Let's Make a Promo – Creating Videos for Apps | Hacker News Reader

Let's Make a Promo – Creating Videos for Apps

medium.com

105 pointsdjfumberger14 comments

Wow. Awesome.

Just as a data point for poor indie devs like me - for my own minimalistic app demo video (http://www.mindscopeapp.com), I created a bridge over my iPad using my kids' Duplos, stuck my iPhone 4S on top, made sure there was enough light, and recorded me using the app for a few minutes. I then edited the video with iMovie on iPad and wrote a quick little doodle on Garage Band as the music.

Another data point for poor indie devs - for a project I worked on last year (http://www.placeunit.com) I contracted my wife as a model. We then shot the video over two mornings on an iPad. Raw video was imported to a Mac and edited with iMovie. We licensed the song for the video. Most important tip: shoot every interaction from multiple angles before moving on to the next one.

Amazing effort.

I've already started working with Reflector and ScreenFlow for our app demo, but the tip regarding After Effects and the device model is handy.

Worth noting that in iOS 8 you can capture video direct from device, and don't need to resort to something like Reflector (and the lower quality AirPlay stream that that entails).

If you plug an iOS 8 device into a Mac running Yosemite it will show up as an available input in Quicktime, and you can make a screen recording direct from there.

Does this require a lightning connection? My iPad 3rd gen (beta 5) doesn't show up in Yosemite (beta 6).

If your app is an Open GL game, you can check out the Kamcord SDK, which will allow you to make a screen recording of your iOS or Android game.

https://www.kamcord.com/

It won't be as fancy as the videos in the linked article, but for indie devs it's a pretty cheap way to make demo videos.

Disclaimer: I know the folks @ Kamcord.

Is turning the screen brightness all the way down not enough to capturing the screen output in a lit environment? If not, finding a thin film to shade it further might work. That seems easier than the solution posted of mirroring all touches to the simulator and recording there.

This was awesome. The fact that I kinda want to download the app now probably shows how important it is to have some good videos to promote your app.

This page consistently crashes my mobile Safari (iOS 7). Funny given the subject matter.

This is amazing work

Dammit. Read that wrong. Guess I need a bigger font.

I came here to live a similar comment.

same

We're going to get downvoted (and rightly so, I believe!) but I, too, read the title quite a few times before I realized what's written there.

I don't believe bigger font would help, but different font could. Ie. one which doesn't display "rn" as that visually close to "m". Bigger letter spacing? I don't know, something like that.

Anyway, I got trolled by my own eyes, a funny feeling :)

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