• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, November 14, 2013

YouTube Capture is a remarkably versatile vlogging tool from Google that seems to be under most people’s radar. And yet it has carved for itself a nice niche among Vine and Instagram videos as a short-form made-by-mobile platform that begs for creative uses. The iOS-only app (Google, what is up with that?) lets a user record video on their smartphone with the same one-button simplicity of Vine, but it does not impose a time limit. As well, it incorporates some of the fast editing tools Instagram made famous in still photography.

Clip shortening and splicing has been added to the app in a 2.0 upgrade this week. So now YouTube members have a way to post short but sculpted posts directly to their channel and to their social media feeds in one quick push. There is also an expanded audio library that users can mine for background soundtracks.

Google is focusing its messaging around this great app to the YouTube developer/vlogger community. In samples posted for developers we see that Arnold Schwarzenegger uses it to post himself redoing a classic film line as a best wishes message to a soldier in the Middle East. iJustine posts her sojourn into a Chipotle with a quick video diary entry on her hectic life. The Special Olympics used it to post highlights from a touch football game. But clearly it could be used to craft a different style of branded video posting to YouTube that is more spontaneous, less polished, on behalf of a brand. YouTube has been so obsessed with becoming online TV for so long, the network and its users need to step back and see how the next video revolution is being imagined in very short, highly personal mobile video notes.