Skip to main content

Mozilla's Popcorn Maker 1.0 lets you turn video into the web

Mozilla's Popcorn Maker 1.0 lets you turn video into the web

Share this story

popcorn maker
popcorn maker

A year ago, some engineers and designers at Mozilla released the 1.0 version of a JavaScript library called Popcorn that let web authors remix and extend web video in some new and exciting ways. Well, at this past weekend’s Mozilla Festival the team released version 1.0 of Popcorn Maker, a timeline-based video editing app, built on Popcorn, and written entirely in web standards. The app enables non-programmers to kit out their videos with everything from image overlays and pull quotes to Google Maps, Twitter searches, and Wikipedia entries. These elements are pulled from the web live on playback, meaning your project could be different every time it’s viewed (example below). The result is something much more like a web page than a traditional video — evolving, interactive, and full of links.

Popcorn Maker hosts your creations and provides an embeddable player for finished projects. And congruent with Mozilla’s open source philosophy, that player includes a "remix" button that allows anyone to use your work as a jumping off point for a new video. In the few minutes we spent playing with it, we were impressed with the slick interface and how easy it was to slap a project together. If you’d like to try Popcorn Maker out for yourself, we’d recommend checking out the video below from Mozilla Foundation COO Ryan Merkley’s introduction at TED earlier this year, before heading over to the project’s website.