Articles about Video

WeVideo on Tuesday unveiled an all-new mode for its video editing Web app geared toward the casual video shooter with little editing experience who needs to do quick and simple edits and share them on social media sites.

We first looked at WeVideo's freemium Web app when it launched last year. That app is still around in mostly the same form, only now it's known as "Timeline Mode." It lets users edit video and audio clips with stills, titles, and effects like one might expect from a free video editor.

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In the beginning there was English and it was good. Okay, not so much. Honestly I found YouTube captions early on to be pretty darn bad. The Google speech recognition tool wasn't up to snuff and it sometimes led to hilarious results. But, to it's credit, the company has made strides to improve. In fact, if you have used Android lately then I think you will find speech-to-text to be pretty solid.

YouTube, a Google property, introduced captions back in 2009. At the time it was English only, but as the technology improved other languages were added -- Japanese, Korean and Spanish were next to appear. Now the service offers an additional six languages.

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I have two cats, Charlie and Chloe. Charlie is very talkative, especially when he’s hungry (which is most of the time), and indeed you can often have lengthy conversations with him. So when, in 2009, YouTube user Andrew Grantham (klaatu42) put out a call for clips of talking animals to appear in a new Christmas video, I filmed Charlie requesting more food and uploaded the 30-second snippet. I was very fortunate, because not only was my submission accepted but my cat was used to sing the opening lines to Deck the Halls.

It was a fun video, and clearly found an audience -- as to date over nine million people have watched it. But Charlie’s fleeting fame wasn’t to stop there. A few weeks ago, out of the blue, I received a slew of increasingly frantic messages in my YouTube inbox from the Leo Burnett advertising agency.

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Finding videos online is generally very easy. Downloading local copies can be more of a challenge, but there are some great tools around that can help -- and FSS Video Downloader is one of the best.

The program doesn’t just support YouTube, for instance. It can also download clips from Facebook. Vimeo. Myspace. Metacafe, Vimeo, LiveLeak, Dailymotion, and assorted other popular sites.

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DARPA, or the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency as it is technically known, has a history of turning seemingly crazy ideas into reality. Now this branch of the Defense Department pursues a new camera/sensor system designed to aid soldiers' vision on the battlefield.

The agency describes it this way: "As missions shift, however, and warfighters are required to work in smaller teams and access more remote locations, it is technology that must adapt if it is to remain useful. Desirable features for many new man-portable systems include small size, light weight, minimal power consumption, low cost, ease of use, multi-functionality and, to the extent possible, network friendliness".

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In video "Can Nanotechnology Create Utopia?" physicist Michio Kaku talks about the upsides, downsides, insides and outsides of having a replicator like on Star Trek to make anything we’d ever need or want. It’s a compelling vision and he’s right that its implications go far beyond the economic to include cultural, social, even psychological. Kaku says it’s possible to make such a device and suggests we’ll have it in 100 years.

I say we’ll have it in 20.

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Less than 48 hours ahead of its launch of Windows 8, Microsoft has unveiled Skype for Desktop 6.0 for Windows and Skype for Mac 6.0, a major new release of its popular cross-platform chat tool. Skype for Desktop 6.0 focuses on improving integration with existing Microsoft Messenger and Facebook services.

New features include the ability to log in using either Microsoft or Facebook accounts before linking all three together. One reason for doing so is that Skype now supports IM conversations with Messenger contacts as well as other Skype and Facebook friends.

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In the late 90's and early 2000's, American music video channel VH1 aired a program called Pop-Up Video, which took existing music videos and augmented them with additional information about the performers, the videos, the music, and so forth. This information "popped" on screen at relevant times with an audible bubble popping noise.

The show turned out to be so popular that it ran for six years, and came back to VH1 nine years later. Right now, it's in its second year as a revival.

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California-based camera company GoPro announced on Wednesday the third generation of its popular ruggedized, wearable video camera, the HD Hero3, and a whole lineup of new hardware for the 2012 holiday season.

GoPro's cameras up until now have been rather boxy, and with the Hero2's accessory to add Wi-Fi connectivity, the little cameras became bulky things indeed. This new generation of cameras, however, is half the size of previous models and has the Wi-Fi capability built in. Functionality has been improved while size has been reduced. It's a great combination for a generational upgrade.

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Last week's Saturday Night Live Season opener, with Daniel Craig hosting, really disappointed. But last night's show returned to form, with host Christina Applegate. Among the highlights, and somewhat appropriate for a host with "Apple" in her name, is a skit about iPhone 5. SNL is often best when using humor to make social commentary and, whoa, does it in the new episode.

I have embedded the official video from NBC but can't be sure it will be visible to international readers. If you can't view the SNL skit, try this user-posted YouTube video (and hope NBC doesn't demand its removal).

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Months after releasing the Wi-Fi controller pack for its Hero2 action sports cameras, GoPro on Tuesday finally released the first version of the mobile app to go along with it.

The GoPro App gives users full control of all camera settings, a live video preview window, and access to GoPro's "social-ish" Photo and Video of the Day site. The app is free and compatible with iPhone 3GS, 4, 4S (iOS 4.3 & 5), iPod Touch 4 (iOS 4.3 & 5), and iPad 1, 2 & 3 (iOS 4.3 & 5). It is available in the iTunes app store right now.

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Finding videos online is easy. Finding videos in a format you can play is sometimes more difficult, though, which is why you might need a tool like Convertilla to convert movies from one file type to another.

The program’s big advantage is its simplicity. There’s no talk of codecs or bit rates here; conversion can be as easy as dragging and dropping your file onto Convertilla, choosing the output format and clicking Convert.

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You might have a great video camera, and be very skilled at using it, but it won’t make any difference: your raw footage will generally still be rubbish. That’s just the way it is.

Having a good video editor to hand, though, can give you the power to solve most problems. And CyberLink’s PowerDirector 11 Ultimate is the latest candidate for your attention, being packed with high-end features -- a 100-track timeline, fine keyframe control, advanced video effects, disc authoring and online video sharing -- yet also simple enough for beginners to use.

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Samsung has revived its "The Next Big Thing is Already Here" marketing campaign with new videos, one of which posted about an hour ago to YouTube. Like its predecessors, the 90-second spot mocks people waiting in line to buy iPhone, something going on right now at Apple Stores around the globe. Doors open at 8 am local time on September 21 for iPhone 5's official launch.

The South Korean electronics giant started the ad campaign in November 2011, following release of iPhone 4S. This year, the commercials come first and are sure to continue afterwards. This spot carries forward the storyline for at least one character -- that is for anyone who has watched the series. It's clever storytelling for advertising.

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CyberLink Corporation has unveiled PowerDirector 11, the latest version of its feature-packed consumer video editor.

And our favorite addition so far has to be its content-aware editing, a time-saving tool that sees the program automatically identify the major scenes in a movie, so that you can then import them in a flash.

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