Create your own web video mashups with Omnisio

Often I find myself watching videos on the web that contain parts which are extremely funny, but the rest is painful to sit through. A new online video mashup service, Omnisio, which launched today, hopes to change that by making it super easy to re-edit videos on the web.

The company was one of the ten we profiled in our post on the Y Combinator demo day. As we said then, the slick, easy-to-use interface is one of the strengths of the site. Getting started is as easy as copying and pasting a URL from an existing video on the web. The site only accepts videos from YouTube, Google Video and Blip.tv — but really, as long as your have online video king YouTube, the lack of other sites is forgivable.

Once you submit a video URL to edit, you are taken to a page with a simple cropping tool which allows you to select only the exact portion of the video you wish to keep. To merge this clip with another web video, simply click the ‘Add Video’ button near the bottom of the editor. Here, you’ll paste in another URL and follow the exact same process.

When you have the clip you want, you hit ‘Publish’, enter elements such as a title and description and you’re done. Your video now exists on Omnisio and can be shared or embedded just as you’d expect from any other video site.

http://www.omnisio.com/bin/Embed.swf?embedID=aiFfV0_mGr3k-gadbiFy2w

As mentioned, there are other sites that do this, such as Searchles (our coverage), but Omnisio has pushed forward with more features. Viddler is another online video company that allows for user commenting within videos, like Omnisio does.

Unlike many other online video startups, Omnisio has a smart approach in terms of keeping costs down: They don’t host any of the videos. Instead, the video still resides on a site like YouTube while Omnisio simply pulls in what it needs for the new video created off of it.

One of the best feature of the site is that you don’t have to create an account to use it. While Omnisio recommends you create one so you are able to come back and edit your videos later, if you know you just want to make a quick and dirty mash-up to use once, Omnisio is the place to go.