Givit Video Editor App Review

This is the 200th article I have written on Technology Bloggers! I really enjoy writing for the blog and value the community. :-)

Technology Bloggers top smartphone app reviewers are without a doubt, Steve and Ron. In the past I have attempted app reviews myself, however I have never reviewed just a single application in one post. What better time to try something new then than in post 200!

I’m playing it safe with my first app review, and choosing an app that has already been reviewed by TechCrunch, and written about on the The Wall Street Journal’s website. The app is called Givit Video Editor, and is available for all iDevices.

What is Givit?

So what exactly is Givit Video Editor? Well in the words of (the apps creators) Vmix Media:

“Givit is a free, fun and simple app to quickly make and share great videos on iPhone.”

As I am sure you know, Instagram is a photo sharing application, which lets you share photos you take, pretty much instantly, to Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. Givit offers a similar service, but for video.

Sharing

One of the key features of the app is its sociability. The app interoperates ‘one-click’ sharing to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, as well as email compatibility, so you can privately email clips. You can also upload your videos to the Givit cloud, where you get 5GB of free storage.

Share videos iPhone application

A screenshot of the Givit sharing screen.

The latest version of the app (3.2.0) enables you to find and invite your Facebook friends, so you can see which of them are sharing their videos, and post your clips to your stream.

Features

The app is a clever video editor, which lets you mash different clips together, so you can chip and chop the best bits of clips and the stitch them together to make great montages.

The app is also compatible with live editing, so you can modify clips as you are filming, adding effects and music wherever you choose.

Cost

One of the best things about the app is that it is completely free! With the Standard Account (as I mentioned earlier) you get 5GB of permanent free storage; so long as you use it once every 3 months. 5GB is enough room to store around 30 minutes of uncompressed HD video; Givit probably have some clever compression going on, so I would imagine you get a bit more that 30 minutes.

Half an hour is all I think I need, as the clips I want to share are only usually a minute or two long, however if you are a budding videographer and need more space you can buy a Premium Account, which costs $29.99 a year, for an extra 100GB of storage.

So far, reviews of the app seem positive. The apps official iTunes rating is currently 4 stars in the UK store and 3.5 in the US store. Coverage on sites like Macworld, CNET and the above mentioned TechCrunch indicate the growing popularity of the service.

Interested in getting the app? Click here to download the Givit from iTunes.

Shoot, edit, share and store – that’s Givit!

Coach Guitar App Review

Coach Guitar enables users to learn guitar without any music theory or tablature. The animated black fret-board represents a guitar and the fingers are marked with different colors to specify the positions efficiently for both hands use. The colored dots signify the different chords of an acoustic guitar to be strummed. These instructions are available in Help menu on the start screen.

When you open this app, the page shows options such as My Lessons, Library, Help and finally Settings. After going through the Help option, you need to start with My Lessons where there are few popular songs pre-loaded. Then, you have to choose one among them and proceed for the coaching sequences. Just like a true professional, this app provides a step by step teaching facility which helps the users to play each verse of the song with perfection.

Coach Guitar Navigation

This version also contains two amazing songs for free- Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin and secondly, Wake me up when September ends by Green Day. Another interesting aspect of this app is the availability of video lessons in HD. You can watch and learn in no time. In the Library, you can buy and store your favorite tracks available which you want to learn. The Library is updated quite frequently for the convenience of users. Also, the developers have provided the settings option to configure this app as per your wish.

The appearance of Library is quite similar to that of a normal playlist in your phone only with a single modification of the price tag on the extreme right of the songs. This can be considered one of the flaws of this virtual guitar teaching concept. You have to pay a certain amount for adding up your favorite tracks further. The customers have complained about this attribute and rightfully so.

Looking at all the pros and cons of this guitar teaching app, I am pretty much satisfied by its functioning. This app skillfully acknowledges its name and acquires relevant features to teach users how to play a guitar. Coach Guitar version 1.7.3 requires only 13.2 MB of phone memory. With the presence of a large display screen in iPhone and iPads, the working of Coach Guitar becomes easier.

Augmented Reality Art

A couple of weeks ago I crossed Grand Island in New York State, a rather desolate place at this time of year near the border with Canada. I was interested in a virtual art installation involving augmented reality, and quite a find it was too.

It turns out that in In September 1825, Major Mordecai Noah founded a city state called Ararat on Grand Island, “a city of refuge for the Jews”. His idea was to create a Jewish homeland. Noah’s dream never came to fruition, until that is a group of academics and artists decided to create a virtual tour of how the city might look today had it been constructed.

Ararat Virtual Monument

Ararat Virtual Monument

The tour involves downloading an app into your smartphone, and travelling to specific areas on the island. When you look through the camera of the phone various structures appear in the view that are not present in reality. There is a copy of a memorial that was designed but has fallen into decay, a synagogue, school, a theme park and various other typical structures. The group also produced postcards, stamps and money, as well as other objects in everyday use in any nation state. There is in fact only one original artefact from that period surviving today, a cornerstone that tells the story of the city’s foundation.

People who would like to take the tour have to download the mobile app Layar, and aim their devices’ cameras at the landscape. The application uses geolocation software to superimpose virtual objects at precise GPS coordinates, enabling the public to see the objects integrated into the physical location as if they existed in the real world.

Money from Ararat

Money from Ararat

Then you just take the photo and the object appears as if in real life, with your friends next to it if you like. The Mapping Arrarat website explains everything, and hosts a short video that demonstrates the installation in practice. There are also lots of photos of the various structures that show people interacting with a virtual landscape.

Although the computer graphics aren’t entirely convincing I am sure they will very quickly improve and get to the point of looking absolutely real, very much in the way that games have developed in recent years. And an installation of this type looks like a fantastic educational tool to me. Objects can be placed on the landscape and presumably old photos and plans could be used to re-make places and events. Wouldn’t it be interesting to go the the Great fire of London, or walk through antique Rome and come back with a few shots to show the family?