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.

Video Editing Is Everywhere

First Youtube released rudimentary video editing capabilities, then we had iMovie on iPhone and iPad and now Vimeo has a video editing app for iPhone (and iPad?).

"An easy-to-use video editor

• Capture video with focus control and grid alignment
• Combine, edit, and trim your videos
• Add transitions, titles, and effects
• Add music and recordings
• Control volume levels
• Save edited videos to your camera roll or upload directly to Vimeo

The whole Vimeo experience

• Watch and manage all your existing Vimeo videos and download them to your camera roll
• Easily upload your raw footage or edited creations in HD or SD
• Pause and resume uploads
• Replace existing videos
• Edit title, description, tags, privacy and credits
• Share with Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, WordPress, Email or SMS
• Add your clips to your Groups, Channels and Albums
• Stats on daily plays, likes and comments"

We're going to be seeing on-set editing more and more I'll bet; rough cuts right then and there. I've already experimented a bit with this just goofing around on set and I can see it coming into it's own soon. I just loathe the day that clients want to see a rough cut the same day as the shoot and expect it to be sent to them before the crew heads home.

Shooting and Editing on an iPad without using iTunes

An interesting question was posted the other day on this post.

Basically, the question is if there is a way to shoot footage and edit it on an iPad without having to use iTunes to sync or in fact, any computer at all: just cameras and an iPad with iMovie.

Now, I don't have all the stuff on-hand to test this but this is what I would try first:

1. Set up your iPad with iMovie.
2. Buy the Camera Connection Kit from Apple.

"The iPad Camera Connection Kit gives you two ways to import photos and videos from a digital camera: using your camera’s USB cable or directly from an SD card. iPad and the Camera Connection Kit support standard photo formats, including JPEG and RAW, along with SD and HD video formats, including H.264 and MPEG-4."

3. Buy or find a camera that shoots H.264 or MPEG-4 to SD cards. Something like the Kodak Zi8 perhaps (just guessing here)?

4. Shoot, then pop the SD card out of the camera and into the Camera Connection Kit that's plugged into your iPad.

I don't know for sure but you may have to reduce the quality (bit rate) or size of the video you shoot so the iPad can handle it. Again, I can't test this at the moment.

5. Ingest with iMovie? (I don't have the stuff here to test this, just thinking aloud)
6. Edit in iMovie

As for output I just don't know if the Camera Connection Kit is something iMovie can export to. The new iPad2 can easily plug into a TV, monitors and projectors via an HDMI cable apparently so there is a way to show videos to groups.

And there are some App Store apps that let you monkey around with video, meaning copy it to SD cards and the like but I've never tried them.

Another option would be to use AirPlay but I that requires an AppleTV or display that supports AirPlay.

Or you could use DropBox, perhaps, to upload your videos to where ever you need them. DropBox needs to be installed on the iPad at least.

Apple has a Knowledge Base article on iPad file sharing here.

And some clever people have noticed that the new version of iMovie can run on the iPad1.

Unfortunately I don't have the hardware here to test this out. Let me know how far off I am :)

UPDATE:

Apparently file names need to be formatted in a certain way (to import images and video clips into iMovie in some cases) and in a certain folder in most cases. More info is here.

iMovie on iPad2

I'm on the road going from location to location for a documentary...as a passenger, and they won't let me drive!

All I've seen for the past 4 hours.

I could have made a documentary on telephone polls from my window seat here if it weren't for the fact that there's a surprising lack of diversity among them. Anyways…

In the Mystery Machine here (which is what I call the crew transport because the Producer told me to stop "audibly calling it the Rebel Transport and/or Honeywagon" (direct quote, btw) and because where we're going each shiny new day is a complete mystery to me) I've been doing roughs (rough cuts) of the previous day's footage to show the director. Which doesn't make sense since we can't go back to the previous location anyways. Anyways…

iMovie's been on the iPhone but now theres a bit in the most recent keynote where iMovie is demoed on the iPad2 and it's actually very interesting. Reverse-pinch (seriously, no one has come up with a better term? Unpinch? PullApart? Lot? Reave?) to move into "Precision editing" mode which while cool and necessary and everything, really seems more like a way to overcome the small screen and lack of precision cursor (your finger) control.

Can you frame-advance? Does it support TimeCode?

What I'm wondering is how and if you can get video into iMovie on iPad2 that's not shot by the iPad2 itself. Maybe you can iTunes it over, I dunno. (iTunes = verb) I'll know after mine gets here I guess.

UPDATE: I'm being told you can import footage from your Mac for use in iMovie on iPad2.

Handling of still images gets some tweaks but while there's the Ken Burns effect there's still no Jack Cole effect.

iMovie for iPad2 outputs to a few formats that can be pretty client-handy, which is nice; heck, even CNN iReport. (Rogue gorilla film crew kidnaps handsome and helpless editor!) I suspect I'll be seeing iPad2s with iMovie along with the requisite iPhones with iMovie (and seemingly endless parade of Flip cameras) on corporate shoots where the client (or their "Social Engineer" which is a glorified name for someone who gets highly paid to post stuff to Facebook on a companies behalf) makes a behind-the-scene video to show their friends (competition) then offers it to me 'in case there are any shots I may have missed.'

Really.

Didn't Social Engineering mean something else just a few months ago?

Btw, if anyone on a set mentions that their phone shoots HD "as well" meaning like the main camera we're using, I will hide that phone behind their car tire for them. (Hope you find it before you leave!)

While mirrored video output will be pretty helpful showing roughs to clients one of the best things about Sharing The Drama may be having one on set and doing a rough edit right there, in-hand, along side the "this is the big boy's camera, you don't touch" camera.

I'm still recommending clients steer clear of iMovie (to save my own wallet) and because of it's posterization issues.

Other things I'm wondering about concerning the iPad2: Camera resolution, memory and despite Steve Job's email about it being "on the way" there seems to still be no wireless syncing.

I am so bored.

Apple's iFrame Announced

Apple has announced something called iFrame in a Knowledge Base article.

What's iFrame?

The iFrame Video format is designed by Apple to speed up importing and editing by keeping the content in its native recorded format while editing. Based on industry standard technologies such as H.264 and AAC audio, iFrame produces small file sizes and simplifies the process of working with Video recorded with your camera.

So it's essentially:

960x540
30fps
H.264
AAC

iMovie 8.0.5 suports it. And only two camcorders. No word on when FCP will support it.

9to5mac.com has a representational image comparing frame sizes here. Their brief article is here.

Appleinsider has a more in-depth article here.