video effects
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In The Mix has wild effects for playful video editors
In The Mix lets anyone create videos with stunning visual effects or full films using multiple video clips. Add in music from your iTunes library, record a few video clips, then browse a long list of unique effects to layer on top of the video. With minimal experience, In The Mix's set of features is capable of producing a movie with plenty of flair and creativity. The app is free for iPhone and iPad and requires iOS 7.0 or newer. Make a video, watch a video or create a feature film - those are your three menu options. This threw me off guard for a moment, though. By "Watch A VIdeo" I thought the app implied I could watch user-uploaded creations from others who downloaded the app, but alas this is just to watch one of your own videos in-app. (That's not a terrible idea for the future though, developers.) Since I didn't have any videos to watch, I came to the brilliant conclusion that I should try making one. Here you either need to add a profile or a video. A profile is just a description of people involved, somewhat like the ending credits. Fill in your name, director, producer, actors and optionally upload a profile icon. Now it's time to add some footage. Tap "Add Video" to first choose the audio: music from your library, music plus a microphone recording or just the microphone only. I do wish In the Mix came with a small catalog of royalty-free music to use, but I have an extensive library of music so I can't complain. The app lets you adjust the speed of the music or crop it to a specific part to play in the film. Then tap "Start Recording." The effects are easily the best part of In The Mix. They're ridiculously fun to play around with. Everything from bubbles to palm trees to rainbows to iPhone borders with random sunflowers flying everywhere. I have no clue why anyone would need the latter but who cares? It's there just in case. The best part is, once you press the Record button, the effects change live as you press them so you don't just need to stick with a single effect per clip. In The Mix reminds me a bit of Video Star, an app geared a bit more specifically toward making playful music videos. The former does offer a more extensive set of features though; the ability to combine multiple clips to create a "feature film" is handy and transitions and timing are thrown in, too. Be warned: the app isn't all that stable. It crashed on me a couple of times and it's a bit buggy at times. I can't pinpoint exact issues because they're sporadic. Also, if you care about design aesthetics like I do, the app is just plain ugly. Everything is too shiny and glossy even by pre-iOS 7 standards. Buttons are sometimes poorly aligned and the color scheme is highly flamboyant. Issues aside, In The Mix isn't bad. It's entertaining to mix and match video clips with music, plus the video effects are alluring. With no in-app purchases, you get the entire package in a single download, too. The app does need some polish and a serious paint job, but it's good enough for what it is. Download In The Mix free for iOS.
Daily iPhone App: PyroPainter is special FX made easy on the iPhone
There's been an explosion of special effects videos on YouTube over the past few years. Because the technology to create special effects has gotten so cheap and so easy to use, basement video editors of all kinds have put together videos of themselves throwing fireballs or fighting with lightsabers against their cats. PyroPainter takes this idea to an even easier place: It's an iPhone app that lets you add special effects to videos as simple as dragging and dropping them across the screen. The app's instructions are unfortunately a little sparse, but once you figure out how it all works, it's really simple. You upload one of your previously recorded videos into the app, choose an effect from the huge library and "paint" it across the screen with your finger. Anything you add gets added to the video, and you can then go back and watch the video while dragging or deleting the effects as you like. Once done, the video gets rendered right there in the app, and sent back to your video library, in full HD form, where you can send it off to YouTube or watch it on AirPlay. It's very impressive. There are already a few demo videos on YouTube, but I hope to see even more cool demos put together by users in the future. PyroPainter is a free download, and there are two packs of special effects to buy for 99 cents each with more to come. Developer Markus Nigrin has also released a second app available for free to celebrate the launch of PyroPainter: Photo Extractor is something he came up with during development of the effects app. It will allow you to grab HD photos from any video on the iPhone, and then save those off to the photo reel on their own. It's a much simpler function than the full effects app, but it could be very helpful for that specific need.
Autodesk Motion FX for OS X Lion arrives on the Mac App Store
Autodesk, developers of the amazing AutoCAD and Sketchbook apps for the Mac, has just released a new free app that is not only a lot of fun, but could be useful to amateur filmmakers. Motion FX for OS X Lion is a 25.1 MB app that requires Lion and creates "stunning real-time video effects using your computer's camera." The app is powered by the brains of the Autodesk Maya software, applying real-time fluid dynamics technology to create effects that react in real-time to movements. There are five modes available -- motion detect, which streams the effects from motion detected by the camera; face detect, which emits effects from visible faces in the camera's field of view; color detect, which blasts effects from only specific colors on the screen; effect paint, which lets users "draw" the effects using a mouse or trackpad; and video warp, which warps video using a mouse or trackpad. The app allows saving of screenshots with a tap of the spacebar, supports Lion's full-screen mode, and supports multiple cameras. Motion FX also supports multiple displays, which Autodesk touts as useful for VJs and performance artists who can use one display to control the app and another to project to an audience. If the description above doesn't really explain to you what Motion FX does, then the video below will.
TUAW Giveaway: iCamcorder for iPhone EDGE, 2G, 3G
If you don't have an iPhone 3GS, there are now apps available to enable video recording capabilities on the older phones. One of those apps, Drahtwerk's iCamcorder [US$0.99, iTunes Link], has a ton of features that might make 3GS owners jealous. Some of those features include: Quad-cam, mirror, pop-art, old movie,color-flip and four more special effects Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube sharing of recorded videos Adjustable recording frame rate Bonjour sharing for downloading videos from your iPhone Drahtwerk wanted to give away some promo codes for this app, and now 20 lucky TUAW readers are going to walk away with a free copy of iCamcorder. Here's how to enter: Open to legal US residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia who are 18 and older. To enter, leave a comment telling us what you'd like to record with iCamcorder. The comment must be left before Tuesday, February 9, 2010, 11:59PM Eastern Standard Time. You may enter only once. Twenty winners will be selected in a random drawing. Prize: One promo code for a copy of iCamcorder (Value: US$0.99) Click Here for complete Official Rules. Good luck, TUAW-ites!
Video tech uses photos to enhance, alter shots: it's the Photoshop of video, and no one is safe
We've seen some decent video alteration in our day, but this new research project by some folks at the University of Washington has the potential to turn the entire concept on its head. Using some rather advanced algorithms to analyze video and photographs of a the same scene, the software can meld the two into something slightly better or even dramatically different. In effect, it's Photoshop for video, since it brings your Photoshop chops to bear on video effects: edit up a still shot or two of the scene, and then meld that with the video, and your edits can be seamlessly integrated into the scene, without all that nasty manual labor required by Shake or After Effects. It's not the end all be all yet, since the tech only works with static scenes so far, but the researchers are working to rectify that. While video evidence hasn't been a sure thing for years, it's always been significantly harder to fiddle with than still shots. With that barrier removed, we might be in for a whole new generation of video that lies and a reality we can be none too sure of. Oh, and really good looking indie flicks. Sample vid is after the break.
Getting the iChat hologram effect back
When Leopard was released a lot of folks (well okay, just Star Wars geeks, but nonetheless) lamented the loss of the hologram style iChat AV effect demonstrated back at WWDC. Well for those folks, a little birdy told me that the Quartz Composer file for this effect can be downloaded here (download link). Just pop it into your /Library/Compositions folder, restart iChat and it should be available as one of the video effects. This file was apparently taken from one of the earlier developer builds of Leopard.If you want a different take on the same idea, there's also a fan made version over at Mac Rumors.
