May 2009 - Page 2 of 3 - Terry White's Tech Blog

May 20, 2009May 19, 2009

Which video sharing site is best?

A couple of weeks ago I started the discussion about which site(s) are best to do photo sharing and you guys responded loud and clear with your favorites and why they were your favorites, but in the end it was as I suspected that no single site had it all. The two favorites among you guys were Smugmug and Flickr. Well now it’s time to ask the same question, but this time about video sharing sites and I imagine that the answer is going to be the same. What’s “best” will greatly depend on what you’re looking for.

–

What you might want in a video sharing site

I’m finding that I’m really enjoying shooting small clips and sharing them on the web with friends, family and colleagues. I used to cringe looking at YouTube clips because the quality was just so bad. I imagine that back when YouTube first started, they were encoding the video using lower quality settings to keep the file sizes down and therefore the bandwidth costs down. However, now that YouTube isn’t the only game in town, they’ve had to step up their game to stay competitive. I asked on Twitter which sites were people using and why and the four sites that kept coming up over and over again were YouTube, Vimeo, Smugmug and Blip.TV. So I decided to give them all a spin.

Here are some things you might want to consider when picking a video sharing site:

Quality of the video playback
Allowable length of the video
Ability to make a video private or secure with a password
Embeddable player
Customizable Player
Advertising
Time it takes the video to start playback
Tools and ease of use for uploading the video
HD support
Full Screen Options
Ability to turn off embedding for others
How easy can your video be found by others
Upload video from your cellphone directly
Ability to turn on/off video downloading by others
Playable on an iPhone or iPod touch

In my testing I found that each of the sites had many of these options, but no one had it all. I tested all 4 sites by uploading the same HD video to them (my Wacom Intuos 4 video review). Then I embedded the video from each site onto the same page so that we could see a side-by-side comparison. Check out that page here and see for yourself. Also check the page on your iPhone/iPod touch.

–

YouTube

www.youtube.com

Pros: very easy to get started. It’s free. Probably the largest of all the sites and therefore the most likely site to have your video found on. Support for embedding HD video at no additional cost. Videos can be played back on an iPhone or iPod touch even if they are embedded on your webpage using the Flash player.

Cons: Not as many options to make your video private. Videos are limited to 10 minutes/1GB each.

Final thoughts: For most of the videos I’ll be putting up I’m likely to use YouTube. Although they don’t have as many player options or privacy options as the other sites, YouTube seems to offer the best balance of features and playback options.

–

Vimeo

www.vimeo.com

Pros: Excellent video quality. Free to use the basic features. Great stats on your video plays. HD Support. You can password protect your video or simply mark it that only Contacts or people that you choose can watch it. You can turn on/off the ability for others to download the source video. You can also turn on/off commenting.

Cons: HD video requires that either upgrade to Vimeo Plus or your viewer will have to see it on the Vimeo website. Doesn’t playback on an iPhone/iPod touch. The free service is limited to 1 HD video/500MBs per week.

Final thoughts: I like the features of Vimeo, although I’m not as crazy about their player. They definitely have the nicest stats page. It’s a little thing, but I also love the fact that you can replace the video with a corrected one without losing your stats and comments. I’ve run into this on YouTube at least a couple of times where there was a minor change to the video and I could only delete the one that was posted and upload a new one. Vimeo Plus is $59.95/year and allows 5GB of uploads per week, unlimited number of HD videos, ability to Embed your HD videos, higher quality video, priority uploading, player custimization, advanced privacy options, and no banner ads.

–

SmugMug

www.smugmug.com

Pros: Probably the BEST video quality. Support of HD video up to 1080p.

Cons: No free options. In order to upload HD video you have to pay for the Pro service at $149.95/year. Even if you pay, you’re still limited to 10 minutes per movie. If you embed a higher quality video on your page, the playback could take several seconds before it starts. Limited embedding/player options.

