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.

Apple Updates Final Cut Pro X to 10.0.2

Apple has updated FCPX to 10.0.2 with:

"What’s new in version 10.0.2:

• Fixes an issue in which a title may revert to the default font after restarting Final Cut Pro X
• Resolves an issue that could cause files recorded with certain third-party mobile devices to play back incorrectly
• Addresses a stability issue caused by changing the start time on a Compound Clip"

Helpful stuff unless you've already moved on to Premiere.

The weird thing is that a place I freelance at switched to Premiere recently jumping (after evaluating) over FCPX entirely which means either I learn Premiere or I don't freelance there anymore occasionally. They've abandoned Final Cut Pro entirely; all 10 edit stations.

Adapter - Another FREE transcoder

I've been busy lately, and part of the reason I've been so busy is clients like to revive long dead projects so they can play them on the latest and greatest outdated video servers at TV stations.

When A client asked for a project that has been planted firmly in the video graveyard several years ago to be converted to "an mpeg two" I eventually got around to it.

Looking around I ran across a transcoder that I hadn't heard of before called Adapter. It's FREE and isn't all that bad for transcoding stuff. Here's the list they provide when they say "Convert anything to anything"

"3g2, 3gp, 4xm, RoQ, ac3, alaw, asf, asf_stream, au, audio_dice, avi, crc, daud, dc1394, s, dv, dv1394, dvd, ea, ffm, film_cpk, flic, flv, gif, h261, h263, h264, idcin, image, image2, image2pipe, imagepipe, ipmovie, m4v, matroska, mjpeg, mmf, mov, mov, mp4, m4a, 3gp, 3g2, mp2, mp3, mp4, mpeg, mpeg1video, mpeg2video, mpegts, mpegvideo, mpjpeg, mulaw, nsv, null, nut, ogg, psp, psxstr, rawvideo, redir, rm, rtp, rtsp, s16be, s16le, s8, sdp, shn, sol, svcd, swf, u16be, u16le, u8, vcd, video4linux, vmd, vob, wav, wc3movie, wsaud, wsvqa, yuv4mpegpipe"

As always, your milage may vary, but it's handy to know about and since it's free it's worth a shot.

8mm Distress Kit goes HD

Back in 2009 (remember 2009? Your iPhone wasn't quite 3 years old yet and Slovakia just adopted the Euro) I reviewed a pretty spiffy piece of kit called the 8mm Distress Kit. Back then in the before-time™ it was in SD.

But, now, in the future world of today when your iPhone 4S shoots 1080HD footage the kit's gone Hi-Def, and only for a modest increase in price. What was then in then dollars was $35, is today, in today's dollars only $59.

In the virtual box you'll get 2 files which contain 28 clips sized at 1440x1080 running at 29.97 or 25fps if you swing that way.

The crazy thing is that this comes at the perfect time for me for a documentary that I've been working on for the past 86 years (well, it feels like 86 but if you want to get down to brass tacks, it's technically closer to 85) which involves super-8 footage and I wanted something to help me obtain some visual interest with some bland-talking-head interviews I've been handed which run the gamut from HD all the way down to SD DV tapes to even some (hold on to something) Flip footage. *gasp*

I think Mediapreview.net's HD 8mm Distress Kit is not only going to help make the documentary look like it cost more but I'll be able to invoice for more since it looks like it costs more which will make it cost more so it's all honest that way.

Check it out, give it a spin; there are some samples to play around with, a nifty little tutorial and more on their site. And with film going away, but people still having an intense interest in it's qualities (look at Instagram, lomography, me taking well over 11,000 photos with my nearly 8 year old cell phone just because they look "lo-fi" and cool), and the feature film Super-8, it looks like the super-8 look as well as the clean-slate innocence of that bygone time which accompanies it won't be forgotten soon.

It's funny; my assistant has never shot or touched film, never placed a needle on a phonograph record and has only seen 8-tracks on tv. He's never used a pay-phone or adjusted rabbit-ear antennas, either.

