Client Keeps Seeing Outdated Version Through Browser?

I ran into this recently and it threw me for a loop.

A client kept saying that they were seeing the old version of a short video when viewed in their browser via a direct link. I checked it it was the newer version.

We ran through all the cache clearing stuff, relaunching the browser, rebooting her computer and even trying another browser but no luck; they kept seeing (and me hearing over the phone) the older version.

Snooping around (which means calling a bunch of friends) I found out that they too, were seeing the old version. This was insane. Until one friend hit some keys and like magic I heard the new version playing over the phone.

Me - "Okay, what's that worth to me you're thinking, right?"
So-Called Friend - "Yeah, I was thinking a free lunch. I like those."
Long pause...
Me - "Fine."
So-Called Friend - "Any place?"
Me - "Any place."
So-Called Friend - "Cool. Meet me at (his favorite place) for lunch and I'll tell you there."

Evil.

At lunch, he goes, "Put a question mark at the end of your url. It'll trick the ISP into serving up the right version and bypass their cache."

I tried it. It worked. The client's ISP sucks. So I billed my friend's free lunch to the client. Shhhh...

DVD Studio Pro Keeps Burning An Old Version of a DVD

If you've run into the problem of DVD Studio Pro burning off an older version of a project, or a completely different project than you have open and expected to burn, it's likely you have some leftover AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS files in your Documents folder.

Look here: /Users/YOURACCOUNT/Documents/DVD Studio Pro Documents

If you see an AUDIO_TS folder and VIDEO_TS folder these are likely the ones that are being burned off rather than the project you expected.

To verify these are the culprits:

1. Drag the VIDEO_TS folder atop of DVD Player application and hit play.

If it's the the culprit delete this VIDEO_TS folder and the AUDIO_TS folder.

Why did this happen?

Well, it's likely that at some point you formatted and project and DVD Studio Pro dumped the files there, or DVD Studio unexpectedly quit sometime ago.

What if there are no folders there in DVD Studio Pro Documents?

1. Open DVD Studio Pro and hit COMMAND + (COMMA) to open it's preferences.
2. Click on "Encoding"
3. Select "Build/Format" next to the "Show:" menu.
4. The location shown for "Location" is likely where the problem VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders are.
5. Delete 'em.
6. Restart DVD Studio Pro and do a test burn. A simulation won't show you a problem, only a disk image or actual burned DVD will.

Some additional info:

Another way to check to see if DVDSP is pulling the wrong or old files is to hit COMMAND + F for Format. Look at what is shown in under the General tab under Disc and next to "Name:" and compare it to what is shown next to "Name:" in the Inspector palette; if they're different, then DVDSP is pulling old files from somewhere.

A clue that you've solved your problem is if you see this window appear when you hit COMMAND + F (for Format).

Install QuickTime Player 7 in Mountain Lion

I've had a few people ask me if Mountain Lion supports QuickTime Player 7. Apple says it does (your mileage may vary, however).

Here's Apple's page on how to install it.

Adobe Media Encoder File Import Error "Could not read from source" error

Sometimes when you drag a file into Adobe Media Encoder you'll see an error "File Import Error" and something about "Could not read from source".

This usually happens with .mov files for some reason. I'm not sure why, but to solve it temporarily I've just been renaming .mov files by appending .mp4 at the end. These files are in fact .mp4 files but for some reason Adobe Media Encoder seems to get confused if they're named .mov. Go figure.

If you change it to something and it still won't import...I have no idea.

This link from Adobe offers a little more information. Even they admit it's a confusing mess:

"The codecs that are found in Adobe Media Encoder depend on which version of Creative Suite or standalone program that is installed. So, while a codec might be installed in one version of Adobe Media Encoder, it might not be found in another."

Compressor and Empty Batch Name error

Sometimes, albeit rarely, you'll see Compressor toss up an error sheet with something about "Empty Batch Name" when you hit Submit but little further help.

It has to do with how you drag items into the target window.

