By Garth Johnston -- Broadcasting & Cable

Embracing its Battlestar Galactica fan base, NBCU's Sci Fi Channel introduced a twist on the growing popularity of user-generated content to its Website Tuesday.

Taking a cue from the Star Wars fans and their popular homebrew films, Battlestar viewers are now invited to create and upload their own Battlestar videos onto a special section of the Sci Fi site . To facilitate in the video-making effort, the channel is making available -- for free--over 20 visual and audio effects, in AVI, QuickTime and WAV formats.

Battlestar Executive producer David Eick will select one of the fan videos to be broadcast during an upcoming episode. Videos can be humorous or serious but must be at most four minutes and are not to be posted on other video sites like YouTube.