Final thoughts: SmugMug would be the site I’d use if I were mostly concerned by the quality of the video. In other words If I were trying to impress you with gorgeous HD video, this is the site I’d use. This would be keeping in mind that the video is not playable on an iPhone/iPod touch and that highest quality settings may mean a delay before the video starts.

–

Blip.TV

www.blip.tv

Pros: the most options for customizing the player! You can allow for advertising or not and if you do, they will pay you for it! Web, Mobile, FTP and Desktop Client for uploading.

Cons: Although there was an option to make the video iPhone/iPod touch compatible, it didn’t work in my testing. Have to upgrade to a Pro account ($8/month) to make your videos private.

Final thoughts: Blip.TV is awesome when you want to customize the look and feel of your player/video. Also it’s the only one that I’ve seen that is willing to share the revenue from the OPTIONAL advertising generated by your video.

–

The Bottom Line

I’m finding myself producing fewer and fewer DVDs as a means of sharing video with friends and family. Sure there are some older members of my family that aren’t online and never will be, but that is a very small percentage of folks I know and share with. Shorter clips shared over the internet for free is the key. You can’t really go wrong with any of these sites and like I figured going into this, there is no one site that is significantly better than all the rest. Each one has something to offer depending upon your needs. For example, YouTube is great for the video reviews I do on my blog. However, if I wanted to post a family video and keep it kinda private, then I’d use Vimeo. If I were trying to put video on my website and match the look and feel perfectly, then I’d lean towards Blip.TV. Lastly if I were trying to impress a client with the highest quality HD video the first site that would come to my mind would be SmugMug.

There you have it!

May 19, 2009May 19, 2009

When I don’t have a photographic assistant

tiffany1

There are times like the shot above, where the sun is cooperating and I can get beautiful light coming in the window. However, there are those other times when the light is too harsh and needs to be diffused. I LOVE natural light!

Ask any photographer who has ever worked with an assistant on set and they will tell you that it’s absolutely fantastic to have some one to hold that reflector or move that light or change that setting. However, most times I’m flying solo when I’m in the studio. Although I get lots of offers from friends that want to volunteer to help me out, I just usually work alone. So the more equipment and gadgets that I can get to help me out the better.
One of my frustrations when shooting natural light coming through the windows is that sometimes I need to diffuse the light. This is where an assistant would come in to hold the diffuser at just the right angle. You won’t believe some of the ways that I’ve propped up diffusers in the past.
–

Lastolite to the rescue, again!

triflip

The first item in my bag of tricks is the Lastolite Mini TriFlip 8-in-1 Collapsible Reflector kit. This one does it all. It’s a reflector or a two stop diffuser. If you use it as a reflector you have a choice of white, silver sunfire, sunlite, or gold. You can also use it as a flag because you get black as well. Like I said, having an assistant to hold this up when needed is great, but when you’re flying solo then you’re going to want the next item.
–
The TriGrip Bracket

trigrip1

This handy gadget is an adjustable arm that holds your TriFlip Reflector at just about any angle you want by simply putting it on a light stand and adjusting it the way you want. It gets better, not only can it hold your TriFlip/TriGrip reflector/diffuser/flag, but it can also hold your speedlight. This is great for when you want to shoot through the diffuser to diffuse the light. Now you can do it all from just one light stand and you can keep your hands free to actually take the shot.

The Bottom Line

If you have an assistant GREAT! Then you’ve got someone to hold stuff up for you. However, if you work alone sometimes or if your assistant can’t be in two places at once holding stuff up, then you’ll definitely want to check out both the TriFlip and TriGrip Bracket from Lastolite. I highly recommend them both. The Lastolite TriFlip kit goes for $75.95 at B&H Photo. The Lastolite TriGrip Bracket (not yet on B&H’s site – hint hint) goes for $117.90 here.

