Dragontape Makes Mixing and Cutting YouTube Videos Easy

I love being the first to play with a new web 2.0 tool and getting show all my techie friends how awesome a new tool is to use, especialy my educator friends. I found this one surfing around trying to find other ways to cut or mashup a variety of YouTube videos into one play list. I have found in the past a variety of tools used for single YouTube videos but never multiple videos. A few weeks ago a stumble across a great new site and app called Dragontape.

“Dragontape is a collaborative online video merging service with which you can drag online videos starting with YouTube onto a ‘tape’ that can be shared with the world.”

Basically, it is a browser-based visual playlist editor, which enables users to merge video files from different online sources into one. The result is a new gapless video which can be easily shared and embedded as if it was a single file – meanwhile the sources remain in their original location so there are no duplicates only a rearrangement of files. With the quick search function users can find their favorite video within seconds and integrate it into their playlist by simply dragging it on their endless tape. (http://dragontape.com/about)

I searched to find a couple educational examples but only found a limited amount. I’m guessing educators have caught onto this new tool yet. Here is one sample I found: US History and Educational Videos:  http://www.dragontape.com/#!/3296438. Dragontape will be very useful to educators both for mixing videos from others published on YouTube and mixing their own videos into the mix too.

I found it easy to make your own mixes by searching for videos or having URL for videos already ready, especially unlisted YouTube video this will be critical. Don’t worry if you cut too much of a certain videos, you can easily go back to edit and change the length. You can continue to add new videos too.

Both iPhone and iPad app are available in the iTunes App Store

A few key features:

• Edit Your Mixes: Drag the videos you want on your tape, arrange them, cut the parts you don’t need, set a number of seconds for fading in/out/.
• Twitter Mixes: Feed your tapes with Twitter – great for party tapes or a self-updating newscast.
• Import Your YouTube Favorites & Playlists: Type ‘favs: username’ or ‘playlist: username’ in the search field to access your public YouTube playlists and favorited videos or search for the videos of specific YouTube users by entering ‘uploader: ‘
• Public or Private: Show your tape in the Dragontape gallery or keep it private. You can even let people edit it.
• Your Tapes In The Cloud: You can create and access your tapes wherever you are, from your computer, iPhone, iPad and soon from your Android phone.
• Sharing To Your Social Networks: Post directly to Facebook or Twitter account or your personal blog.
• Embedding On Blogs And Facebook: Embed your mixtapes right into your blog post or even into Facebook updates.