JibJab: Starring You!

Back in the day when you wanted to slap someone’s face onto a video clip, you’d typically have to open some sort of advanced video editing software such as Adobe Premiere. It wasn’t a simple task either; you’d have to cut out the person’s head, do the motion tracking, etc.

Fast forward to today and you’ll see some internet applications that are capable of some pretty advanced stuff, including slapping someone’s face onto a video clip thanks to Starring You! created by the minds at JibJab.

Starring You! is an easy way to make hysterical video clips in a matter of minutes. Although you have to work with existing video clips, JibJab is slowly uploading more for users to work with so the library doesn’t get stale. It’s a pretty easy process too; upload a photo, cut out a head, pick the clip to slap it on and after it’s done processing, you’re ready to watch the fruits of your labour.

Here’s an example of a result starring Leo Laporte:

I’ve had fun using it and made some pretty embarrassing videos of my friends as birthday e-cards, or as a joke to mass email at the office (sorry Mike). The process is simple enough that anybody who can surf the net and trace out a picture can easily pick up how to create video clips though Starring You!.

The Good

• Very simple process, the majority of time invested is in cutting out the head. The rest is as easy as pie
• Real easy to share your creation to facebook, myspace, and even generates a code to embed
• Good library of movies to select from, and it’s growing, but at a slow pace

The Bad

• You need to have a JibJab account. If you don’t like creating another account, unfortunately you’ll need to create one in order to use Starring You!

Now although you need to create an account to use it, I found that at the end of the day, it’s pretty beneficial to have for future creations. You can save heads you cut out, which makes it easy to generate another clip.

Overall, I think this is a great “application”, if you will, that makes it easy for practically anyone to poke fun at friends at, and share some laughs. Kudos to the developers at JibJab.