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Comment by harscoat | Hacker News Reader

I really like the idea of onesec app: solves the pb that "I suck at taking video" (// Instagram: even if my pics are crap they could look good with filter). Still imho the best comparison is not "instagram" but Twitter. Onesec = twitter for video ie: only 1 second format (or 2 or 5s) videos not more. That'll make video less of a waste of time and more appealing to me.

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I played around with this idea, mocking it up in a Adobe Air app. The UI that worked best was to allow for unlimited video but if it exceeds seven seconds (that feels like enough plus it has a nice alliteration) then have a scrubber at the bottom that lets you select any number of seven second snapshots to publish ala Instagram.

For the consumption UI I would use a scrolling list like Instagram but just have start and end of video keyframes alternate in a animation - maybe use a fade in/out transition so it is not jarring to the eye. This would let you quickly browse without much interaction required.

Care to share the UI mockups? I'm working on the editing part right now & I'm interested.

It wasn't much - I vertically stacked a Flex VideoDisplay control, a custom scrubber control and then a Flex Button control to publish. Instead of a fixed size thumb the custom scrubber's thumb width was proportional to 7 seconds of the total video width. I did it in AIR/Flex so I could just drop a video on the app to test with it.

I never tested it on a mobile device but on my desktop I needed a lot of keyframes in the video to make it work. I'm not sure what it would look like with native video on a iOS/Android device.

yeah, it goes in the same direction as other short duration formats. E.g.: - 5s Movies: http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/thatguywiththegl... - 15s Film Festival: http://www.15secondfilmfestival.com/

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