lifting on the backend if they run into browser limitations.

The immediate benefit that I see with these types of things is: installation isn't needed.

I remember this being quite a good thing for the Harvard course CS50. You don't need to download an IDE, you can just open one up in the cloud.

Video editing falls in the same space, depending on one's tech savviness.

> installation isn't needed

That is such a silly gimmick. Video editing is a pretty time intensive activity - if I'm spending hours on something might as well spend 5 minutes installing the app locally, right?

You have full local admin access, right? And a dedicated workstation that's powerful enough for the job?

I'm not in the target market for this, but I can absolutely see a class of people for whom this style works completely.

That is if you can install the app. Some people aren't tech savvy but quite internet savvy. That wouldn't be us :P But some older aunts and uncles that I know, definitely.

Would they pay for a subscription in order to do video editing in the browser though?

It's not a gimmick, it's just better user experience. Look at it through the lens of an average user rather than a power user ("power user" in the context of someone who is fluent with technical aspects of computers, not the domain).

I'm not arguing that the app itself has better video editing UX -- it may very well be that local apps win there. But for onboarding, no installation wins.

There are photo editing browser apps that are very popular and received huge funding. Video is naturally the next thing, right?

I would honestly probably pay if they gave better controls on gif conversion. There's a ton of gif websites but they don't do longer gifs / multiple scene text editing very well.

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