May 18, 2009May 18, 2009

Scott Kelby’s 2nd Annual Worldwide Photowalk

featurephoto

My buddy Scott Kelby just announced his 2nd Annual Worldwide Photowalk to take place Saturday, July 18th 2009. This is a worldwide event with photographers gathering in their local area and taking photos to all be submitted for the big contest or doing it just for fun. I lead the Detroit walk last year and not only did we have a blast, but one of our photographer’s (Jim Howe) photos was a finalist in the contest. I’ll be leading the Detroit walk again this year and as of 9AM this morning it was already half full. So if you even think that you want to participate, you better head over to the site and save your spot no matter what city your in!

Check out our group from last year:

May 18, 2009May 17, 2009

My new online class is up!

kelby-idclass

At Photoshop World Boston, I had quite a few people come up to me and ask me if I was coming out with any new classes/videos for CS4. My answer was yes, stay tuned! Well I’m pleased to announce that my New “Adobe InDesign and Photoshop CS4 Integration” class is now available via KelbyTraining.com.

–

What is KelbyTraining.com

I’m honored to have my classes available via Kelby Training. I’m in awesome company with some of the best instructors in the world! Kelby Training Online is a one stop shop for all your graphics training needs. They have both monthly and yearly all you can eat plans that start at $19.99/month ($17/month if you’re a NAPP member). You can pay one price and watch as many classes as you want, by as many instructors as you want 24 hours a day.

kelbyclassprices

Hey! Was this post just a shameless plug for your new class? …… yep! 🙂

May 15, 2009May 15, 2009

iPhone App of the Week – SlingPlayer Mobile

slingplayericon

This is a bitter sweet kinda review. So let me get to it. When the iPhone 2.0 update came out last year and the iPhone was open to 3rd party app development, one of the main apps on my wishlist way back then was a SlingPlayer Mobile app. After all Sling Media had produced mobile versions of their player for other mobile platforms and the iPhone seemed like a natural for this kind of app. So I waited. Then I thought my dream might actually come true. I actually got to play with an early Alpha fo the SlingPlayer Mobile app back in January at Macworld Expo in San Francisco. The app was beautiful with a nice translucent display for onscreen buttons. I started getting really excited until I heard those words. They said, “well we’re just about ready to begin the submission process to Apple.” That’s when it dawned upon me that even though this app was being developed, that doesn’t mean that it will actually make its way into the hands of users. Unlike most other mobile device platforms, Apple has to approve every app submitted for the App Store. So there’s always a chance that the app could be rejected. Back in late March, the news broke that SlingPlayer Mobile app had been submitted to the App Store for approval. The approval process takes about a week on average. When two weeks went by, I knew that there was trouble in paradise. Something was wrong. Another week went by and I had pretty much assumed that this thing would never see the light of day. I had a suspicion that the problem was not with Apple, but with AT&T. AT&T has recently been reemphasizing their polices on streaming data and bandwidth to wireless devices. The SlingPlayer certainly would violate this policy. Even though they later came back and said that the update was released in error, the writing was on the wall. So it was no surprise to me that when the SlingPlayer Mobile App finally got released this week that the ability to stream video over 3G networks was removed.

–

It’s finally here! SlingPlayer Mobile for iPhone

sling1

–

What’s a SlingBox and SlingPlayer?

To save time, if you have no idea what a SlingPlayer is and why you’d want one, go read my review of the Slingbox Pro here. Go ahead and read it now. We’ll wait…..

