Tales of woe from my iPad
1st Video from Vericorder
(Updated, see bottom)
I’ve spent the last couple of months occasionally trying to do my job with an iPhone and my new iPad mini.
Had to cover opening night of the fair last night for the 20-somethingth time, so decided to do it mobile. What a disaster.
Got my eyefi card talking to my ipad? Check.
Got a bunch of video editing apps? Check
Got a story? Check
So I shoot the story, get some pr flak voice and sit down in a quiet place to edit.
I’ve shot tons of 30-second iphone videos with clips butted together and emailed in. That works fine.
This time I thought I’d try to put flak audio under b-roll and try to make it a real video. Whoa. Blew up in my face.
Vericorder 1st Video is the only app I know that will layer audio from a video clip so that’s what I used. It’s the most user-hostile video app you can imagine. Ok, hours later I’ve got a bad video put together. On the iPad Mini, there’s no way to tell if a clip is in focus, there’s no way to skim clips for good bites, and frame-accurate editing is an exercise in frustration that makes you want to cut your thumbs off. But I’ve got a one-minute-twenty video.
Export it. Oops, too big to email. Try to FTP it with FTP Client Pro app. Hangs up half way through. Repeatedly. (Of course, there’s no way to use our video upload form from an iPad, so gotta send it in.)
Ok, recut it to a minute. Pull it into other video apps to compress it. Finally get it small enough to email. If I had shot it on my regular camera and edited on my laptop, it would have been done three hours ago.
Oops the desk says it won’t transcode through our video provider, VMIX. Crap. VMIX doesn’t like modern quicktime codecs.
After midnight, I finally give up and pull everything into my laptop, edit a much better piece with stuff I know is in focus, and post it myself. Consider slitting my wrists but decide to do a ‘will it blend’ video of my iPad.
Anyone else out there on the bleeding edge of mobile video production?
Got any app suggestions that will layer audio and video like Vericorder’s? Quick to use apps that don’t constantly crash like Splice? Anything with a ftp client built in? Anyone figured out how to get sound from an audio recorder into a video editing app?
Why does something so simple become so hard with just a little extra thrown in the mix?
Ok, I’m resigned to a laptop from now on.
Update from Glen Mulcahy, who runs the excellent mobile journalism blog VJ Technology, who tells me Pinnacle video editing app WILL split audio from video if you drag clip to audio line instead of video! D’oh!
Promise vs. Reality on the iPad
VIV Mag Interactive Feature Spread – iPad Demo from Alexx Henry on Vimeo.
Before the iPad came out we were promised extraordinary innovation in publishing on the new device. This preview of Viv Magazine is, indeed, extraordinary. But if you go to Vivmag.com on an iPad today, months after the new Apple toy hit the streets, what do you get? Nothing. The current issues display in Flash, which, of course, the iPad won’t display. No app to be found, either.
It takes a lot of talent and time to produce compelling content like this and the economics of publishing aren’t in favor of it.
I still hope for the best. Although the AP news app is terrible, the USA Today one is ok. The New York Times ‘Editors Choice’ app has been updated and just recently added video and it looks great! And although they aren’t publishers, Vimeo plays video full screen in html5 on the iPad and it’s really nice.
