We’ve kicked off another blog series — this one’s on web apps, or applications that you run inside a web browser, like Firefox or Chrome, rather than as a standalone application. We’re focusing on ways that web apps can act as replacements for separate apps, in order to save you money, time, and most importantly, performance!

So you’d like to edit your home movies on your PC and show to your friends and family … maybe add a customized audio track. Perhaps you’d like to do all of the above on a netbook. Very difficult with a separate application. Most video-editing software is expensive, computer intensive and difficult to use. Luckily, there’s a web app out there that you can use instead, one which you’re probably already familiar with. It’s called YouTube. Today we’re going to take a look at how you can edit videos for YouTube.

Bet you didn’t know you could edit videos on YouTube itself, did you? Here’s how. Upload your videos to YouTube as normal, then go to YouTube Editor. There are a lot of advanced tools here, and you’ll be able to easily cut out the boring moments and stick to the excitement. Plus, there’s a huge selection of music that YouTube has no problem with you including as a background track. When it’s all finished, show it off to family wherever they have YouTube.

One thing you won’t be able to do is burn the resulting video to a DVD, at least not easily. To do that, you’ll need to start with standalone software like DVD Styler.

Ultimately, you’ll save a lot of hard drive space, CPU usage and memory by not relying on a heavy-duty video editing app that you really don’t need. You’re all set to edit videos for YouTube!