Make sure you drag the media in there first, then drag in settings. You may see the error if you have multiple media files and drag them all in at once then highlight them all and drag a settings to them en masse. If so, just try again. Compressor's funky like that.

H4N Zoom Slow to Start Recording

Although not a FCP tip here's something I noticed today that may save people's sanity on-set. On an H4N Zoom audio recorder, after a while tapping the REC button will take a long long time to begin monitoring audio, and sometimes it'll go straight to recording (this is with Firmware 1.72).

The solution I discovered was to simply tell it to record into an empty folder. That seems to eliminate the excruciatingly long pause before it starts rolling.

There must be some sort of file or file-tree check before it begins writing or thinking about writing to a card with many files on it. Today was with a Class 10 card so it's likely not a speed issue. My guess is somewhere around 100+ files causes a slow down to turn on monitoring/recording.

So by recording to an empty folder there's no file-tree to check and it goes right to monitoring/recording. New rule: New Day - New Folder.

Hard Drives Wake Up and Spin Up For No Good Reason

With Mac OS X sometimes hard drives that are attached will spin up for no reason, when open/save dialogs appear, when quitting an application or when unmounting a .DMG.

Here's a little tip to reduce some of this, mainly the completely random wakings/Spin Ups.

It involves a little Terminal magic but it's not too bad.

Fast Way to Find Multiple Uses of a Clip

If you've ever edited something with limited footage or too much footage you've probably gone back over it with a client and realized that you've used a shot more than once. Sometimes it's not obvious until you watch the edited piece, especially when you have limited footage and a precise script.

One trick I've used many times is to find the clip in question in the Bin and assign it a color label.

Highlight the clip
Hit Command + Option + any number key. I like using 6 for Green or 3 for Red.

You can toggle this while keeping an eye on the Timeline to see what gets labeled.

Sure there are other ways (like using Find) to locate what clips have been used but having a visual indicator of precisely where they are in the project helps me out tremendously since if they're far apart enough clients tend not to notice.

Perian is going bye-bye

Perian has announced that they're ceasing development. But they're doing the right thing and making it open-sourced on Google Code or GitHub so tell any developers you know.

Perian is really an essential tool to the roaming editor especially those who cut a lot of documentaries where people tend to hand you bizarre formats. Hopefully someone will take up the reins and continue it's development.

Removing GoPro Cineform Studio's Menubar CodecStatus

UPDATE:

In the latest version of GoPro Studio (v2.5.7 as of this updated post) on OS X 10.11.3, the method easier, yet a bit hidden.

1. Launch GoPro Studio
2. Hit COMMAND + COMMA to open it's Prefs (or go to the menu bar and select GoPro Studio . Preferences...)
3. Uncheck "AUTOMATICALLY IMPORT FROM GOPRO CAMERAS"
4. The annoying menubar icon should be gone.

Sneaky, eh?

The old post below...

If you have a GoPro camera you've likely installed GoPro Cineform Studio. However it also installed a menubar item that deals with codecs and whatnot. If you've never asked for it to be there and don't use it it can be hard to get rid of it as it shows up every time you boot up. I'm not even sure what it's officially called but at the bottom of the menu it reads Check Codecs or something.

If you look at Activity Monitor you'll notice a process running called "StereoModeStatus" which is located in /Applications/GoPro/Tools/StereoModeStatus.app (technically it's inside the package here /Contents/MacOS/StereoModeStatus).

Now I don't like things being installed without my asking and I really dislike not having a way to uninstall specific things or at least permanently turning them off. You can select to quit the menubar item but it'll come back upon a reboot.

Also note that it's standard operating procedure to be able to hold down Command and then drag a menubar item around and OUT of the menubar. This thing doesn't let you Command + Drag it out of the menubar. Evil.

Here's what I did to get rid of the CodecCheck menubar thing.

