RealNetworks' next app makes sense of your photos and videos
The company that gave us RealPlayer is now targeting something else entirely: All of the media that we take that never sees the light of day. RealTimes, the next flagship app from RealNetworks, automatically backs up your photos and videos into the cloud and sorts them into easily shareable montages. Because if you're like most, you probably end up shooting plenty more media than you know what to do with. That's especially the case with parents, a demographic that RealNetworks is determined to crack. The app, which is available for iOS, Android, Windows PCs, Roku devices and Chromecast, automatically chooses the best photos and video selections for its montages. Your montages can also feature soundtracks based on built-in tracks or your own tunes. You can store up to 2GB of media and create 30 second montages for free, or pay $5 a month for 25GB more storage and longer montages, or $10 a month for completely unlimited storage.
RealTimes is basically an evolution of the company's last major product, RealPlayer Cloud, which was focused entirely on getting your videos into the cloud and viewable across multiple devices. While that app managed to snag 11.5 million users since debuting in 2013, RealNetworks found that most people were only using it once or twice a month. So for its next project, it wanted to created something that you'd use several times a week, RealNetworks CEO and founder Rob Glaser told us.
There are, of course, plenty of other apps and services trying to do something similar to RealTimes. Google+ automatically stores and organizes your photos, and HTC has been pursuing photo and video montages with its Zoe app. But RealTimes could still be compelling to people given its wide device support, as well as the fact that it's building on everything the company learned with RealPlayer Cloud. For example, you can watch media remotely from any of your devices connected to RealTimes.
"if a startup says we're going to hold your memories forever you don't know how long that'll be," Glaser said in reference to Everpix, a now defunct photo startup that also tried to backup all of your photos. "As a 20 year old company think people know we'll be in it for the long haul."
One thing's for sure, our desire to capture our daily lives through photos and videos isn't slowing down anytime soon. So while media management solutions may seem niche at the moment, eventually they're something more consumers will need. It's too early to tell if RealTimes will end up being the ideal tool for sorting and sharing our media, but it's certainly worth keeping an eye on.
