Section: New Software and Platforms

VideoClipper

Keyword: Video recording

Functional Description: VideoClipper is an IOS app for Apple Ipad, designed to guide the capture of video during a variety of prototyping activities, including video brainstorming, interviews, video prototyping and participatory design workshops. It relies heavily on Apple’s AVFoundation, a framework that provides essential services for working with time-based audiovisual media on iOS (https://developer.apple.com/av-foundation/). Key uses include: transforming still images (title cards) into video tracks, composing video and audio tracks in memory to create a preview of the resulting video project and saving video files into the default Photo Album outside the application.

VideoClipper consists of four main screens: project list, project, capture and import. The project list screen shows a list with the most recent projects at the top and allows the user to quickly add, remove or clone (copy and paste) projects. The project screen includes a storyboard composed of storylines that can be added, cloned or deleted. Each storyline is composed of a single title card, followed by one or more video clips. Users can reorder storylines within the storyboard, and the elements within each storyline through direct manipulation. Users can preview the complete storyboard, including all titlecards and videos, by pressing the play button, or export it to the Ipad’s Photo Album by pressing the action button.

VideoClipper offers multiple tools for editing titlecards and storylines. Tapping on the title card lets the user edit the foreground text, including font, size and color, change background color, add or edit text labels, including size, position, color, and add or edit images, both new pictures and existing ones. Users can also delete text labels and images with the trash button. Video clips are presented via a standard video player, with standard interaction. Users can tap on any clip in a storyline to: trim the clip with a non-destructive trimming tool, delete it with a trash button, open a capture screen by clicking on the camera icon, label the clip by clicking a colored label button, and display or hide the selected clip by toggling the eye icon.

VideoClipper is currently in beta test, and is used by students in two HCI classes at the Université Paris-Saclay, researchers in ExSitu as well as external researchers who use it for both teaching and research work. A beta test version is available on demand under the Apple testflight online service.

• Contact: Wendy Mackay