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Motion Stills – Now on Android

research.googleblog.com

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Re: Motion Stills – Now on Android

#31

Post by whiddershins »

owenversteeg wrote: post #28

So I hadn't heard of this and I thought the name was for taking a still photo from a video. Sadly, that's not what this does, so does anybody know a good solution that does this? It's 2017, I feel like "hit spacebar in VLC and screenshot" is a really poor way of extracting still images from video. So what is the highest-quality way to extract a still from a video?

Photoshop can extract frames from a video, from which you can save animated gifs or just single frame stills.

Premiere or Final Cut can easily export single frames as stills.

As for doing it with free tools, I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are a number of good ways.

Re: Motion Stills – Now on Android

#32

Post by raldi »

themacguffinman wrote: post #29
raldi wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This has been by far our #1 request for the past year. It's been a long haul and we're very proud of what we've put together. We think you're going to like it."

How is this meaningfully different, other than the fact that your statement takes twice as many words to express the same thing?

It doesn't contain the horrendously-overused word "excited".

Re: Motion Stills – Now on Android

#33

Post by rbg246 »

raldi wrote: post #32
themacguffinman wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this meaningfully different, other than the fact that your statement takes twice as many words to express the same thing?

It doesn't contain the horrendously-overused word "excited".

But it does contain the highly annoying and redundant -"We think you are going to like it"

Which both annoys me because you are telling me how I should feel and it's a new feature what other emotion are you hoping for in a customer.

Re: Motion Stills – Now on Android

#34

Post by bambax »

> In order to display your Motion Stills stream immediately, our algorithm computes and stores the necessary stabilizing transformation as a low resolution texture map. We leverage this texture to apply the stabilization transform using the GPU in real-time during playback, instead of writing a new, stabilized video that would tax your mobile hardware and battery.

But doesn't this mean videos can only be shared/viewed within the app? How does one share videos with users that are not on Android 5.1+ then (and who therefore can't even install the app)?

Re: Motion Stills – Now on Android

#35

Post by zdkl »

j4ybee wrote: post #13
andybak wrote: post #12

"We listened to your feedback and today, we're excited to announce" - doesn't anyone have a functioning cliche detector anymore? Maybe my ears are oversensitive but I find this kind of bilge insincere and off-putting. Is it a UK vs US thing? Or am I just getting cranky in old age?

how about: "All right you entitled cunts, we made the Android version you begged for, now leave us alone."

Actually the way CCP handles marketing for their game is not too far from this; a little less cheeky, buuut you get the same message. They're not trying to humanise the org, they pitch updates and features by a technical lead attached to said feature. It's hugely refreshing to enjoy reading their material because they realise explicit advertisement sucks and try to make the information they're selling you relevant and interesting. Hype is an emergent feature of their communication campaign, not the central tool.

They're still trying to get you to be excited about their stuff, but they try to meet you in the middle by giving those who are interested the opportunity to dig into some details. That's how you market to nerds.

Re: Motion Stills – Now on Android

#36

Post by pgeorgi »

bambax wrote: post #34

> In order to display your Motion Stills stream immediately, our algorithm computes and stores the necessary stabilizing transformation as a low resolution texture map. We leverage this texture to apply the stabilization transform using the GPU in real-time during playback, instead of writing a new, stabilized video that would tax your mobile hardware and battery. But doesn't this mean videos can only be shared/viewe…

I think the keyword is

>> "immediately"

The GPU texture mapping thing is the strategy employed for immediate feedback in the app. The stabilized video can still be rendered to a file in the background (and/or while plugged in) later.

Re: Motion Stills – Now on Android

#37

Post by GuiA »

owenversteeg wrote: post #28

So I hadn't heard of this and I thought the name was for taking a still photo from a video. Sadly, that's not what this does, so does anybody know a good solution that does this? It's 2017, I feel like "hit spacebar in VLC and screenshot" is a really poor way of extracting still images from video. So what is the highest-quality way to extract a still from a video?

If you want to do it interactively, what do you want that frame capturing from VLC doesn't offer?

If you want to do it programmatically, what do you want that ffmpeg doesn't offer?

Re: Motion Stills – Now on Android

#38

Post by pgeorgi »

crazygringo wrote: post #22
andybak wrote: post #12

"We listened to your feedback and today, we're excited to announce" - doesn't anyone have a functioning cliche detector anymore? Maybe my ears are oversensitive but I find this kind of bilge insincere and off-putting. Is it a UK vs US thing? Or am I just getting cranky in old age?

As a product manager who writes sentences just like these, genuine question -- what would you prefer instead? Let's say this has been by far the #1 app request for the past year, and the reason you've built it is literally because it's what people have been asking for. And as a team, you're actually excited to ship it after months and months of development. Really curious how else to phrase it? Without sounding immat…

> genuine question -- what would you prefer instead?

Genuine answer:

The version used in the motion stills press release already sounds rather self-absorbed to my ears. Might be cultural (non-US, non-English), just like everything that follows.

Compare "We listened to your feedback and today, we're excited to announce" to "Today we release the Android version, implementing the #1 feature request we received".

The latter sounds less personal, but nobody ever listened to "my" feedback on such things. "Your (plural) feedback" is always in aggregate, and unless you're talking to your database of customer sentiment, it's as unpersonal as can be, it just hides that fact better through linguistic ambiguity.

> And as a team, you're actually excited

Every 3 years old is excited to show off their paintings to their parents.

Except for a few, everybody knows that you're excited about shipping things. But since we're customers and not parents, barely anybody cares. Those who do are probably your team members' parents.

tl;dr: Highlight the product, the team if you want, their hard work. Leave out the excitation (nobody cares) or how you listened to "you, the user".

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