–

How well does the SlingPlayer Mobile App for iPhone work?

sling-dvrcontrols

Now that we’ve gotten past all of the politics (well not quite, but let’s put that on hold for a sec) and what a Slingbox/Player is, let me concentrate on the app itself. The idea of the SlingPlayer and SlingPlayer Mobile app is that you can watch your TV (DVR, DVD player, Apple TV, basically any video source you have connected to the Slingbox) on the go. I LOVE the ability to watch recorded shows from my DVR anywhere I happen to be as long as I have my laptop and internet connection. The SlingPlayer Mobile app promises to give you that same capability on your iPhone or iPod touch. It’s great to have this ability when you find yourself with some down time or sitting in a waiting room somewhere. Plug in your headphones, fire up the SlingPlayer Mobile App and using the on screen remote control interface you can change channels, switch sources and watch recorded shows from your DVR.

sling-favs

My DVR of choice is the TiVo HD. I have Comcast cable and I do have one Comcast (Motorola) DVR. This is the DVR that I have my SlingBox Pro connected to. Why not connect it to one of the TiVo HDs? There’s a reason that I have it connected to the Comcast box instead of my favorite DVRs. When you use a SlingPlayer to watch your TV/DVR remotely, you are physically controlling that DVR in real-time. So whatever you do will be seen by the people in your home if that TV happens to be on. So as to not disrupt the TV viewing for the rest of my family, I put the SlingBox Pro on the DVR that no one likes to use. Yep, that’d be the Comcast box in my office. This way I can have it to myself when I’m on the road.

I downloaded the SlingPlayer Mobile app the minute it became available (something like 1AM my time). I wanted to see how well it worked and of course tell you about it as well. The app works great! I haven’t had a single issue yet. When I first fired it up, it requested that I log into to my Sling account online. I hadn’t actually set up an online account yet, but I did right there on the spot. Took just a couple of seconds to get going.

Once I had my account setup the app/site found my Slingbox and I was watching live TV! Wow! It works! I don’t really have much interest in watching live TV, so of course the next thing I wanted to see was my DVR. The integration was right on the money. I pressed the onscreen DVR button and it sent the proper commands to my DVR to bring up the list of recorded shows. I was able to easily navigate to a show and start playing it. Again, it just worked as advertised. Although I don’t really use the SlingPlayer to watch live TV, I wanted to test these features too. So I setup my “Favorites” buttons so that I could switch to any of my favorite channels with the press of a button. It worked fine.

–

What could be better?

sling16-9

sling4-3 — This is 4:3 content while the player is set to the widescreen mode. If it's set to the 4:3 mode, the content will fill the screen top to bottom.

The one thing I noticed is that I can’t ever seem to get the video to fill the screen. If I watch 4×3 content I can set it to letterbox it. However, if I watch 16:9 widescreen content, there doesn’t seem to be a way to zoom in on it (even if I’m willing to crop some off) to see it fill the screen from edge to edge. Apple allows this in the iPod app. I would like to see this in the SlingPlayer app as well. Although the remote functions well, there will be a few second delay from the time you press a button until the results are displayed. You have to remember that it’s sending these commands over the internet and then via IR to your device. So give it a sec.

Bonus Tip: Since you have control of your DVR via this app, there’s nothing stopping you from using this as a remote control to schedule recordings too.

sling-controls

I can’t ignore the elephant in the room. As great as this app is, the single biggest frustration is that it only works over a Wi-Fi connection. If you’re an iPod touch user, you’re used to this. So it’s probably no big deal. However, if you’re an iPhone user, it may be a deal breaker. It means that you’ll only be able to stream content from your TV source or DVR when you’re connected to Wi-Fi and not over the 3G network. Argggggh! So close, but so far.

–

The Bottom Line

Here’s the thing with this app, it works as advertised. However, I can’t ignore the biggest problem and that is it’s been crippled by AT&T restrictions and doesn’t not allowed to work over a 3G cellular network. It only works over a Wi-Fi connection. While it’s easy to blame AT&T for this restriction, there is one thing that Sling Media could have done to soften the blow and that is lower the price! I don’t have a problem paying $29.99 for a SlingPlayer Mobile app (heck I just did). However, I do have a problem paying the SAME price as every other version of the SlingPlayer Mobile app (for BlackBerry, Palm, Windows Mobile, Symbian, etc.) and not being able to watch over the SAME 3G network as all the other players do. Think about it! If I go buy a BlackBerry from AT&T, I can buy the SlingPlayer Mobile App for BlackBerry and watch TV over AT&T’s 3G network. Granted, it’s probably in violation of the small print in the agreement I would sign, but there would be nothing stopping me from doing it technically. If caught, AT&T would be within their right to suspend my account. I’m not advocating breaking the rules. I’m just using this as an example.

sling-wifi

This is not the first app crippled by AT&T. Remember, it wasn’t long ago that Skype shipped their iPhone app and like the SlingPlayer for iPhone, it only works over Wi-Fi.

