Video processing in the cloud from your iPhone with Videomatic

I thought HN might be interested in my iPhone app, Videomatic. It lets you dub in sound effects, music, and add full-length video effects to videos on the iPhone 3GS. It's built entirely on the cloud using GAE and EC2 -- the system costs $0.00 to run when no users are using the app and scales up appropriately based upon usage. This "0 cost for 0 usage" dynamic makes it literally stress-free for me to run as a hobby.

I think this app showcases the potential for cloud-based processing from mobile phones. Often, cloud computing is thought of as a data-centric idea, giving remote access to data available universally. While it is, I think there are a class of apps such as Videomatic that see the cloud as a massive CPU. The philosophy of the app is to take advantage of the mobile phone (touch screen, mobile camera) where it shines, and use the cloud for the CPU-bound processing tasks.

Of course, simpler video effects could be done on the phone directly. But, for full length effects and audio mixing such as this, the cloud based approach seems more convenient and scalable. As I get fancier and add more effects, such as frame-level transformations and Photoshop-like filters, it would have been more and more tough for the 3GS CPU to process the video in a practial amount of time. Videomatic does it asynchronously on the cloud with push notifications, so you can use your phone while the video is being composed.

Would love to hear ideas and feedback on this, and any ideas for what cool things this approach could offer for future effects based upon the fact it is not processed on the phone. The app is free with 3 effects (slow motion, fast forward, and reverse) and there are currently 3 effects that can be purchased for $1 each from within the app. All of them let you dub in 100+ sound effects and a few dozen music loops. As the app grows, I'll be adding more fancier effects. Thanks!

http://www.vidmint.com/videomatic