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.

Timing Voice Overs with Handy (FREE) Apps on an iPad or iPhone

I've been on the road for a few days and while shooting we've been roughing in some potential VO's to show the client.

I didn't realize it right away but my iPad doesn't have a built-in timer to time VO's to 60 & 30 seconds.

Here are two FREE timers I found that I dig:

1. Timer Z

Timer Z has an optional alarm when time is up and has a stress-inducing optional visual aid which frankly I love watching. It also has a great history log of times which you can email if you need to.

2. LabTimer

LabTimer can run 4 timers simultaneously which is more helpful than you'd think. Plus seeing the duration of past attempts is handy.

Not Showing Location in Titles on iMovie for iOS

I've been playing around with iMovie on an iPad2 and noticed a little hassle. iMovie REQUIRES location services to be on in order to see footage that you've shot or transferred over from another project which is bonkers in my opinion.

It sees footage in two locations, btw:

1. Camera Roll
2. Synced iPhone Library (which you do via iTunes).

I'll post later on the steps to transcode stuff to ingest into iMovie for iOS.

Anyway, if you're in iMovie for iOS and add a title, often you'll see the location under your typed title. There's no one-button way to get rid of this.

But there is a simple workaround.

1. Double-tap a clip that has a text element with location text you want to remove.
2. Tap "Location"
3. Tap the Location listed.
4. Delete the location shown there and tap Done.
5. Click outside what is now called the "Edit Title" pop up window to dismiss it.

Done.