Business Idea: Low Cost Video Editing Service

OK, ever since my last visit to see the twins, I've had this idea kicking around in my head. The best way to get out is to yammer on about it here a bit, so please excuse me.

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When I was visiting with the twins, I shot gobs and gobs of still photos but almost no video. I held off on the video for a simple reason: it was going to be a hassle to edit it down into something reasonable. I can reduce 50 photos to 5, and post them to post on the blog in just a few minutes. To look through 20 minutes of video, and try to create a half-way viewable clip, would take significantly longer.

The same scenario comes up with vacations or pretty much any one attends.

Here's my solution: why not offer a low budget video editing service for the masses. You'd drop your raw footage in the mail, or upload it to them, and for a relatively low cost you'd get two services. First, you'd get a number of short films of the best footage. Second, they would tag (think: adding keywords like: yawn, crying, smiling, .etc) and index all the footage.

The short films wouldn't be high quality movies - they'd just be whatever the editor's judgment lead them to. Throw some stock audio on top, and you're good to go. The indexing and tagging would be helpful for going back through the footage easily, to say, find all cases with Dovid in yawning or some specific case like that.

I could see the service having an elaborate website where you can browse your raw footage and view your movies. I can also see starting the service really simply, by just posting the completed work to YouTube or another video site. For the right price, I wouldn't mind doing without the extras.

The whole arrangement wouldn't be about perfection, it would be about convenience and value. I could shoot a bunch of video knowing that for a reasonable price, I could have it turned into movies suitable for family and friends.

Now, for all I know there's already a low cost service out there like this. If there is, I'd love to know their URL. If there isn't, it seems like a small business a film student could start relatively painlessly. And when you do, let me know, so I can put you to work!