Hasta La Gadget!

Short of serving the popcorn, Magisto’s editing app can take care of the video production needs for the busy (or artistically challenged), including helping with music choices, chopping it all together and even distributing it across video albums. However, one sorely lacking feature was the ability to include photos, which the developer has just rectified in its latest update with a “smart photo feature.” After you pick your images, the system’s algorithms “choose the most compelling moments within the pictures and videos, and automatically marry them in a narrative format,” according to Magisto — even matching photo and video subject matter via AI. From there, it’ll add graphical themes, music and transitions to fill out the movie while you tend to more pressing matters. The iOS version is now at the App Store with an Android release arriving shortly, and the company said it’ll soon add morphing, image foreground / background separation and other effects. If you want more than the five images the freebie version offers, you’ll need to pay $18 a year for the premium app — but all that extra free time should let you go earn the bucks to pay it off.

Filed under: Software

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Avid Studio for iPad arrived back in February, priced to coax iPad filmmakers away from Apple’s in-house iMovie. Since then, however, the company sold its consumer business arm to Corel, leading it to re-brand the package as Pinnacle Studio for iPad. The editing app has gained a bunch of features that users were clamoring for, including 1080p support, integrated uploads to Box and a raft of stability tweaks. As part of the change, it’s being offered free for a limited time, so if you own an iPad (or plan on getting one in the future), we suggest you jump-cut to the App Store pretty quickly.

Filed under: Tablets, Software

Avid Studio for iPad gets renamed, free on the App Store for a limited period of time originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Sep 2012 18:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft has never been shy about its ambitions for Kinect’s depth sensing abilities. A pair of patent applications, however, show that its hopes and dreams are taking a more Hollywood turn. One patent has the depth camera going portable: a “mobile environment sensor” determines its trajectory through a room and generates a depth map as it goes, whether it’s using a Kinect-style infrared sensor or stereoscopic cameras. If the visual mapping isn’t enough, the would-be camera relies on a motion sensor like an accelerometer to better judge its position as it’s jostled around. Microsoft doesn’t want to suggest what kind of device (if any) might use the patent for its camera, but it’s not ruling out anything from smartphones through to traditional PCs.

The second patent filing uses the Kinect already in the house for that directorial debut you’ve always been putting off. Hand gestures control the movie editing, but the depth camera both generates a model of the environment and creates 3D props out of real objects. Motion capture, naturally, lets the humans in the scene pursue their own short-lived acting careers. We haven’t seen any immediate signs that Microsoft is planning to use this or the mobile sensor patent filing in the real world, although both are closer to reality than some of the flights of fancy that pass by the USPTO — the movie editor has all the hallmarks of a potential Dashboard update or Kinect Fun Labs project.

Filed under: Digital Cameras, Gaming

Microsoft patent applications take Kinect into mobile cameras, movie-making originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Aug 2012 18:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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