Quik and Splice: Edit your GoPro videos on your iPhone in a jiffy

While many see GoPro’s success as being entirely hardware based, the company itself envisions a future where both its software and hardware are the key pillars of its business. Its tiny mount-everywhere cameras are market leading, thanks to being feature-rich, easy to use and having a strong portfolio of mounts and accessories. But are the apps up to snuff?  

Quik: Video edits in minutes

The first – and most user friendly – app in GoPro’s arsenal is Quik. It’s an app that automatically builds fully edited videos in just a few minutes. The process is as simple as you could hope for and involves just selecting the photos and videos you want to appear in the movie from you library and letting the app do the rest for you. 

As long as the images and video are in your phone’s library, you can use them. So, if you want to, you can mixed up footage from your GoPro with those snapped on your phone camera. 

Once you’ve chosen the content you want, you hit next and choose from any of the themes on the bottom of the next screen. The themes include preset transitions and a backing track, as well as font styles and animations. Your videos and images are then cut in time with the music automatically. If you’re happy with it, you can save it as it is or share it to social. If not, there are a number of ways to fine-tune your finished product.

Tapping the musical note icon beneath the video preview lets you choose which backing track to use and when it comes in. Pressing the pencil icon lets you re-order the images and videos as well as add text to them. You can change the focus point to so that when images zoom in or out, they aim for the right area. By default it does a decent job, especially with faces, but sometimes it aims for completely the wrong part of the image.

The last change you can make is changing the length of the video. Quik chooses what it thinks is the best length, but you can choose to have a shorter or longer video. Once you’re done, you can save it and share it on all of your social media handles. The entire process takes just a few minutes.

Splice: Simple control

If you need more control, there’s an app called Splice, which is similar but is much more like a traditional movie editing app that allows you to choose more than one backing track, adjust transitions manually, record voice overs and add filters to any of the images or videos in the timeline. 

In the beginning, selecting images and video to go in the movie is pretty much the same as the Quik app, but after that, everything is different. The next stage is choosing music, which can be selecting from the huge library of royalty-free tracks available in the app, or choosing something from your iTunes library.

After that, the project settings screen lets you choose a name, background colour, default transition, photo and transition duration and whether you want the Ken Burns (zooming in/out movement on photos) on by default. You can also choose to have Splice’s outro switched on or off.  

Tap “done” and you have a movie waiting for you showing a basic video timeline. You can drag and drop each clip to re-order them, or tap on an individual clip to edit it. In edit mode you can choose an instagram-style filter for that clip, set the time the photo should appear or add text as well as adjust the ken burns animation. 

There’s also an audio timeline which lets you select where the tracks come in, as well as add a secondary track which can be music (again) or ambient noise. You can even record a live voiceover on to the video as it plays. Then you’re done and you can save or share the video. Despite the level of control, it’s still an incredibly simple application to use.

Even if you don’t have a GoPro, you should try out the apps if you’ve found smartphone video editing daunting in the past. With these, anyone can make a good video without needing to be a pro, and without a laptop. 

Pokemon Go the Movie planned, live-action film rights snapped up

After the unbelievable success of Pokemon Go, Legendary Entertainment has reported snagged the rights to make a live-action movie starring the cute cartoon monsters.

Although there have been plenty of feature length Pokemon films in the last 20 years, they were all fully animated, much like the anime TV series. The idea for the new movie is that it will feature Pokemon in the real world, much like the app sensation.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, details “on the plot and story of the character” are “under wraps”. However, it is known to focus on Detective Pikachu, who recently made his bow in the eponymous Japanese-only 3DS game.

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The movie site also claims that Legendary moved quickly to secure the rights after the Pokemon Go craze started because Netflix was hovering in the background. The streaming service is said to have also been “very hot on the property”.

No casting options have been released, but Danny DeVito has been cited by fans to voice over Pikachu. 50,000 people signed a petition in April to have DeVito play Pikachu in a forthcoming movie.

DeVito’s response, however, suggests it might not happen: “What the f*** is Pokemon?” he asked at the time.

