Flipagram

Flipagram app

For a while now I have been trying to find a replacement for the late-lamented Pummelvision which would create videos from lots of photos (as opposed to not very many such as Animoto).  I liked using Pummelvision for creating a video of my Flickr challenge photos.  With various references to Flipagram in the last few weeks from people using it for highlights of 2013 I was hoping that I might have found a solution.

Flipagram is a micro video app for iPhone and android created by Cheerful Inc in Los Angeles, CA. I loaded the app easily from the app store and then created a short video from 14 photos on my camera roll.  I used a piece of their music and was also able to upload it to my Youtube channel and share to other social media. You can change the sequences of photos and crop them before creating the video but can't edit after that. The photos were chosen randomly so there is no significance in their choice or sequence.



I wasn't quite sure how many photos could be included, though once I had uploaded mine to Youtube I found several quite a bit larger.  My 14 photos ended up in 16 seconds. I also noticed that some friends were using collages so that was another way to expand possibilities.  However, the Flipagram FAQ on their website state that "You must select at least two images and there is no maximum limit".  Wonderful!  Incidently, it is very hard to find the FAQ where all the useful info is stored.  I found it eventually by a Google search and it appears to be in a link to Tumblr..

So at last an unlimited micro video site that I might be able to use for my Flickr challenges!  But, Flipagram can be used for photos on Instagram, Facebook and your camera roll.  I have a few photos on Facebook and use Instagram intermittently, but I store all my edited photos on Flickr. Alas, I can't access them for Flipagram.

I have communicated with Flipagram and they tell me links to other sites such as Flickr is a work in progress. I do hope the work progresses well. All those photos on Flickr provide a brilliant market.

I created another video, again rather randomly, of 35 moments and uploaded it to Youtube.  This curiously was shorter than the other and ended up as 15 seconds.  Again, there is potential: 

#blog12daysxmas Post 7 #anz23mthings Thing 6 Youtube+Screencasts

I am not really much into video creation, I must say.  I have been using Youtube for years and I really love the use it has for archival material.  It is great to preserve and disseminate film footage and sound archives.  These play a very special role in family and local history, and any sort of history really.

I have had a Youtube channel for a few years, but I have usually used it for videos that I have made using photos.  Sites such as Animoto and the late lamented Pummelvision have been ones I have used to document things, such as my year in photos, my uncle's life when he died, a trip to Shanghai and others.  Yes, cats have definitely featured.  But that's the web.This is my Shanghai video:




I can see a real use for this in family and local history to document a series of photos about a particular place or person. This is a very brief one I did when my uncle died, but I would like to experiment with doing some local or family history focused ones.




While doing this Thing I signed up for Vine and was amazed at the very large number of my friends who were on it.  I was also interested to see that one of the trending topics was cats.  I am a great Henri and Simon's cat fan so this was heartening to me. I haven't loaded anything to Vine yet.  I think this has a lot to do with my real aversion to jerky handheld video. For the library profession, I think it is important that we don't produce amateurish stuff that gives a bad impression.  I am sure that many members of the profession do have these skills - just not me.

And I did do a Vizify twitter video of my account today.  That showed me who my golden followers are.  You can see it here.

#blog12daysxmas Day 9 videos from Flickr

 

I was very pleased to have finished my 366 photographs for the Flickr Photo a Day 2012 Challenge.  But as I stated a couple of posts ago I am very keen to create a video of the 366 photos like I did in 2012 with the late lamented Pummelvision.  So, rather than moaning about it any longer, yesterday I decided that I would explore possibilities.

After a bit of research I ended up with what seemed to be three contenders.The first was Animoto which I have used in the past in its free version which was going to be far too short for 366 images. Animoto in its free form was actually Thing Number 39 years ago and that is how I came across it.

There are also Plus and Pro paid versions and so I thought that that maybe the Plus version for $5 a month or $30 a year would be the goer.  I pottered around in the site for a while checking the functionality and made another freebie of my Loupe.com collages which I successfully uploaded to Youtube.  You can see it here.


Of course, then I looked into the fine print of the technical detail and discovered that the maximum number of images was 300!  Boo! That was not going to be very good for a year of 366 days (or even 365).