Bandwidth abuse or overuse is a legitimate concern especially when you know that your network can’t handle the hit. If you’ve been to the last two Macworld Expos you’ve witnessed AT&T’s data network brought to its knees by the sheer volume of iPhone users simply checking email and surfing the web. Each year after the Apple keynote you could forget about using your iPhone to do anything data related on AT&T’s network. Nothing but gridlock. Streaming video/audio takes way more bandwidth than email and web surfing. AT&T is concerned that thousands or hundreds of thousands of SlingPlayer users suddenly streaming video for hours on end would be a significant impact to all their users. They’re probably right!

I have read many of the angry comments in protest of this and people are saying that they refuse to buy the app without 3G support. Frankly, I don’t blame them. Yes, I know that software development costs money. Remember, I work for a software developer? I know that Sling’s hands were tied over the whole 3G issue, but they are the ones that set the price. Why should we be asked to pay the same price for our app that doesn’t have the same functionality of the same apps on every other mobile platform that this app is available for? So there I’ve said what many of you have been wanting to hear. I agree with you!

Apparently AT&T released a statement explaining their stance. Let’s hope that this rumor is not true that they purposely crippled this app as it was competition for an U-verse app that they are going to release.

The SlingPlayer Mobile app (Wi-Fi) is available for the iPhone and iPod touch for $29.99 from the App Store. I don’t think I need to say it, but just in case: you will also need a Slingbox connected to at least one video/audio source in order to take advantage of the app. Need a Slingbox? The Slingbox Pro HD is here for $234.80 (List Price $299).

Sling Media has done a very good job coding this app. If they lowered the price OR if AT&T would allow it to work over 3G it would be a must have for every Slingbox user out there.

May 14, 2009May 13, 2009

You should take advantage of Acrobat.com!

acrobatcom

It seems like I’m showing someone each week about the virtues and benefits of the FREE services at Acrobat.com. I’ve talked about Connect Now many times on this very blog. I’ve done podcasts about it too. Yet, the general public still seems to be unaware of the benefits that await them if they simply point their browsers at acrobat.com.

–

What is Acrobat.com?

Well the first thing you probably already figured out is that acrobat.com is a website. What this website gives you is access to some very useful hosted services by Adobe. Probably the most valuable one is Connect Now for doing your own online meetings using technology that is very similar to that I’ve used in my “Evening with Terry White” sessions. You don’t get to have a lot of people in your meeting and you can’t record it like you can with Connect Pro, but you do get most of the other key benefits.

Another cool service is Buzzword. I’m using it more and more to collaborate with colleagues. Think of Buzzword as an online collaborative word processor. You can start a Buzzword document and invite others to come in and edit it or add to it. You can export the final document as a Word compatible file or print/PDF it.

Acrobat.com also allows you to create PDFs online and share them. Speaking of Sharing files, there is a File Sharing component too. If you have a file that is too large to email, you can simply upload it to Acrobat.com and send someone the link to download it.

Acrobat.com is cross platform and therefore works seamlessly with Macs and Windows PCs.

