MixBit for iPhone: Shooting, editing and sharing bits of video
It's rare for individuals and companies to create one successful product after another, Steve Jobs and Apple being the notable exception. Today marks the official release of MixBit for iPhone, a free video app from Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, the two founders of a little success called YouTube.
What makes MixBit different from the fairly recent video sharing apps like Vine and the updated Instagram? Well, while you can shoot video bits as short as one second long and up to 16 seconds long, you can also stitch up to 256 of those bits together to create an hour-long opus. [The MixBit approach is pretty different from the socially minded CrowdFlik, but both do involve stitching short clips together to deliver a full video experience. –Ed.]
MixBit has a surprisingly iOS 7-like minimal interface, so it will be right at home once the new mobile OS ships from Apple. Recording is done by using a touch-and-hold gesture, and the individual clips are then stored as independent video elements. Those bits of video can be dragged and dropped to rearrange them, deleted with a tap or two or cut to a shorter length. Once you're done with your editing, the bits play back as one seamless video, at which time it can be saved and / or published.
There's also no need to shoot your own video. Through MixBit.com, users can watch, download and then remix (hence the "mix" part of MixBit) videos that have been submitted by others. I can't wait to see what happens when someone takes bits of "4 Ways To Remove A Beard" and mixes them with "Free Hugs" to make "Removing Beards with Free Hugs." I might even pay to see that...
