YouTube has introduced a new service on their website called “Quick Capture” which allows the user to record video directly to the YouTube website. This feature is designed for people who want to directly video capture to the website using their video capture cards or a webcam connected to their PC.

The new service utilizes Adobe’s Flash Player API to connect to the video capture device. Everytime you go to the Quick Capture page, you’ll have to give permission to the Flash Player to access your video capture device and your microphone. Once permission is granted, all you need to do is fill out the information on the left hand side which includes the title, description, tags, video category, and language of the video. Then press record and watch the video get automatically saved to the website. There’s no encoding converion performed on your PC – everything is passed straight onto YouTube.

There’s one downside to using this service at this moment – there’s no online video editing feature at this moment, so what you record is what you’re going to get on YouTube! Those of you who are inclined to edit your videos will still need to record, edit, and encode on your own PC before uploading to YouTube.

This service will certainly be a boon for the millions out there with webcam equipped PCs and laptops. I can see it now – leave a video message for a friend and send them the link to the video using YouTube. Or send a video gram of yourself to your family for X-Mas. Very cool feature folks.

[Check it out via Ars Technica]

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