Again, this is all FREE to do. As a matter of fact, its probably easier if you see it in action, so take a look at this video I recorded for my Creative Suite Podcast:

[flv:http://media.libsyn.com/media/cspodcast/podcast-AC-acrobat.com.mp4 625 353]

May 12, 2009May 11, 2009

Wacom Intuos 4 Video Review

It seems like it was only yesterday when Wacom introduced the Intuos 4 line of professional pen tablets at Photoshop World Boston. I did a first look on that day and promised to follow up with a more detailed review. Sometimes I’m finding that it’s just easier to show you rather than write paragraphs of text. So here’s another one of my video reviews showing some of the most important and my favorite features of the new Intuos 4:

–

The Bottom Line

The more I use the Intuos 4 tablets the more I just love them! If you spend ANY time in Photoshop or Illustrator, these tablets are a MUST HAVE! Both Photoshop and Illustrator’s tool sets take advantage of the pressure sensitivity of the Wacom tablets. I still love my Cintiq, but when I have to travel with a tablet or just want to use one around the house, I reach for either my Intuos 4 Medium or Small tablets. The Intuos 4 Small stays in my laptop bag and goes everywhere I go.

Intuos Small $199.99 (List Price $229)

Intuos Medium $335.98 (List Price $369)

May 11, 2009May 10, 2009

Good quality memory card that doesn’t break the bank

I’ve really been getting into using my Canon VIXIA HF10 HD camcorder more and more lately. I only had one SDHC card which was 8GB in capacity. I wanted to be able to at least record up to two hours on one card at the highest quality setting. So that meant upgrading to a 16GB card. I usually buy name brand memory cards for my digital photography work. My usual brand of choice is SanDisk. I use other name brands too, but the SanDisk cards have all served me well with no failures to date.

hf10

I was pricing the Class 6 (the speed I wanted for HD video work) SanDisk cards when I realized that the 8GB card I had been using all along was NOT a name brand card. That got me thinking, do I really need to spend the extra $$ on a memory card to get quality? Usually I don’t chance it. However, the proof was in my hand that I might be able to break tradition this time. So I did a little comparison shopping and opted to get a Transcend 16GB SDHC Class 6 card. It was literally half the price of the SanDisk card! It was also getting decent reviews on Amazon.com (a site where people can be brutally honest and not hold anything back when writing reviews). So I took a chance!

The results so far

It’s still early in this game. I’ve only been using the new Transcend cards for about 2 weeks now. However, they’ve performed perfectly. Again, it’s early and ANY card can die at any time. However, that’s the point! Any card can die at any time! So if you have a decent not so known brand that works and is compatible and seems to have a low failure rate as far as the reviews go, why not save the money? I did just that! I bought TWO of the 16GB SDHC class 6 cards for the price of ONE SanDisk card. So far so good! If the card ever dies I will report back here.

Once I record my video footage, I simply pop the memory card out of the Canon HF10 and pop it into my SanDisk 12-in-1 card reader on my Mac Pro. From there I fire up Premiere Pro CS4 and edit right off the card in the native AVCHD format. I will never go back to tape again! This workflow totally rocks! See it in action here:

[flv:http://media.libsyn.com/media/cspodcast/podcast-PR-AVCHD.mp4 625 353]

Here’s what I can record at with a 16GB SDHC card on the VIXIA HF10:

17FPs FXP (highest quality setting) 2 hours 6 minutes

12FPs XP+ 2 hours 53 minutes

7FPs SP 4 hours 48 minutes

5FPs LP 6 hours 8 minutes

Check out all of my latest gear recommendations here.

May 8, 2009May 8, 2009

iPhone App of the Week – Flixster Movies

movieslogo

As we enter the official summer blockbuster movie season I’m relying more and more on the apps on my iPhone to give the latest and greatest movie info and showtimes. I’ve choosen “Movies” by Flixter as my iPhone App of the Week this week because it seems to the closest app to offering all the things I want. You would think it wouldn’t be that hard to come up with a movie showtimes app, but I’ve got 3-4 of them on my iPhone at any given time. That’s because each one offers something that the others don’t offer or each one has a better user interface in one area or another.

