The average consumer making “online videos” today probably has no idea about the total amount of work and time it used to take to make videos: you needed to digitize, edit, render, export and share said videos. I remember the days of online and offline edits and waiting for previews to render, and I’m continuously impressed by advances in video production. It used to be “uphill, both ways,” but today, making and sharing videos is something just about anyone can do. Yet while the consumer video revolution has been moving toward a more user-friendly experience for decades, the camcorder-to-online experience, still has much left to be desired.

Fortunately today, owners of traditional camcorders can get more connected with a little help from Sony and cloud-based video editing company, WeVideo. This new collaboration is specifically for Sony Handycam and Action Cam owners, who can now turn their recorded video clips into edited, sharable features or even mini-movies, complete with titles, effects and editing tools normally reserved for professionals. Sony customers will receive 90 days of WeVideo.com‘s online video editor, 30 minutes of 1080p export per month, real-time previews and fast rendering, 10GB of cloud storage and 400 royalty-free audio tracks.

I see this type of cloud-to-hardware-integration as the missing link for manufacturers of devices that are “portable, but not connected.” This means more savvy content from consumers and a more media-literate population. Giving customers the power to play with their media and make it better has been the goal of device manufacturers for decades and it seems the hardware manufacturers who figure this out first position themselves to better succeed in a constantly connected consumer market.