Before this however, you can head to System Settings and look for "Cineform" pane and under the Process tab at the bottom you'll see "Show Stereo Status Menu". Now while this will hide the menu, it doesn't seem to always prevent the process from running. If you're like me and want the process to never run, continue reading:

1. Launch Activity Monitor (Hit Command + Shift + U to open up your utility folder and then hit A to highlight it then Command + O to launch it).

2. Look for "StereoModeStatus". Highlight it.

3. At the top of Activity Monitor's window hit Quit Process. Notice the menubar item vanishes. Yay!

4. Close Activity Monitor.

5. Navigate to your Application folder. (Hit Command + A to open it) Drill down to GoPro folder then inside there open up the Tools folder.

6. Right click on StereoModeStatus and select "Compress "StereoModeStatus".

7. After a second you'll see a new file called "StereoModeStatus.zip". This is your backup copy in case you ever need this thing again. Once you've confirmed this .zip file is there right click on "StereoModeStatus" (the original, not the .zip) and select Move To Trash.

It may ask you for your admin password to put it in the trash; further evidence of it's evil nature.

8. Empty your trash (Shift + Option + Command + Delete) and you're done.

Name Sequences Appropriately Now To Save Time Later

I was watching the "head" of a group of editors a few days ago and while I waited for some photos to come in ("Can you do that moving pictures things like in documentaries?") I watched this person export a sequence, rename it, then compress it to the various formats the client needed then rename it again.

Then I watched him do it again.

And again.

And I realized what bugged me about it. I tend to name my sequences the final output file name right from the get go.

For example in my Bin, I'd have a sequence named along these lines:

An example would be

tyrellcorp-nexus07promo-newVO_V03

So when it's exported from the timeline it becomes:

tyrellcorp-nexus07promo-newVO_V03.mov

That way when I transcode it to something like H.264 or whatever (NO...NO WMVs! Not anymore!) it ends up in a handy name, with notations with version number and no spaces or weird characters that occasionally screw up FTP servers and email links and other various and sundry tend-to-go-wrong-unexpectedly-thingys.

I'll even mention what file type it is on the flashdrive/DVD/HD I hand them right in the file name sometimes:

tyrellcorp-nexus07promo-newVO-V03.h264.mov
tyrellcorp-nexus07promo-newVO-V03.animation.mov

Like that.

What the guy I was watching was doing was changing:

Tyrell Corp Nexus 07promotion with New VO

into something like

tyrellcorp-nexus07promo-newVO-V03.mov

by renaming it in the Finder each time.

My advice: name your sequences something that you won't have to edit later to send to the client or their FTP/cloud/server whatever.

QuickTime Player Still Image Export Bug

I'm not sure if I've posted about this before but QuickTime Player 7 (Pro) has a bit of an odd bug in Snow Leopard and later with Preview.

1. Open up a movie and hit Command + E for Export.
2. Under the Export pull-down select "Movie to Picture".
3. Hit the Options button and select any standard image file format, like PNG or TIFF.
4. Notice that the name of the file ends with .pct no matter what.
5. Export the still image.
6. In the Finder, Get Info (Command + I) on the image. Notice it's a "QuickDraw picture"
7. Try opening it with Preview and behold this:

So Get Info on Preview and toggle this tick box:

so that Preview opens up in 32-bit mode.

TaaDaa now the image will open.

But what if you try to open it in Photoshop CS5?

How's that for helpful?

Oddly, if you QuickLook (Spacebar while it's highlighted) the Finder will preview the image.

So what's going on?

QuickTime Player 7 has an export bug relating to exporting still images from video files. It's some combination of the player, the version of the OS (the bug is less buggy in 10.5.x) and later versions of Preview. I suspect that the way the file is written and/or it's format is deprecated now days and likely has been since 10.4 or thereabouts.

The problem (if you're curious) is how PICT files are constructed. Think of them as PostScript for images in a way. When you run the Terminal command "file" on a QuickDraw picture you'll just see "data" as the result. Which is accurate since the data in the image file is (kinda sorta) just coordinates of how to "draw" that image. Wild, eh?