But there is something that speaks to us visually through the ages with film; there's a strange personal investment -or perhaps connection is a better word- in it when we see something shot on film, especially older formats like 8mm, super-8 and 9.5mm (look it up). There's some manner of ephemeral hypotactic permanence with it that digital just can't obtain. Sure digital is beautiful, the future and in many many ways better than film but the tangible hic et nunc of it is difficult for our minds to grasp; you have a pocketful of little digital cards or "files" tucked away in the dark recesses of a hard drive, unlike film where you can simultaneously see and hold history and memories and movement literally right in your hands...without needing any batteries.

Maybe it's the analog simplicity of it that encourages us to capture (and indeed slow down and notice) the simple things in life, and for that matter life itself. But then again, I'm old and have an 8 year old cell phone.

Give the kit a whirl and see how it changes the flavor of your footage, not just stylistically, but perceptually. To me it gifts digital footage with an import that it otherwise doesn't have. That's the language of film at work; that's why tilt-shifted footage looks miniature and in my mind and for my money, adding effects like what's in the distress kit makes footage as large as life.

box.net and 50 GBs FREE storage

If you're anything like me clients are forever loosing the projects you hand then on DVD, Data-DVD, CD, Flash Drives, copy to their hard drive, hand them hard drives, upload to their FTP server, can't figure out file hosting sites CAPTCHAs, etc... ad infinitum.

SO...it just happens that box.net, a competitor to DropBox is offering for a limited time a full 50 GBs of storage FREE just for signing up.

You see where I'm going with this; while box.net doesn't have the Finder integration that DropBox does (and face reality, the client likely can't figure out anyway) it does have oodles of storage and an easy to use web interface and iOS compatibility (meaning your iPhone and iPad and iPod Touch).

You can upload a completed project to a box.net account, send (email) the client a URL to the file for them to download and then wait for the inevitable codec incompatibility calls to come in as per the usual.

But, at least they'll have the file and an email (which they'll lose) with a link to the file. Just make sure you Subject the email with the project name and the word "download" and yeah, I just used subject as a verb.

Better yet, create a box.bet account FOR THEM using their company so later on you can blame it all on them.

Update: To get the free space you may need to sign up with an iOS device like an iPhone or iPad, if you don't have one try it on a friends or run into an Apple store and set up the account.

I'm like that :)

Video Inspection Tools

If you get lots of strange formats and weird incompatibilities you've likely used a video inspector app before, maybe VideoSpec or Media Inspector.

A friend tipped me off to another one that's also FREE called iMediaHUD which is current and pretty spiffy. It even does folders of video clips.

I mention this because I had two clips allegedly from the same camera and one would become out of sync in the Timeline while the other wouldn't. Comparing the two with iMediaHUD showed some differences and I was able to sort it out.

It's free. Give it a whirl if you like to see some interesting specs on your video clips.

ProApps Update

Apple is forging ahead bringing the new FCPX up to closer match the features and capabilities of the old FCP. Today there's a codec update here.

Final Cut Pro X Update (and free trial)

Yep, Apple had decided to actually update FCPX (the big thing is XML import from FCP7 as well as export XML, no word yet on how FCP7 handles FCPX's XML) and a free 30 day trial.

Good news or not? I have no idea. I suspect that the divide of love vs hate will remain about the same but the numbers on each side will increase. That is, depending on how well FCPX imports FCP7's XMLs I guess.

Final Cut Pro Freaks Out

Here's a fun Final Cut Pro Viewer glitch:

Apparently it has something to do with waking a Mac from sleep while a hard drive was spun down and some planets were aligned, or something.

A relaunch of FCP fixed it.

Apple's Help Library Search

I get random questions fairly often about some tricky or hard to find or downright hidden, annoying or absent stuff regarding Final Cut Studio.

Often times a simple Google or Bing search will find the answer as one of my adages is "If you have the problem, chances are someone else has and has solved it." I tend to used "licked" rather than solved in certain company however.

Another great resource other than this blog and further down the line big box search engines is Apple's very own humble Help Library Search which resides here.

This spiffy thing is that you can essentially search the manuals for all of Apple's stuff simultaneously, drill down to just a few app's manuals or get crazy and just search one.

The results are kinda-sorta real-time when you click the checkboxes even and how cool is that?

Bookmark it for later; you'll need it.

And you can finally find out what that Hue Direction Control really does.