TECH REPORT | John Brandon

4 Tools for Creating Video Blogs

A review of editing software that makes it easy to produce professional-looking video blogs

 

Jacob Thomas

A video blog can be a great way to spread company news, talk about products, and stand out among traditional company blogs. Thanks to easy-to-use editing software, you don't have to be a professional to produce one. We created our two- to four-minute vlogs using a webcam and the following applications.

Windows Live Essentials

Our top pick, this new suite has 11 basic apps, including Movie Maker, which lets you record videos and add music and graphics. You can save the videos as Windows Media files and upload them directly to Facebook and YouTube. We shot, edited, and posted our vlog in 10 minutes. The result was crisp and colorful.
COST: Free

Apple iLife 2011

Apple's new software suite, a close second, includes improved iMovie software for shooting and editing video. You can save videos as QuickTime files and post them directly on YouTube or Vimeo. Our vlog looked like a professional newscast, with swirling animations and nifty transitions. The entire process took 25 minutes.
COST: $49

PowerDirector 9 Ultra

The most robust application we tested, PowerDirector offers a wide choice of templates and special effects. You can post videos directly to YouTube and Facebook and export them in a variety of formats. It took only 10 minutes to create and post our vlog. Unfortunately, the result looked washed out, and the audio was a bit out of sync.
COST: $99.95

Adobe Visual Communicator 3

The most confusing program we tested, Visual Communicator cut us off whenever we exceeded our preset recording time. We also had trouble using Adobe's vlog hosting service. You can save videos as Windows Media files, but you can't upload them to YouTube. We spent 40 minutes total on the video, which looked unpolished.
COST: $399

Go to www.inc.com/thegoods to watch the video blogs we created for this story.

John Brandon is a contributing editor at Inc. magazine and writes the Tech Trends column in every issue. He also writes the Tech Report column for Inc.com. @jmbrandonbb