Now, if a client has handed you a pile of these images what do you do?

Three viable options:

1. Open them in Photoshop CS4 - Not guaranteed to work on a given OS however.
2. Use GraphicConverter - Yes, it's still around.
3. Use Preview by switching it to 32bit mode and then doing a batch convert if you have many of these files. Here's a post about that right here.

Now, you may be asking what the best way to export stills from a video file is? I'd suggest MPEG Streamclip which works nicely and lets you export to formats like TIFF, PNG and Jpeg.

Conversion - A Video Transcoder

Conversion is a new video transcoder that's as of this post in beta but it seems promising.

It's FREE as of right now (beta) and transcodes many formats into many (including wmv for those clients) other formats, thanks to it's use of ffmpeg. It claims DVD encoding support but I haven't tried that yet.

Give it a try and see what you think.

Amazing Free Online Toolset for Video and Editors

Michael Cinquin has a pretty amazing page with some handy FREE online tools that you may want to bookmark.

I'm on the road (again) and needed to convert a .srt subtitle file to .stl and his online converter worked beautifully.

Check it out and see if anything is helpful to you and drop him a thank you note if you have the time.

There is help for Final Cut Pro, RedCode, Conforming sounds, Subtitles...and lots more.

Quick Access to Audio Inputs and Outputs

Often I use a USB microphone for quick Voice Overs (for timing) and when I'm on the road I tend to just hook up my Zoom H4N to the laptop and record comments and VO's using it directly into FCP or Quicktime 7.

If you hold down Option while clicking on the volume adjustment menubar item you'll see this:

Instead of the normal volume slider. This is a quick way to access these common settings and get to the the Sound Preferences.

Bonus Tip:

Hitting Option + Volume Up or Down will also take you directly to the Sound panel in Settings.

Fixing Camera Bobbles

Let's say you have some footage that's supposed to be a lock-off but somewhere during the filming the camera gets nudged, or bumped or slowly drifts due to a loose lockdown or a sleepy operator.

If it's a short clip and you can't really use smoothcam or some other image stabilization software due to them digitally zooming in I'll do this:

1. Download and install the plugin "DH Grid" from here.
2. Layer that atop the less-than-smooth footage.
3. Resize and reposition the DH Grid overlay so it's grid aligns with a portion of the image that you want to stay where it is.
4. Set a Center keyframe in the Motion tab of the clip.
5. Now using the JKL keys, advance frame-by-frame (or small groups of frames) and Nudge the footage up, down, left and right as needed using the grid to keep it in place.

One great way to do this is to use the little known Nudge key commands in FCP: Option + Arrow Keys. It'll help if you have the Canvas set to Image + Wireframe and you must have the clip you're nudging highlighted in the Timeline.

If you want to nudge a really really tiny amount use Command + Option + Arrow Keys. Depending on how zoomed in you are -or aren't- in the Canvas you may need to zoom in to see these tiny adjustments.

6. Each time you nudge the clip on a particular frame you'll automatically set a keyframe.

7. Render and see how badly you messed up :)  Don't worry, it's hard to get it right the first time. And the human eye/mind is so used to seeing movement that is natural, that unnatural movement will seem quite obvious.

Scoot back to the problem frames and adjust them as needed, render, wash, rinse and repeat.

Be aware though that if you've fixed a particularly nasty bobble, you're first inclination after making all these keyframes is to zoom the clip or reposition it (since the bottom or sides or top may be cut off).

DON'T.

If you move the clip now you'll set another Center keyframe and mess things up.

Instead, use this little-known key command: Hold Command + Shift and move the clip in the Canvas. Command + Shift will move the clip AND THE KEYFRAMES en masse without setting any new keyframes. Nifty, eh?

Pasting Negative Infinity

In the Level setting for audio in the Viewer you can type in all sorts of values to change the level of your audio. But you really can't type in "-inf" if you want the audio from certain channels gone completely while you monitor playback.