Harman Kardon Go + Play review: Post-retro design, powerful audio

Can a wireless speaker already be retro? Weirdly enough, that’s what the Harman Kardon Go + Play feels like. There’s something refreshing about how out-of-step it is.

As a large wireless speaker it totally ignores the trend for every speaker larger than a matchbox to have Wi-Fi and Sonos-impersonating multi-room chops. So while such feature absences make it a wireless speaker dinosaur, it’s exactly this style that lets it pack in an 8-hour battery and sound much larger than you otherwise tend to get at the price.

Harman Kardon Go + Play review: Design

The Karman Kardon Go + Play isn’t a brand new line. Its daddy was released years ago, back when speakers used to have physical docks you’d plug your iPhone or iPod into. Those were the days, eh?

As you’ll only usually find such a dock on the bedside table of a hotel room nowadays, Harman Kardon has ripped it out of the new model. This is a Bluetooth speaker, pure and simple.

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It’s far larger than the average Bluetooth speaker, though. The Harman Kardon Go + Play is a modern boombox, with an oversized aluminium handle that’s a central part of the design. It makes this box portable even though it weighs a forearm-bulging 3.5kg.

Portability is key here (if you’re strong enough). If you don’t care about moving the Go + Play, it loses much of its appeal. The appeal is real, though.

The battery lasts for up to 8-hours, and if you want something to provide tunes for an outdoor BBQ, this will beat a Bose SoundLink in terms of bass depth and sound scale.

Harman Kardon Go + Play Wireless review: Features

Being so simple means the Harman Kardon Go + Play doesn’t have loads of extra features. There’s no NFC, no aptX and definitely no Spotify Connect, but there are a few bonus bits. A USB port on the back lets you charge a phone using the speaker’s battery, there’s a 3.5mm aux input and buttons on the top give you direct control over volume and playback, with the usual slight Bluetooth delay.

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There’s also a little 5-pip LED indicator on top that tells you how much juice is left in the battery, while dual microphones let you use it as a speaker for calls. As unlikely as that seems.

Two speakers can be hooked up wirelessly and turned into a stereo pair, but with only one to hand, we’ve not tried this first-hand.

Up close the Harman Kardon Go + Play seems almost toy-like simple compared with some wireless rivals, but it looks pretty smart from a distance. The combo of carry handle and stubby metal feet is striking, while the decision to use a fabric weave on the front rather than per-driver grilles like the alien-looking old Go + Play model is sensible – and much prettier.

The Harman Kardon Go + Play feels tough, too, even though the look is clearly desperate to look stylish. Its fabric covering isn’t the kind you’ll easily poke a hole in but a sturdy nylon weave. It’s not begging to be abused, but will take some punishment. The use of a rubbery bung to cover the ports on the back also gives it some water resistance. You’re not going to leave this thing floating in the bath, but it’ll stand being sat on soggy grass, festival goers.

Harman Kardon Go + Play Wireless review: Sound

The Harman Kardon Go + Play’s decent heft lets it pack in a very solid driver array. Pull off the front grille and you’ll see two 3.5-inch drivers, a pair of 1-inch tweeters and, in the middle, a great big circular passive radiator.

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Harman Kardon doesn’t even mention the radiator on its website, even though it’s the biggest audio change between this and its predecessors, which only had active drivers. The radiator is used to extend the Go + Play’s bass. It’s effectively a woofer that’s powered by the air movement created by the other drivers, rather than directly by an amplifier. Most small and mid-size speakers have one these days.

That extra size, and those larger drivers, push the scale of sound you get from the Harman Go + Play from that of most Bluetooth speakers closer to something like the Sonos Play:5. It’s a room-filler, and the sound isn’t too positional. The tweeters have been angled to face slightly outwards, giving close to 180-degree dispersal of the trebly sound that lets us pinpoint the location of a speaker easily.

This is a big, powerful-sounding speaker that you’d almost certainly have to pay more for if it had Wi-Fi. And even then it probably wouldn’t offer battery-powered operation.

