Watched Beau Travail ★★★★★ enjoyed this dreamlike fable very much.
The May is Out | A test of @snapthread 2.0 and some ramblings on video size and formats, classroom video apps and blogging.
The May is Out
A test of snapthread which has been updated to version 2. When I tried the 1.8.1 version I rather liked it. It was then an app to stitch live photos into wee videos on iOS. Version 2 adds a lot more features. I still like it.
This video should not be used to judge the quality of the output, I used CloudConvert to squash the 38MB 1440 × 1080 mp4 down to 4.5MB 1.
My class used the free version, limited to 30 seconds of video, last session a bit, we had a few crashes, but I think it is a promising app. Ease of use, limited time of the free version and lack of stickers, for now 2, are useful for the classroom. My class use iMovie and Clips too, but sometimes we might not want the greater complexity of iMovie or the wacky possibilities of clips.
Unfortunately CloudConvert doesn’t work for me on the school network, I’ve tried a few apps that convert and squash video but no really found a good one for pupils to use. I would like my pupils to be able to do that, to save space on their blogs and to speed up uploading. I am not sure on the official line on posting to silos in North Lanarkshire. Social media, especially twitter, is very popular. That is staff rather than pupil posting, I’d like my pupils to be involved in the uploading of video to their e-Portfolios and the class blog without my interference.
For Glow Blogs, I’d also like the app to change the file type to mp4 or m4v as .MOV files, that are apples favourite, don’t play nicely with all browsers. We made a change to standard WordPress functionality to accept .MOV files as video, but some browsers don’t play them. Strangely, just editing the file extension, from .MOV to .m4v works, at least for Chrome. I can’t find a way to change extensions on iOS but I’ve tested on the desktop.
FWIIW Snapthread’s videos are .MP4 when exported to the camera roll, so only need squashed for my needs.
- Thanks to Martin Coutts for the pointer to CloudConvert ↩
- Snapthreads developer has a really interesting post about the development of the app: Journey to 2.0: Market Appeal | Becky Hansmeyer
There is something lovely about the light under beech trees.
I am still finding my On This Day page both interesting and useful. Checking old posts with broken images, grabbing the image from archive.org and repairing. Not every day but it is quite satisfying to do now and again.
@danielpunkass what a nice surprise, MarsEdit in Setapp and it picked up my blog from a previous beta install. Zero friction.
Rosemary Orchard (rosemaryorchard.com)I was really excited when Tim Nahumck agreed to come onto Automators to talk about Drafts! In the last year the app has increased in power so much, as well as gaining a Mac app, and now seemed like the perfect time to cover it. Today I thought I’d share a few bonus tips that were mentioned in the ...
I really enjoyed this episode of Automators. I’ve used drafts for a long time, one of my favourite iOS apps. Listening made me realise I still mostly use the older features. I need to spend some time getting up-to-date. A lot of digging to do in the shownotes.
Up to Loch Humphrey. The usual route. Bright sunny, nice breeze.The hawthorn mostly out. St Marks flies lower down. Butterflies, peacocks, whites, orange tips and small coppers. A couple more to fast to recognise. A kestrel buzzed by swallows. Oak getting leaves at last.
The 100,000 gif on Ski Pi was published yesterday. These are gifs create by one of my PIs which are automatically uploaded to tumblr every 15 minutes.
I think it might be time to repurpose that pi or switch to video or something else. The process was more fascinating that the result. I need a better view perhaps.
Aaron Davis (Read Write Collect)Dominique Schwartz reports on the water currently filling Lake Eyre. What is unique about this is that it is all just nature. Although locals fought an attempt in 1995 to introduce large-scale irrigated cotton farming on the Cooper, there has not been any other attempts. It makes me wonder about rew...
Great story Aaron, the linked webpage is beautiful too.