Faculte makes producing video slideshows quick and easy

Faculte allows anyone to quickly and easily make video slideshows.

(Credit: Faculte)

SAN DIEGO--Sometimes, elegant, innovative ideas come across as incredibly simple and feel like they've been around all along.

That was my thought after watching a company called Faculte make its case Wednesday morning at DemoFall 09. It's a new service that makes building multifaceted video presentations as easy as creating PowerPoint slideshows.

It's not that there aren't other ways to make video presentations. Other companies like Brightcove, SlideRocket, and WebEx all offer ways to build them. But what Faculte showed off onstage here looked intuitive, easy, and about as drag-and-drop as could be. It almost seemed like the kind of software that Apple would build into the Mac OS or its iLife suite. But so far, Jobs and Co. hasn't done so.

And indeed, making a video slideshow with Faculte's software did seem like a simple matter of dragging and dropping individual pieces of video--from easy-to-access folders--into a stream. Further, at least according to the demo, it seemed simple to add new elements after publishing, or delete pieces you don't like.

The result? A way to put together such a presentation with a number of different video elements that make a larger case. After watching one of these, I asked myself why this hasn't been something readily available all along. It's certainly long been possible to use a video-editing tool to piece together different video elements into a larger presentation, but this felt more creative than that. And also simpler to use.

What's not clear is Faculte's business model. I'm not sure I would pay to use it, and I don't know how ads would fit in. But the company has venture and angel funding, so it looks to have a chance to demonstrate its profit potential. I look forward to seeing how it fares.