The sound is detailed too, and bass power is very strong without, for the most part, acting as a destructive influence. This is a very good party speaker, one that makes us slightly nostalgic for the golden age of iPod docks.

There are some issues with the sound, though. The tuning of the passive radiator seems pretty basic, designed to emphasise the frequencies kick drums pump out. There’s a reasonably narrow bass spike that, while effective, makes the bass seem a little disjointed and prone to some boominess when bass drums land square in the radiator’s wheelhouse.

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The bass is also slightly “slow”; not taut, meaning its decay lags a little. This is not a speaker that suits careful, navel-gazing listening.

Tonally the Harman Kardon Go + Play is otherwise very solid aside from a minor fibrous quality to the mids that gives vocals a bit less relative weight than they have in, for example, the Cambridge Audio G5. That “relative” part is important, though, because there’s real satisfaction to a speaker whose larger size gives it greater dynamic range than a lot of the sub-£300 wireless speakers we listen to these days.

Verdict

Those with picky ears can poke holes in the Harman Kardon Go + Play, but it is one of the few new, sub-£250 wireless speakers to offer both the clout of a main lounge speaker and real portability.

Despite being woefully lacking in the supplementary tech elements many of today’s speakers offer, it’s still a solid buy that comes across as fun and vital in use. Not as some sort of tech relic.

ThinkProgress joins Medium’s growing list of publications

When Medium shifted its focus from independent writers to a more full-fledged blogging platform earlier this year, it nabbed an impressive lineup of small, but influential sites. Now Medium can boast its biggest addition yet when the liberal site ThinkProgress moves over to the platform next month.

In an email, ThinkProgress editor-in-chief Judd Legum told CNN Money that the move made sense for a site like his that boasts 6.5 to 9 million unique visitors per month and a staff of 37, but still operates without the product team that larger publications use to build out their own backend systems. “So we had to divert editorial resources to think about the technology and what new tools and features we needed,” Legum wrote. “Now we can let Medium develop the technical product and we can focus on writing stories.”

When it launched in 2012, Twitter co-founder and Medium CEO Evan Williams explained his new project as a mix of a blogging platform and social network. Facing increasing pressure from Facebook’s constantly shifting News Feed algorithm, Legum sees Medium as a way to get in front of more traffic, while preparing the site for future. “Publishers want traffic on their websites and Facebook wants traffic and engagement on Facebook,” Legum said. “On Medium, our interests are aligned.”

The platform also snatched up Bill Simmons’ Grantland replacement The Ringer earlier this year, with Simmons citing similar reasons. While that site is starting fresh in terms of audience numbers, it’s still indicative of a larger trend that allows publications to focus their budgets in the newsroom rather than their backend tech.

Hubble study finds two potentially habitable exoplanets

Scientists from MIT and the University of Liège studying a planetary system orbiting the star TRAPPIST–1 have discovered two rocky, Earth-like and potentially habitable planets only 40 light years away from home. According to a paper published in Nature today, the atmospheres on planets TRAPPIST–1b and TRAPPIST–1c are likely to be dense and compact like the atmospheres of Earth, Venus and Mars.

The research team, led by MIT postdoc Julien de Wit made the discovery by pointing the Hubble Space Telescope in TRAPPIST–1’s direction just in time to catch a rare double transit – when both planets were passing in front of the star. Using Hubble’s spectrograph, the team was able to observe variations in the light passing around the planets. Because the wavelengths didn’t vary much, de Wit’s team could conclude that the planets’ atmospheres were not “light, large and puffy” like the ones found around Jupiter and other Jovian gas giants.

“Now we can say that these planets are rocky,” de Wit told MIT News. Now the question is, what kind of atmosphere do they have? The plausible scenarios include something like Venus, with high, thick clouds and an atmosphere dominated by carbon dioxide, or an Earth-like atmosphere dominated by nitrogen and oxygen, or even something like Mars with a depleted atmosphere. The next step is to try to disentangle all these possible scenarios that exist for these terrestrial planets.”

