Web edit era

The web edit era is the period, beginning around 2005, in which online video replaced physical media as the primary way BMX riding was shared, watched and judged. Video-sharing sites, then brand-run websites and blogs, and finally social media turned the slow cycle of annual DVDs into a constant stream of short edits and single clips. The change reshaped how riders built reputations, how brands marketed and how the sport remembered itself.

Before the web: the DVD years, 1999 to 2005

By the early 2000s BMX video culture was mature. Props Video Magazine had moved from VHS to DVD and still released several issues a year. Road Fools tours were a fixture. Every significant brand released a full-length team video every year or two, and riders were judged on their video parts in those releases.

The cycle was slow. Footage was filmed over a year or more, edited for months and released on a disc that had to be bought in a shop or by mail order. A rider's part in a brand video might contain clips that were two years old by the time anyone saw them. Trick progression spread slowly, because it took so long for footage to reach other scenes.

The internet existed but could not yet carry video well. BMX websites in the early 2000s were forums and photo galleries. A few sites hosted small, low-resolution clips that took minutes to download. Message boards did much of what social media would later do, including spreading rumours of new tricks and arguing about who was best.

The first web edits: 2005 to 2009

Broadband and video-sharing sites changed everything within a few years. YouTube launched in 2005 and Vimeo, which became the preferred host for BMX because of its better picture quality, had launched the year before. For the first time anyone could upload a video and have it watched worldwide within hours.

Brands moved fast. By 2006 and 2007 the web edit, a short video of two to six minutes released online, had become the standard way to show a new rider, a new product or a trip. The term itself distinguished these from the full-length DVD and from the single clips that would come later. See web edit.

BMX media changed with it. Print magazines built websites that posted edits daily. Independent blogs, run by one or two people, became essential reading because they aggregated every edit released that day and added commentary. For a few years these sites were the centre of the sport's conversation, and a post on one of them could make a rider's name.

The effect on progression was immediate. A trick landed in one city could be seen everywhere the next day, so the pace of new tricks accelerated and the idea of an NBD, a trick never done before, became a daily currency rather than an annual event.

Peak web edit: 2009 to 2014

By the end of the 2000s the web edit was the dominant form of BMX media. Brands released several a month. Riders filmed constantly. The full-length DVD did not disappear immediately, and some of the most respected videos of the era, including Fit Life (2007) and Anthem II (2010), were released on disc around this period. But they were increasingly exceptions: prestige projects made by brands and filmers who believed in the format, rather than the norm.

The web edit had its own conventions. It was usually one rider or a small crew, cut to one or two songs, with the best clip saved for the ender. Trip edits, product edits, welcome-to-the-team edits and "year in review" edits became recognisable genres. Riders who understood the format, filming consistently and releasing often, built audiences that did not depend on contest results or a brand's DVD schedule.

Picture quality improved rapidly as cameras became affordable. By the early 2010s a single filmer with a consumer camera could produce footage that looked as good as a professional DVD from a few years earlier, which lowered the barrier for small brands and independent riders.

The era also brought a flood of footage that was hard to sort. With hundreds of edits released each month, individual videos were watched once and forgotten. Riders and filmers began to complain that the web edit had devalued the footage it carried, and that a trick which once would have been an ender was now a Tuesday clip.

Social media: 2013 onward

Instagram launched in 2010 and added video in 2013. Within a couple of years the single clip, posted directly by the rider, had replaced the web edit as the basic unit of BMX media, just as the web edit had replaced the DVD.

The shift moved power to riders. A professional no longer needed a brand's filmer, website or release schedule; they could post their own footage to their own followers. Brands adjusted by sponsoring riders partly on the size of their audience, and by producing content for social feeds rather than for their own sites. The independent BMX blogs that had thrived in the web edit years mostly closed or shrank, since social feeds now did the aggregating.

The single clip has obvious limits. It is short, it is watched without sound, it is forgotten fast, and it rewards tricks that read well in a few seconds over lines, style and context. Many riders and filmers responded by returning to longer formats. Full-length videos released online, such as Still United, and long-form video parts hosted on YouTube and Vimeo found audiences precisely because they offered what social feeds could not.

By the 2020s BMX media existed in layers: social clips for daily attention, web edits and video parts for reputation, and occasional full-length projects for history. Contest broadcasts, including the Olympics, sat alongside them for the park and racing disciplines.

What was gained and lost

The web edit era gave BMX speed, reach and independence. Trick progression accelerated. Scenes outside the United States, including Australia, Europe, Japan and South America, got the same exposure as American riders for the first time. Small brands could compete with large ones on footage alone. Riders could build careers from their own bedrooms.

It also cost the sport things it valued. The DVD had given footage weight: a part was watched hundreds of times and remembered for years. Online video gave footage a shelf life of days. The mystery that once surrounded riders and spots disappeared. Full-length videos, which had been the sport's collective memory, became rare. And the pressure to post constantly changed how riders rode, with more sessions aimed at producing clips than at riding for its own sake.

Whether the trade was worth it is argued constantly within BMX. What is not in doubt is that it happened, and that the sport is now shaped by the medium that carries it.

Legacy

The web edit era is not over; it is the present. But its first fifteen years left permanent marks. The culture of the filmed video part, which began in the DVD era, survived and now exists online. The NBD, the ender and the daily release of footage are the normal condition of the sport. Riders expect to be their own media.

For street, which had always depended on video rather than contests, the era confirmed its dominance, since street footage suits online formats better than any other discipline. For flatland and trails, small disciplines with little contest presence, online video provided an audience that print and DVD never had.

The era also made the archive. Nearly every edit released since 2006 still exists online, which means the sport's recent history is more completely documented than any period before it. See BMX in the 1990s and rise of street riding for what came before.

Related

• Web edit
• BMX in the 1990s
• Rise of street riding
• Street
• Props Video Magazine
• Road Fools
• Still United
• NBD