Tubifi aims to take the pain out of making video with a whole lot of stock footage

Marketers frustrated by the costs of making web video may find solace in Tubifi.

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While video is becoming an increasingly important part of online promotion, creating it isn’t cheap — neither in money nor in time.

Tubifi CEO Martin Heller said one of the most effective ways to fix this is by making the process of finding and purchasing stock video a lot easier.

That’s the central pull of Tubifi, which pulls footage from vendors like T3Media and Pond5.

Doing this, Heller said, allows Tubifi users to create projects that aren’t large enough for agencies but need more work than the average low-budget project. “That’s the sweet spot,” Heller said. “We’re hitting the high end of independence and the low end of agencies.”

But stock footage is only part of the service. With a vital social feature, Tubifi also plans to connect video makers to the marketers that need them. The other big feature of the service is online editing, which allows users to take the stock video they buy and edit it from their web browsers.

But Heller stresses that Tubifi isn’t going to replace your copy of Final Cut Pro.

“We’re not trying to compete with professional editing programs — we can’t. We are trying to provide something those programs don’t by mixing in footage with the workflow,” Heller said.

Heller said Tubifi’s target demographic isn’t the average home video creator, either. “We don’t care about people trying to mix video from an iPhone. We’re targeting the professionals,” he said.

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To illustrate the point, Heller cited this video made for the Peruvian Children’s Fund. Ordinarily, Heller said, a video of such quality would run for up to $600,000 to create, but by using Tubifi and its collection of stock footage, its creators were able to launch it for less than $10,000.

“That’s a very compelling story for customers and investors,” Heller said. “We’re going to streamline creators’ workflows and help them cut costs.”

DEMO image via Stephen Brashear

Tubifi is one of 75 companies chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Fall 2012 event taking place this week in Silicon Valley. After we make our selections, the chosen companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.

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