Even if one of these planets is habitable, life as we know it on Earth would be extremely difficult in the system because the two planets orbit much closer to their star, an ultracool dwarf that gives off less heat than the sun, but emits more radiation in the infrared spectrum. While the planets orbit TRAPPIST-1 in 1.5 and 2.4 days respectively, they are also locked into their rotations — meaning they have a fixed day and night side. On the other hand, NASA scientists believe planet c is within the star’s habitable zone, where temperatures are right for liquid water to pool.

Sky Q update makes binge-watching that little bit easier

In the UK, Sky Q offers a bunch of improvements over the old Sky+ platform: a better interface, a fancy new remote and support for 4K content. It’s also an acknowledgement of the role streaming now plays in the TV landscape, putting on-demand episodes and box sets at the centre of the experience. Today, Sky is adding some basic but welcome features for binge-watchers, including the option to auto-play the next episode in a season. (Much like Netflix and Amazon do already.) The new software update also adds an auto-download option, meaning the next episode will start downloading while you watch the preceding chapter in the season.

If you’re the type that spends more time browsing than watching, a new “Top Picks” section could be of interest. It houses a bunch of TV and movie recommendations, including those being shown live, on-demand and in the near future. Other additions include a “Series Record” option on the Mini Guide, making it simpler to download a complete season. There’s also a redesigned Sports homepage and a parent-friendly pin-lock option for adult video clips. Finally, if you press pause with the remote, you can now swipe or swipe-and-hold to scrub through with pinpoint precision.

Source: Sky

Samsung fixes Galaxy S7 Active’s waterproofing problem

Earlier this month, Consumer Reports found that two units of the Galaxy S7 Active failed a water immersion test that was within the limits of the phones’ IP68 rating. Samsung issued a statement, saying that it will replace any S7 Active that suffers water damage.

In an additional statement to Consumer Reports, Samsung said that it found a manufacturing problem in the production line that has since been corrected.

From Consumer Reports:

Samsung says it has fixed a manufacturing problem that caused some Galaxy S7 Active phones to fail in underwater conditions the phone was designed to withstand. The company says it launched an investigation after two phones failed a Consumer Reports dunk test, and that the manufacturing problems were corrected approximately one week after our results were published on July 8.

Samsung would not reveal the total number of Galaxy S7 Active phones sold since the model was introduced in mid-June, or how many had been returned with water damage. However, Phil Berne, a public relations manager for the company, said “compared to the total number of devices sold, it was tiny.”

According to Berne, all Galaxy S7 Active phones are manufactured in the same facility in Asia. “We found a problem in the production line that we were able to correct,” he said. He declined to provide details. Phones now being shipped should be problem-free, according to Berne. However, to his knowledge, Galaxy S7 Active devices already in stores were not being removed from inventory.

Consumers whose Galaxy S7 Active phones sustain water damage can return them to the retailer where they were purchased, or directly to Samsung, for a replacement.

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NASA tests composite material for lightweight rockets

NASA has subjected an 8.4-foot-tall barrel made of composite materials to a series of abuse for the sake of building lighter and stronger rockets. The agency put it under extreme loads of almost 900,000 pounds to determine just how tough the material is. In order to get detailed data of the seven tests they performed, the scientists outfitted it with thousands of sensors and had high-speed and low-speed cameras monitor the whole process. Thanks to those cameras, you can see the barrel suddenly snapping under all that weight in the video after the break.

Dr. Marc Schultz, NASA Langley research engineer, said the “failure still caught [them] off guard” even though they were expecting it. “The loud bang first startled us and then we saw the crack all the way around the barrel that formed almost instantaneously from the buckling event,” he added. This is only the first in a series of large-scale tests for NASA’s composite material. The researchers plan to apply what they learned from this round to the next four rounds planned over the next four years.

NASA’s primary goal is to determine a composite material and structural design that can be used to make rockets lighter and tougher than their metallic counterparts. Those will allow the agency to send off missions with more payload than current ones can carry. Since those rockets will give NASA a way to pack more food, water and other supplies, they could make manned flights to Mars and other deep space destinations a reality.

Source: NASA