Review of iMovie for iPhone4

Hello fellow video enthusiasts,

A few years ago Nokia introduced very quietly an application called Muvee. This very nice application allowed the users of an N93 or N95 to create movies wholly within their phones.

The application allowed to put Music, transitions, texts, captions, credits, pictures, etc. It was really great except for two small problems:

1. It was really slow due mostly to slow CPUs. A movie of more than 15 minutes long will bring the phone literally to its knees.
2. It was very easy to crash the application, which really annoyed me because you would lose all the work you've done :(

Still, for very short clips (less than say 5 minutes) it was "doable" specially if the source videos were all shot at low resolution QVGA or less. And it showed that a full blown Video Editor was possible in a mobile computer (er, phone).

Nokia decided to drop the Video Editing functions even from the N95 as newer versions of Firmware did away with the Muvee application. So now most users don't even know that this marvel was possible in Nokia.

The N8 is rumored to include the Video Editing function. Until I can get my hands on one I'll hold judgement.

For now if you want to try Video Editing your best option seem to be to get an iPhone 4 and purchase (yes purchase as it's not included) the iMovie from the App Store.

Our friends from The Register have reviewed this little app. So head over there and read up.

Minor changes and polls re-opened

I've been thinking what could be the next big thing to do with this blog, but still not so sure.

I want to get some ideas from the readers. I know most people go tot he DIVX N97 post and then bail out but hopefully some will see this post and comment.

I also re-opened some of the previous polls so feel free to cast your vote. It's always interesting to see how people from all over the world think.


Cheerio!

N8, iPhone 4 and 720p

Hello all,

Time does fly!, it's been quite a while since I've posted anything to the blog.

Still there are quite a few visitors so it's all good!. Really, it's nice to see that a lot of people have found something useful in my posts. Cheers!

Today I want to write about something that has been on my mind since TV-out became a feature in the N95. Can/will a phone replace some of the video equipment at home?

With the N92 this became even more of a question as the N92 has DBV-h and TV-out. Once I was in Finland using the N92 and watching TV on an N92 connected to a TV monitor. The experience wasn't "great", but it showed the potential (the images were QVGA at 15 fps). 

When the N96 came out, I re-did the N92 experiment, using a TV an N96 and watching DVB-h at 25 fps. On a  26" screen this wasn't bad at all. When using VGA videos at 29.97 fps with the TV out it started to get really close to watching a DVD*

I also tried several ways of using uPNP with the Playstation 3 or a PC and the N96. It worked Ok for pictures and music but was really poor for  videos.  At the end what I settled in doing is using the USB cable and hooking up the N96 (now N97) to the PS3 and then use the PS3 to playback the videos/music/pictures stored in my phone.


All other Nokia products haven't improved on this since the N96. And there aren't any newer DVB-h products that I've tested.


But now the new jump in video features is at hand.
Enter the N8 and the iPhone 4.

Why do I say there's a big jump?, well because both of these phones will allow you to both take and reproduce 720p video. The N8 will even allow you to hook up using HDMI so that you can enjoy the 720p videos on your tv, AND most crucially, supports AC3 (dolby 5.1 for you).


Now either of these phones could, in theory, start replacing some of my video gear without having to give up on video quality! YEAH!

PVR (or TiVO if you live on the other side of the pond)
SLINGBOX
DVD player (for sure)
Bluray (ok, maybe not yet but it's close enough quality)


The N8 is also rumored (or is it fact already) to support 801 /N speed for WiFi which would enable it to stream at least 480p video with little buffering.


The iPhone may get some TV out or HDMI out using the iPod port.


So what do you think?, will the phone start replacing your other video sources?, has it replaced then already?, or am I really not getting it?
 


* Using Composite video and not upscaling the DVD

N900 does DIVX and XVID (AVI)

Hi,

It's been a while since I got down to write something.

I've taken a break from doing video since now most of the stuff I watch can be viewed using a web browser. No need to down.load, transcode, upload, etc. I just need a hotspot and my laptop or device and I can watch movies, tv shows, you name it. Also the quality of some of the videos posted has increased greatly. I was watching an old TV series, I have all 170 (or so) episodes in a hard drive but I found a place where I can watch them all streaming, so now I don't copy them or carry them, I just connect and watch.

Now if only the battery life would be 10-15 hours of video streaming or something like that, I would be really happy indeed.

Anyways, I got a chance to play around with an N900, many good things about the device, but after using S60 and the iPhone, the N900 was a bit weird to use, specially the phone. But there are some good news.

The N900 comes with very good AVI support right out of the box!

AVI streaming (like from Megavideo) doesn't work well with the N900 (it's painfully slow), but local playback is superb. I managed to play very good quality (over VGA) videos with no apparent slowdown.

The video controls are extremely limited and touchy, and the screen aspect ratio is not the best to watch video but overall a step in the right direction.

I didn't get to play enough with the N900 to really put it through it's paces regarding video, I did find some problems playing H264 videos converted for the N96 format, and I didn't check if it supported Main Profile, if I have another go I'll try to verify this.

One good thing is that people are developing new stuff for the N900 all the time so you don't have to rely on official releases to fix or expand functionality, just keep checking the Maemo repository or other Maemo sources.

The Ovi Store gets 'tabs'...

The Ovi Store gets 'tabs'...

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