–

Here’s what I want…

show times – this is the main reason for the app! So I want to launch it and get to the showtimes for the movie I want to see as quickly as possible. I hate it when an app makes you click through an ad to get to this info. I’d rather just pay for the app then to have to deal with ads that get in the way of functionality. Also only list times that haven’t happened yet for that day. Don’t show movie times that have past.
ratings/rankings – I need know what the movie is rated (G, PG, PG-13, R, etc.). It’s also nice to see how it’s rated/ranked by those who have seen it already.
Location based – of course the app needs to take advantage of Location Services. If I’m traveling, I want to know about the movies playing around me.
Favorite theater – when I’m not traveling, I go to the same theater about 99.9% of the time. So I really just need to know quickly what time is the movie that I want to see playing at my Favorite/Default theater.
Trailers – Movie trailers are nice if they are fast. Half the time I get bored waiting for the trailer to load. Chances are I’ve already decided on the movie I want to see anyway. So trailers are cool, but not a deal breaker.
Little to no Ads – Like I said above, given a choice of ads or pay for the app, I’d opt to pay for the app not to have to see the ads. I know that free apps are often subsidized by the advertising in them, but unless the ad is a banner ad that doesn’t get in the way of how the app works, I’d just rather not have them period. Whatever you do don’t make me have to watch a full screen ad before I can get to the info that the app provides. That really grinds me the wrong way!
Map to theater/directions – If I’m on the road, having a link directly to built-in Maps app is key. This way I can not only see the closest theater, but also see how to get there from where I’m at.
Buy tickets – oddly enough there’s only one app (Fandang0) that supports buying tickets at my closest/favorite theater. The other apps allow for ticket purchases, just not at my theater. Buying tickets via the app is nice, but what would really make me use this feature a lot more is if there was a way to buy the tickets online via the app and either print them or email them to my computer for printing. I would love to print the movie tickets before leaving the house and just go straight to the ticket taker person.
Add movies to my Netflix queue – Usually when I’m sitting there before the movie starts I’m watching the trailers for other movies that are coming out. Many times I’ll see a movie that I’d like to see, but know that I won’t see it in the theaters. So I like to add it to my Netfilx Queue right then and there while I’m thinking about it.

–

Bonus Features/Nice to haves – these are not deal breakers, but nice to have features:
email show times to friends – if you’re going to the movies with friends, it would be nice to either email or SMS the movie times so that you can all pick a time and meet up at the theater. If you’re going to have this feature, I guess you’ll also need the ability to email the map/directions to the theater too.
See upcoming movie/DVD releases – It’s nice to be able to see what movies are coming to the theaters or DVD/Blu-ray on which dates/weeks.
Facebook, Twitter integration – usually after I see a movie, I want to either tell people how great it was or how much it sucked! So having the ability to rate the movie and instantly post that rating on Twitter and/or Facebook is a plus.
Concession Stand Ordering – How cool would it be to also place your food order (fill out the mortgage app first) before getting to the theater so that you can just pick it up when you arrive and walk straight in with your printed tickets too.

So out of all the things I want above, Movies comes the closest and seems to be the one I tap on first most times. I just fired it up to see how quickly I could get to the show times for Star Trek at my favorite theater. The first thing it hit me with was the option to play the trailer:

moves1

When I hit “Skip” it took me to the Box Office Screen to show the list of movies Opening this Week. Star Trek was at the top of the list. Cool, but I already know the movie I want (Star Trek) and I know which theater I want to see it at.

moves2

So I taped the Theaters button and my favorite theater is at the top of the list (good!)

moves3

I tapped my favorite theater and then it showed the list of showtimes and I scrolled down until I found Star Trek.

