Google offers YouTube video software for Macs

Google's Vidnik lets users take videos, trim them, and upload them to YouTube.

(Credit: Google)

Google has released basic software called Vidnik that lets Mac OS X users record video with a Webcam or built-in camera, trim its length, add tags and a title, then upload it to YouTube.

The software also can be used to upload other videos to the company's video-sharing site, and other editing software can be used on the videos taken by Vidnik, David Phillip Oster of Google's Mac team said in a blog posting.

The software is among a host of Mac applications the company has produced. (Another interesting one is Visigami, which lets people search for images on Flickr, Picasa, and Google Images and use the results as an animated screensaver.)

Google has an increasing stable of software that runs on people's computers--Google Desktop is one good example--and is working on mobile phone applications, too, through its Android project. But don't be confused by all this attention to what's known as client software: the company's higher priority is to make the Internet the application foundation of choice.

[techprophet]

Sweet! Even though I don't personally have a mac, I have several friends who will love this!

[ittesi259]

This is nice and all.....but anyone who uses a Mac should just shrug their shoulders....you've been able to record a webcam shot and upload straight to YouTube from iMovie for sometime now.

[someguy999]

I don't own a mac... but every one of my mac friends use iMovie on a regular basis... and its far more feature rich than the article describes... basically the poor man's premiere.

I guess applause for re-inventing the wheel? PS: even the PC has a free tool called movie maker, not great by any means but free with some basic features.

[DavidPhillipOster]

Thanks for the favorable review!

There are many ways to get video from your camera to YouTube. Vidnik is supposed to make it simple. Many people will use Vidnik once, then move on to something more advanced.

There are many Mac users who are barely aware that their Mac has a video camera. Vidnik is for them.

[benjaminstraight]

It's about time!