Motion Stills – Now on Android | Hacker News Reader

Motion Stills – Now on Android

research.googleblog.com

84 pointsarunc38 comments

I'm confused. Does this imply that photos within this app can be taken similar to 'live photos' - where a single tap records both a full-res still pic AND a video? Or is this app just for recording stabilized / loopable videos?

I recently switched to iOS after using Android for years and live photos are a huge draw for me. I don't care if they're stabilized or loopable, I just love the context they add in (audio, movement) while also having a still photo.

I've got an Android phone and unfortunately no, it's just video, there's no still.

I sorely miss the real Live Photos I had on iOS for the same reasons as you. There are camera apps on Android that do it (like Camera MX) but the UX isn't really comparable and you can't use Motion Stills on stuff taken outside the app.

Seems like an productized implementation of Hyperlapse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOpwHaQnRSY

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft....

has existed for years

I think it's kinda funny that the dreaded Pixel lens flare issue is clearly apparent in the stabilization demo.

The UI on this is pretty novel for an Android app; a longtime Android dev I usually get pretty pissy about UIs that feel too 'iOS'y but this one does a pretty good job of feeling 'fresh' instead of just like another iOS port. The stabilization stuff is pretty good too.

I'm assuming the GIF showing a phone taking a Motion Still was itself made using Motion Stills. Fun.

The camera app I truly miss on Android is Instagram's Hyperlapse. They should make it happen!

> 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)?

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.

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.

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?

It's a good thing this is getting supported on non-Apple platforms too. In time, maybe they'll all get common formats, and then we'll all have the same stuff again.

This isn't about 'stealing' or who 'came first', it's about everyone getting everything.

This is not the same thing, though. I hope you realize. This is not bringing Live Photos to Android nor allowing cross-platform playback.

It's just giving Android users a handy app to loop videos.

Whatever happened to that gimmick where an image from both the front and rear cameras was saved?

I can do that on my phone. Samsung allows you to download modes for the camera. One of those is dual camera. It's fun sometimes.

I texted a GIF from my Pixel and it was really blocky, even at the highest setting. It doesn't look bad during playback or when uploaded to Photos though.

Is this an MMS issue or something?

I just used it on my S7 and shared it on whatsapp: looks very high quality to me. You can try changing the gif quality from settings, although the default worked fine for me.

I tried at the medium (default) and highest. Oddly enough the highest quality setting was the most blocky so I'm guessing the MMS or Pixel->Iphone text did something weird?

Either way, the app is neat and I think this is just an artifact in the MMS stage rather than the files.

I also have issues sending video over MMS.

I think the issue is just the design of MMS. It was designed back when dumbphones ruled, so it was designed to have cell networks transcode media into a compatible format for the target device. The cell networks don't want to spend the cpu cycles or perhaps engineer time to do it properly. Perhaps RCS[0] solves this issue, but I think everyone will have switched to WhatsApp, et. al by then.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services

I'm wondering how it competes with the stabilization algorithm available in the default video editor for Nexus/Pixel (is it in the Google Camera app for other devices?).

I find it so weird that an oxymoron is accepted as product name.

I think that's the idea.

I'm sure it is

"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."

"Will you stop saying we can't do product now?"

LOL. Have an upvote.

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.

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 immature or unprofessional ("it's here WOOT!") -- or too self-absorbed ("Drum roll please...").

"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".

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.

If you can apply it to some other product in the same tone/voice that many other kickstarter or tech products use and it sounds contrived, then you've employed your cookie cutter speak.

It's seems ok because everyone else is doing it but it'll lack the sincerity that people respond to.

The blog actually says this:

However, from its initial release, the community has been asking us to also make Motion Stills available for Android. We listened to your feedback and today, we're excited to announce that we’re bringing this technology, and more, to devices running Android 5.1 and later!

This sounds perfectly normal.

> 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".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com