But you can drag the slider all the way to the left to "-inf", then highlight and copy (Command + C) then while it's on your clipboard you can paste it (Command+V) into other clip's channel's level settings.

When you paste it into a Textedit document set to plain text, you'll even see that it's "-inf", yet you can't type letters into this box in Final Cut Pro. Weird.

Copy Negative Infinity, then Paste Negative Infinity in spite of ram limitations!

Box.net Corrupted File Warning

I'm not sure of the parameters of this one but it seems that if you upload a .NEF (Nikon Electronic Format) to a box.net account and then download it, it sometimes gets corrupted. I noticed this on a client's machine after they placed roughly ten .NEF files in their account and all of them ended up with a Segmentation Fault: "(com.apple.finder[409]) Job appears to have crashed: Segmentation Fault" and Finder crash-relaunch on Snow Leopard, by -and get this- just highlighting a .NEF and hitting Command + I (Get Info) in the Finder.

I tried getting screengrabs of the effect but wasn't able to. But I did manage to get a quick snapshot with the client's phone:

It's kinda like an Ib Melchior movie.

What I saw was the Get Info window zooming out quite choppily leaving echoed windows on the screen, then the actual Get Info window was shifted down leaving blank white space above it while it shuddered slightly up and down before the Finder gave up and relaunched.

Playing around with this I had the client zip an individual .NEF, upload it to Box.net, then downloaded it on another machine and tried Get Info after unzipping it. Everything was fine.

I'm not sure where the problem lay but it smells of the old losing-the-resource-fork file problem of the days of yore.

The solution was to just zip the files and then upload, then download them.

Fixing the RT Still Cache is full error message

I mentioned it briefly here but here's how to do something about it.

First off you'll see something like this in FCP 6/7 if you hover over the render indicator in the Timeline:

Actually, the solution is mentioned right there.

If you read the entire message you'll see you need to look here:

Where it reads "Thumbnail Cache" just bump up the Disk and or RAM setting a bit to cover the amount of images you're using in the current project to eliminate the warning, and help FCP a little bit with rendering all those stills.

I've left mine bumped up over the years as projects have caused the warning and left it with no ill effects. You'd think this would be dynamic after all this time but then again, OS 9 had separate application memory allotment settings in the old Get Info window.

Convert Final Cut Pro 7 projects to Final Cut Pro X

There's a $10 app called 7toX [app store link] that claims to convert Final Cut Pro 7's project files to Final Cut Pro X.

"7toX for Final Cut Pro brings your Final Cut Pro 7 projects forward to Final Cut Pro X so you can use Apple’s powerful new professional editing tools to update or finish your older projects. The lightweight application is simple to use, with drag-and-drop support and progress information. 7toX translates important metadata from your Final Cut Pro 7 Project — including bins, clips and sequences — to a new Event in Final Cut Pro X with the highest fidelity of any translation application for Final Cut Pro. In addition, the application provides clear, detailed reporting after every transfer. "

I haven't had much time to play with it but I'll be looking into it more this week and beyond to see how it fares. I wonder why Apple didn't release an app like this or build something like this into FCPX, even as a "beta" feature.

Had Apple integrated this (as a big red flag warning-ized "beta" feature) and waited until Photoshop Layer import, broadcast monitoring and Multicam editing were ready I believe the adoption rate for FCPX would have been MUCH higher and the bad press would have been MUCH lower. Heck, they may have even had Mac Towers still on display in all of their stores. (meaning, today some Apple stores don't have Mac Towers on display anymore...I know!)

FCPX gets Multicam Editing...finally

Apple has finally updated FCPX with a feature it should have had when launched: multicam editing. And to Apple's credit it now supports 64 streams. They also thought it was time to let FCPX import layered Photoshop files and allow Broadcast monitoring.

How long did that take? And why?

I wonder then how many companies and editors who bought Premiere will even notice given that the gap between launching FCPX without these features and then including them in an update was about seven months.

