Application for the visual canvas

The app is intended for building a visually impactive video, combining a moving picture (video or “movie”) and “still” photo. Photos can tell a story in a moment, like a graph, whereas videos take more time to make their statement. They can both advance each other’s message and meaning. 

Begin with the basic video and photo to see the process. Click new session on the welcome page. The comment banner about audio and DRM will appear only once when first started. The next page allows you to add your photo in a recognizable iPhone/iPad manner: a photo picker of your photos will appear when you press the button to select. Click one photo one time and it will be added to your canvas. At this page you can move and reshape the photo in the usual press and drag interaction, or the pinch and zoom option. Part of the photo can be moved off of the visual field, and also return from the edge as you move it about. We will refer to this mechanism as positional cropping, one of several ways, such as magnification, to call attention to a section or feature of the photo. 

Next choose your video pressing the video selection button. The picker returns with your videos preferentially set aside without photographs. Choose one video, it is added to your canvas on top of the photo. If they are “busy” images they may at first appear to meld. We can separate the video from photo in multiple ways. For now, we make a standard picture in picture effect as follows. Choose the “Video” and gear-shape button in the upper right corner of screen (a number of other buttons have appeared in the bottom toolbar) and a settings window will appear. Click the Line option of the Frame Edges category -> a line appears around your video. In the same settings window, click Square in the Video Frame category. Now your video image morphs to a square, with line edging. Pull down the settings window to remove the window. Tap the video image to change the line color to white. The application decides, with each frame, the video area that requires cropping when the image dimensions are changed. Presently, the app does not offer alternatives for the area of focus, except for you to choose from available frame options. The video's complete visual field and photo's image are placed in working memory. 

Move the video and photo images where you want them to appear. The video duration badge tells your approximate recording time. We are ready to preview and record. Press the preview button and follow the messages through a process of preparation. Pressing the accept button at the caption window is a step in the sequence. Toolbars and buttons will disappear from your canvas as your production takes life. When recording starts, the device is using the standard “screen recording” process, so we will wait for the video to play. 

When recording ends, choose to save and share. Post, publish, push where you prefer. Saving a video to Library makes it part of your general collection. Note here, saving several versions may look quite similar to the original video and photo, and in this way can flood the original images in a sea of app recordings -> so an album or collection for the app versions is recommended. 

The screen will return to the canvas ready for your next version. You may decide to try some options we will describe in the next section, under construction ….