The You Tube cloud editor 06/20/11

Huh?… As “El Profesional” video editor I don’t quite know what to make of this.
 
Google, which seems to release a new product a week apparently launched the You Tube video editor a year ago with very little fanfare.  Is this a harbinger of things to come?  A validation of the future of remote editing?

I dunno.

I think it’s interesting though – and I’m not the only one.  CNET has a tutorial on how to use the site and PC Mag has a more comprehensive overview.  And with all the frothy talk over the debut of FCP X this week (?) I won’t even speculate on whether Apple would eventually move iMovie to the Cloud.

Obviously the You Tube cloud editor is not robust enough for pro use, but hopefully Avid Interplay Central will be.  We have  a ways to go before our nation’s network infrastructure is capable of reliably handling real-time video manipulation.  But we can still take advantage of things like VNC or distributed computing for remote manipulation.
 
And speaking of distributed computing, I stumbled upon Novacut a free, open-source video editor and CouchDB a database that allows for media synchronization/replication in the Cloud.  Check out the video in the middle of the page called, “CouchDB is Magic” – low tech but effective.
 
These technologies don’t look like they’re anywhere near ready for prime-time but they don’t seem far-fetched either.
 
What do you think of cloud based editing?  Is the time ripe or is it all hype?