Some interesting bits:

- Multicam will sync clips based on audio.
- Broadcast Monitoring (technically a beta feature as of this post) requires a PCIe equipped Mac or Thunderbolt.

Compressor and Motion both get some minor updates as well.

Importing PDF files into Final Cut Pro

Today I was handed a 100+ page PDF to use in a FCP project. The problem is that FCP doesn't really like .PDF's all that much and if you drag a multi-page PDF into FCP you'll get a short clip that will essentially have each page as a frame. Not terribly useful unless that's what you'd like to see when you hit play.

Here are a few ways to get decent results without too much trouble using stuff you likely already have.

METHOD #01

(Save As... in Preview, better for high-quality requirements like text)

01. Open the PDF in Preview.
02. Hit Shift + Command + D to see the sidebar if it's not already open.
03. Hit Option + Command + 2 to see a long list of Thumbnails. Scroll down to the page you want to use in FCP.

Alternatively, if you know the page number of the page you want hit Option + Command + G to bring down the Go To Page text entry box, enter the page number and hit OK. The reason this may not be the best way is that some PDFs numbering schemes are off by a number or two, at least in the few that I've been given to use in FCP: ie.. Page 43 in the thumbnails is actually Page 42 as shown on the PDF.

04. Hit Command + Shift + S for Save As...
05. When the Save As sheet drops down select JPEG for the Format Pull-Down (you can also choose TIFF if you'd like to).
06. Set the Quality Slider to "Best"
07. For Resolution it will likely default to 150 pixels/inch. This should be okay for most situations, but you can bump it up higher if you'd like. I didn't notice too much of a difference between 150 and 300.
08. Tell it where you want to save the file and hit Save.
09. Import the file you just made into FCP.
10. Bring the .jpg or .tiff into the Timeline and Scale it if needed then render.

I've have acceptable results for corporate junk using this method. It's not the best quality but good enough for company work.

METHOD #02

(Dragging out a separate .PDF page)

01. Open the PDF in Preview.

02. Hit Shift + Command + D to see the sidebar if it's not already open.

03. Hit Option + Command + 2 to see a long list of Thumbnails. Scroll down to the page you want to use in FCP. 

04. Find the page you want and then drag the thumbnail in the sidebar to the Desktop or folder where you want it to go.

This will create a new PDF of just that single page.

05. Import the file you just made into FCP.

06. Bring the .pdf into the Timeline and Scale it if needed then render. 

The results won't be perfect but good enough for some projects.

METHOD #03

(Making each page a separate image file. Read the Warning about this!)

If you need each page in the PDF as a separate image file here's one quick and dirty way:

01. Open the PDF in Preview.

02. Hit Command + P for Print...

03. After the Print sheet drops down hit the PDF button at the bottom left.

04. Select either "Save PDF to Folder as JPEG" or Save PDF to Folder as TIFF"

WARNING!

Be aware though that when I do this there is no sheet asking where to save the files. For me, and maybe this is some kind of bizarre bug or me doing something wrong, it saved the individual pages as images files in my "-Tmp-" folder, which is inside an invisible folder (not meaning Lion's crazy invisible user folder madness).

How to convert a single audio file to separate ones with a .cue file

A client sent me a link to their FTP server of a VO for a project I'm cutting. It turns out that whatever place they used to record the VO, I guess, just left their equipment recording while the VO talent read the script.

Meaning, it's one giant 400 MB .Flac file.

A, why they sent it as a .Flac file is beyond me.

B, why it's one large file is equally beyond me other than they literally never hit pause during the entire recording session, which is exactly what it sounds like they did.

Hearing the client "direct" the professional voice over talent is priceless btw…

But, at least they provided a .cue file.

Seriously. I know.

So my task was to either complain and loose my job and sanity -imagine trying to explain .flac, .mp3 and .cue files to a client- or just find a way to break them up myself.

