Awesome Video Mashups with Dragontape

There’s always that bit of a particular YouTube video that makes you laugh more than the rest and combined with a baby laughing hilariously and a 10 second clip of Rick Astley dancing, it would make for a pretty entertaining piece of film. If only there was a way to make this masterpiece without going through the painful task of acquiring video editing software and downloading the videos individually…

You guessed it – there is. With Dragontape, it’s suddenly a quick and painless process to mix your favourite YouTube videos into a piece of video artwork. Find out more about the app after the fold.

Overview

Dragontape is a cool new app that allows anyone to mix their favourite videos from YouTube together to make some really nice mashups. Whether it’s just for personal enjoyment or to share with your friends, mashups are a great way of taking everything you love about certain clips and mixing them into fantastic videos to share with whoever you want.

User-Interface

The unique design of the Dragontape website makes it stand out. With a huge button and a heavy emphasis on typography, it’s somewhat reminiscent of a magazine-style design. The actual app’s design is also not one to be ignored. They’ve taken some of the elements of the main website’s design and fashioned them into a really nice app.

Creating A Tape

When you first visit the site, you’ll be greeted with a huge button that allows you to create your first tape on Dragontape. Once you’ve clicked this, you will be then taken to the editor. In here, you will be able to create your videos

When you’re creating your video, one of the most important things you’ll need is a good collection of footage. Dragontape allows you to add almost any video from YouTube and once you search for a term, it automatically chooses the top results which can then be dragged and dropped onto the timeline. A nice little feature is the ability to find your YouTube favourites by searching for “favs: USERNAME”. You can then choose which of your favourite videos you’d like to import and throw them onto the timeline.

Once you’ve finished editing your video together, you can play your video by either hitting the space bar or pressing the play icon. Immediately, videos should play in the background and you can hover over the monitor icon to make them full screen.

Once you’ve taken all of the pleasure and enjoyment from watching your creation, you can then rename your app through the dropdown menu in the bottom left corner of the app to give it some personality and then choose some other options which we’ll come to later.

Adding an Account

To save your tapes or share them with others, you’ll first need an account. There is a “Register” button in the top right of the screen and once you’ve entered your name and email, you’ll be sent an email with your password. Despite the inconvenience that is randomly generated and there’s no way to change it, at least you’ll be able to take delight in the fact that you can now save your mashups and share them with whomever you choose.

Sharing Videos

Once you’ve finished your tape, you can then share it with your friends. You can also choose to make your tape available publicly in the Dragontape gallery where videos are promoted and you can get yours viewed by the community. This can be done by expanding the section with your tape’s name and then choosing to make your tape public.

The link to your now public video can be found in the bottom right corner of the app and you can then give this out to anyone you think would like it. A “Share” button also appears that allows you to automatically share your tape through a couple of popular social network and bookmarking websites.

Through the bottom right corner menu that you used to make your app public and rename it, you can also allow others to edit the video. This is great if you’re collaborating to make a really good video that several people can bring ideas too.

Final Thoughts

All in all, I think Dragontape really is one of those great gems that is fun for even the most inexperienced of budding editors. Its quirkiness allows it to be usable for people of all ages; overall widening its reach and potential. The design is unique and is consistent throughout the app, thus giving the user a great experience.

Although it does lack a great wealth of features that would probably add more to the overall usability, it is still useful nonetheless when you don’t have the experience or the money to invest in software to edit videos together professionally. Despite its frustrating temperament for some major browsers, it is a great app overall and definitely one worth checking out if you’re ridden with boredom.