There are times it would be useful or fun to take an existing video on YouTube and edit it for yourself.  You can even re-post the edited video, and capture some of the traffic from high-popularity videos.

For example, when Susan Boyle, a frumpy-looking 47-year-old woman stood in front of three cynical judges and thousands of cynical audience members, and shocked them with her beautiful voice, that video received over 30 Million views within the first week.

I decided to try to capture a part of that sensation. So I downloaded the video from YouTube, edited it, and re-published it. Directions on how to do that are below the video.

Here is the edited version of that video (edited to be "Popup Video" style, with comments inserted):

(Frankly,the video isn't that funny, but I just threw it together for the purposes of demonstrating that editing someone else's YouTube video is possible.)

1. I searched YouTube for the original video. You can sort by number of views, descending, so you can see the most-watched video.

2. I copied the URL of that video and went to http://mediaconverter.org. I used the free version there to convert the video to an MPEG format, then downloaded it to my hard drive.

3. I downloaded a free version of VideoSpin (http://www.videospin.com). You can use Microsoft Movie Maker to edit movies, too, but VideoSpin has some better options, such as being able to add graphics (like the lipstick kisses in the movie above).

4. I loaded the downloaded video to VideoSpin and edited it. In the case of the video above, I used 'Titles', and simply tweaked their font, their size, the location, and how long they appeared (and under what segment).

5. I used tubemogul.com to upload the finished video and distribute it to multiple video sites at once. It is important to note that I didn't claim ownership, nor did I blatantly use the content of the video to advertise. However, I did place the URL of this site in the description, as the first words of the description. For YouTube (where you'll get the most traffic), that becomes a hyperlink, and your chances of having people visit your site increase, if that's why you're tweaking a video.

Linda - http://how.best-free-information.com - The "How" Blog