The second was Windows Live Movie Maker. I didn't get very far with this one, though I think fiddling with it seemed to change my Firefox settings and resulted in no video access. That is a whole other story.  The reason I didn't pursue it was that it only accesses photos on your PC or camera and not from other sites such as Flickr as I wanted. This may be a great tool but it is not what I want.

The third one was another paid site, Stupeflix. It also looked hopeful so I started making a video by loading up photos from Flickr. Although I could find no information anywhere on the site about the maximum number of images, my initial load stopped at 50 and although I was able to load more incrementally it could not deal with 366.

So does anyone have any other bright ideas?  Am I missing the obvious?  It seems to me that the solution is to do divide the year into two and do two videos using the Animoto Plus account.  At least my Flickr Friday Photos 2012 will only be a maximum of 159 photos!

#Octshowntell #4 Animoto for recipes

For my fourth #Octshowntell, I went back to Animoto to see if it would work for another type of story: a recipe. there are a number of site where you can upload videos of cooking recipes but I have never really liked them or the result. I thought that Animoto might work. In preparation I took step by step photos while I was making basil chicken balls in tomato sauce. This time I loaded the photos directly from my own drive so that I could select them more easily. I then played around with some different formats and different music. Which one do you like best? Do you think Animoto works for recipes? Would it be better with a full length video as opposed to the free 30 seconds?

The first was done with original Animoto style to Mozart's overture to the Marriage of Figaro.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

The second was the same style and music but done with a one click remix.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

The third used the original Animoto style but changed the music to another piece of Mozart.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

The final version used the Color Fold style and the same piece of Mozart.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Animoto - postscript

Needless to say I did go back to Animoto. I wanted to put together some photos for the family (or for me) of an uncle who died in recent times. Now that was frustrating. I had photographs scanned on my hard drive and it took me ages to work out why I couldn't see all of them when I was trying to upload from Animoto. Duh! I finally worked out the difference: these are .tif and the ones I was able to load were all .jpg. So it looks to me that this tool can only be used with .jpg files. Anyway, I was glad to have worked out what was happening. Meanwhile, as I have posted a couple of my video clips over at the City of Boroondara Learning 2.1 ning, I can look at them there to my heart's content.

More Animoto - a family history tool

This is positively the last play I am having with Animoto this afternoon! Note that that leaves this evening, of course. This one, with great originality labeled La vita, is an attempt to see how family history photographs could be used to create a video clip. I know I am quite transparently playing with this to avoid housework so I had better get on with it!

#39 Animoto - make video clips like pros!

Animoto is absolutely cool! After my lack of skill and enthusiasm about the comic relief topic, it was great to get into Animoto and let them create a professional video for me. I continued on the theme of Agatha Christie and Egypt that I started in Photobucket a number of things ago and also carried on with in Scrapblog. Animoto was easy to join up to.

The first glitch came when loading from Photobucket was not available as an option, even though it was listed as one and they had apparently promised that it was coming in September 2007. But as I had loaded some of the Agatha Christie and Egypt photos onto my hard drive, I loaded them from there. That was pretty straightforward though it took a bit of time. I could then spotlight photos I wanted highlighted and reorder them or delete them. Then I needed to choose music. I could have uploaded some from elsewhere but chose to use some of theirs. The range was not great - Electronica,Indie rock, hip hop, Latin and Singer/songwriter - and none of it probably suited my archaeology and sleuth theme.

Animoto then analyzes the images and the music and pieces it together into a video clip. It took a while for this process to happen, but they warned you and offered some entertainment. Once the video clip is produced you can then remix it or tweak it yourself. I was happy and easily uploaded it here to my blog and also onto the Boroondara Learning 2.1 ning. You can do 30 seconds clips for free and these take about 10-15 photographs, or you can join up and pay for longer videos.



I was so excited I decided to start another one based on some photographs of Polyxena and Hecuba. Those photographs are higher resolution and took quite a time to load. I also remixed them and changed the photos. It all takes time but it is fine. Some of them turned out quite grainy in the application and I'm not sure why. With this one, I also uploaded it to the blog (see next post), to the Boroondara Learning 2.1 ning and also to Facebook. It all worked fine, though I am now wondering about the automatic start here on the blog as both want to start in conflict. Sigh! The challenges of technology.