moves4

Mission Accomplished! However, call me silly, but shouldn’t I be able to set a default that just takes me right to this screen every time I launch the app? I mean after all, I’m usually going to the same theater when I do go to the movies. I usually know what I want to see and I’m really just launching the app to see what times the movie is playing? That’s how this app could be better! That’s how all of the movie apps could be better. Let me set my landing page and let me get there with one tap! Before these apps were available I used to use a Web Clip to the mobile Fandango site for my theater and son of a gun, it launched Safari and took me right to the page for my theater listing the current times. I want the native apps to do the same thing. Then if I want to do more like see trailers, see other theaters, see other movies, etc. I can choose to do those things. Just for kicks I recreated my Web Clip for my favorite theater and timed how long it would take to get me right to the times for Star Trek. It was on screen in about 7 seconds. I had to tap one more button to get to the next page where the Star Trek movie was listed. Otherwise it would have been more like 5 seconds.

–

The Bottom Line

Like I said, Movies is probably the app I use the most. But it’s not the only App I use because there are other apps on my iPhone that do some things better. I do recommend Movies as it’s the most popular and closest to everything I want. However, I also recommend looking at iTV (more than just movie listing and offers Netflix management and TiVo scheduling too. iTV is a KILLER app and it would be my first choice if it were faster. I use it more for TV listings which is what it really excells at!), OneTap Movies, which was my first favorite movie app and Fandango, which has a ways to go in the interface and features department, but it’s the only one that actually lets me buy tickets at MY theater.

You can download Flixster Movies App here from the App Store. It’s FREE and works on the iPhone and iPod touch.

All of the Apps I mentioned above are FREE and therefore you should try them all out and see which one you like best. Perhaps at the end of the day I’d use a web clip to quickly get to show times and the Movies app for everything else.

May 7, 2009May 7, 2009

MetaX completes me

In yesterday’s post I talked about my project to convert all of my purchased movie DVDs into MP4 format for streaming playback to any TV in my house (via Apple TV). I got lots of questions about the workflow and some of the questions revolved around Movie Poster artwork. When you rip your Audio CDs iTunes happily finds the missing album art for you and inserts it. It also looks up the track names and other info to help with the process. However, for movies iTunes doesn’t offer much help at all. I was quite content just having the name of the movie and the DVD artwork. I was manually looking up the artwork on the web and copying and pasting it in via the Artwork tab in iTunes Get Info area. It was working! However, the one thing I thought would be nice to have is the Movie Ratings (G, PG, PG-13, R, etc.). Even if I wanted to put these in manually, iTunes doesn’t allow access to this field. So I just decided to live without it.

–

MetaX rocks!

The one thing I’ve found out about blogging is that if you blog about a product or workflow, there’s usually someone out there reading that post that’s either done the same thing you’re doing or tried other products that do similar things. I’ve gotten some of my best tech recommendations from the comments area of my posts. Well my blog readers were very quick to offer suggestions to help with my project this time too. Blog reader “Noel” suggested an app called MetaX, which would pull in the Movie Poster art AND other data. Well of course I went to go check it out and I was floored by how well it works!

MetaX polls a variety of databases to grab not only the Movie Poster art, but the description, ratings, actors/acrtresses, chapter names and more! You can go movie by movie and tell it what you want from each database by checking off the boxes in the interface and then let it batch write those tags into your movie files. Be prepared as this process can take 5 minutes per movie on average. I ran it on all the movies I had already ripped and it’s still going as of this morning (almost done though). Speaking of Movie Art, this app even has the ability to allow you to manually crop off the annoying white background that some Movie Posters will come in with.

As you can see above the top two movies have no extra metadata and the bottom two have been run through MetaX to grab the rating, genre, year, description and the movie art (which isn’t shown here).

Believe it or not MetaX is free to download. The author requests a donation via PayPal, which I will be happily making today! It also works great for TV shows. MetaX is a Mac only App. I don’t have a similar solution for Windows users. However, if one exists I’m sure someone will chime in in the comments and let us know.

Thanks Noel for the suggestion! You’ve helped make this project even better than I imagined it would be. My workflow now puts MetaX right in the middle. I go from HandBrake to MetaX and then into iTunes.