One solution would be to dump the audio into Final Cut and just Control + V at all the gaps or actually listen to it all and copy paste into new timelines or make subclips or something else equally archaic. Another way was to use an app to cut the audio when it encounters silence but that would likely lead to it cutting at pauses in long sentences.

It turns out it's easier than I had thought. First off Toast won't due it easily (if at all) which was my first thought and attempt. I didn't make much progress with it -it seems the more Toast is updated the more confused it becomes as to what it's main function is- but I did remember a cool little free app called Max that I had used a long time ago so I did what I usually do when awakening an old app…look for any updates first.

Looking at some software sites I saw that Max hadn't been updated in a while but as a "related" search item I saw the FREE app XLD which is an acronym for "X Lossless Decoder" which I knew of but never had much use for outside of the odd conversion.

Now, while Max would likely work I decided to try XLD because it was more recently updated, by a lot.

What you need to do to break up a single file into separate audio files using a provided .cue file (technically you could make your own) is this:

1. Drag your .cue file onto XLD. It'll launch.

2. After XLD's window appears look at the left column. There you'll see the main recording. Make sure it's highlighted and active and you'll see the list of individual tracks on the right in the main window.

3. Hit Command + Comma for XLD's preferences.

4. In the Preferences window select the Output Format you want (double check the Options button if you need precise control of the output format, say for like a TV station or something), then set the Output Directory to where ever you'd like it. You can also set things like the format of the file name and the Maximum number of Threads here. Close the Preferences window.

5. Back in the main window hit the Transcode button and away you go.

Magisto

So I've been terribly busy lately but I noticed something at CES this year.

Magisto.

What's that?

"Magisto automatically turns plain videos to beautifully edited and produced Movies, perfect for sharing."

Automatically!

Wait…Editing AND Producing? Wow.

Check out their FAQs for some interesting tid-bits like:

6. The clip I got was very short... What happened?
Part of what Magisto does with your videos is take out the parts that are less interesting. By doing this, the clip you will get will be significantly shorter than the original videos that you uploaded. In such cases we advise you to upload more videos or longer ones.


Why not clips that are more "interesting"? That is to say by whatever defines interesting. Isn't "interesting" subjective? Or are they just counting delta-frames or something?


How's all this magic work?


2. How do I create a Magisto clip?
Simple! Creating a Magisto video is a 3-step process so all you need to do is:
• Upload your video (you can upload more than one if you'd like)
• Create a title for your clip, which will appear in the beginning of your video (or not. It's not a mandatory step)
• Select a soundtrack from a variety of music genres and VOILA, you're done!


You're done!

Oh, and it's free.

It's a bit like iMovie's automatic trailer making mode-thing with face-recognition and title slots and what not.

Although with Magisto in my head I can clearly imagine all your footage being uploaded (ie..outsourced) to some third-world country and row after row of chained-to-their-desks slave-editors in front of Windows Movie Maker slapping something together as footage comes in, then only being allowed sips of water from the communal ladle only after they upload it back to you.

What my imagination shows me when I think about how Magisto works.

And this app is for iOS devices.

An iPhone that shoots 1080 and an app that edits it for you. (it's not free to have it edit 1080 footage, only 720 apparently).

I haven't played around with it too much but it's certainly interesting. I've already seen so very many corporate videos shots on Flip cameras or iPhones, iPads and other tablets that are "good enough for what we need" that I'm beginning to think that outsourced video production companies are going to loose a lot of their low-end work in the long run. I've already started to see it dry up for some of my work and even more so for some of my associates.

On the other hand it's fascinating watching a...wait for it...paradigm shift like this taking place in real time.

So there you have it, you can no shoot HD video on your phone and then almost literally hit one button to "edit" it.

And it's free, unlike iMovie for iOS. I believe that everything has a trade-off somewhere, somehow and placing this in the Project Triangle, this being easy and free, means it's not good.

Give it a whirl though and see what you think. Keep in mind that this app requires you to log in via a Facebook account. Not really the best idea if you ask me. I see it as potentially more of a way to collect user data for advertising in the future.

We're done.