Magisto for iPhone Takes your Home Videos to a Whole New Level and it Does it For Free
By: Hillel Fuld
By now, we are all sick of hearing the phrase, “2012 is the year of <insert some breakthrough technology here>”, so you will forgive me when I add one more trend to the long list of technologies that will dominate this year, mobile video.
Of course, you don’t have to be a prophet to see that mobile video will hit the mainstream this year, it is already starting now. A few weeks ago, we reviewed a new app, Action Movie FX, that allows you to add professional looking effects from an action movie into your own iPhone videos. The app is fun, addictive, and a total conversation-starter. Of course, it is not a very practical app but more of one for kicks. Magisto, on the other hand, is a must have for someone who takes a lot of video with their iPhone.
Now you might have heard of Magisto after the company partnered with this small unkown video site. I think it was called YouTube or something along those lines? You can find out more about the Magisto Youtube partnership here. Basically, Magisto enables you to take a plain old video with no bells or whistles and transform it into a professional-looking video production. It is pretty cool stuff, but c’mon, Web is so 2010!
Well, good news mobile folks, Magisto just launched on iPhone! You can download it here. The basic concept is, you select a few video clips you have filmed, or you can take new ones with the app, choose your music, add a title, and let Magisto work its magic (see the before and after video here.). You can then share the video on Facebook, Twitter, or by email, as well as upload it to Youtube directly from the app.
The app is beautifully designed, and the results are just as impressive. I have been testing out the app for a few weeks now and passed on some feedback to the developer, mostly regarding the speed of both the processing of the video as well as the playback of the final product.
Now, here is the thing with the Magisto service, both on the Web and on the iPhone. What you see is only a small fraction of what is really happening. The video processing, which is something usually regarded as one of the most resource intensive tasks you can do on a computer, is all done in the cloud. Magisto lets you define and design certain parts of the movie, such as the music, but once you press Make My Movie, the processing is not done natively so no battery drain or slowing down of the device is involved.
The down side of this is of course, speed. While, I like apps that are snappy and responsive, Magisto uses push notifications to let you know when your video is ready. Just for the sake of perspective, I selected less than a minute worth of footage and it took at least three times that to process the video. I understood from the developer that the processing is real time so if you upload a minute of video, it should take a minute to process but again, not based on my tests.
Now, this is not a big deal if you think about it. In fact, it reminds me (like many things do in today’s fast paced world of technology) of the famous “Everything is Amazing and Nobody’s Happy” video by Louis CK. He talks about how people get annoyed with their phones and he says “It’s going to space!! Give it a second to get back from space!”. Awesome. Watch the video below. If you have not seen it, it is the funniest video you will watch today. Guaranteed or your money back.
In this case, we are talking about real video processing all done remotely, so a slight delay is something I am willing to live with. However, when you finally do get that push notification that your video is ready, you might expect to watch it natively from your device, or even have the option to download it. Sorry to disappoint you, folks, but both are a no-go.
You are watching the video from the Magisto servers, which means one thing… Buffering. And a whole lot of it. That, to me, is the biggest downside of the app. I waited all that time to watch the video, now let me watch it and without buffering. What is this? 2008?
OK, I am being a little harsh because at the end of the day, the app is designed beautifully, the final videos are super impressive, and the very fact that Magisto is doing heavy video processing from a mobile phone in the cloud, is, in and of itself, wow.
All in all, I would say Magisto for iPhone is a must-have, especially considering the fact that it is free, at least for now. Grab it here!
What is Magisto from magisto on Vimeo.
