Here I consider the whole iPhone ecosystem as the sum of the “Touch” user interface and the AppStore and its 140,000 existing applications. For developers, it’s indeed the same platform.

The iPad re-purposes the iPhone ecosystem into the future mainstream utility to get things done. The magic is in simplifying things to make them iPhone-like, and the genius is in artificially restraining some technical capabilities.

Your mythical grand-ma cannot buy or use a computer alone, but she downloads and uses apps on her iPhone, alone. That’s the whole differentiating point of the iPad, and because it’s not a computer, Apple has met its goal to give whole new demographics their Internet-age appliance.

Now, let’s go back to SimpleMovieX. I have no doubt that the iPad will be a successful platform, that eventually will displace current platforms. That is definitively a place I will be unless I want my business to address only niche technical markets ten years from now.

SimpleMovieX is a lightweight video editor. From the scope point-of-view, it can be a good fit for the iPad, that is primarily a consumption and lightweight creative device. SimpleMovieX uncluttered user interface could easily be transposed to iPad screens.

The first problem is how you get your data into your iPad. Movies syncing through iTunes works well, but it is not the channel that people will use to import content that they want to modify. According to published information, the iPad doesn’t have a built-in camera, nor does it connect directly to video cameras.
The iPad seems too disconnected from video production workflows and from video devices to be a place for SimpleMovieX to live. At least today.

From the technical stand point, it looks really bad too: All indicates that the QuickTime framework that powers SimpleMovieX is not available on the iPad. Instead, the modern and efficient QuickTime X, used in the iPhone and iPad for audio and video playback, supports very few codecs and formats, and have near-zero editing capabilities.
This will improve over time, for sure, but Apple is like a car with no reverse gear: QuickTime X will grow towards the future, not towards ensuring full backwards compability with legacy QuickTime.

In other words, if SimpleMovieX someday exists on the iPad platform, it will have nothing in common with today’s SimpleMovieX. Except maybe the skin and purpose. Time will tell.

Version 3.9.2 that runs on Snow Leopard is just a few hours away!

I will have missed the end-of-month deadline by a couple of days, because I had underestimated the changes that Snow Leopard is bringing. Let’s review the main points:

64 bit:
SimpleMovieX cannot compile in 64 bit because legacy QuickTime APIs are not available (only Cocoa QTKit).
For 64-bit apps using legacy QuickTime, a 32-bit process is automatically generated by the OS. Could be what happens in the next major release of SimpleMovieX.
The bottom line is that SimpleMovieX 3.9.2 will ship as a 32-bit Universal binary. Not a big deal.

Intel versus PowerPC:
Snow Leopard only runs on Intel Macs. Older PowerPC models can still run SimpleMovieX from Mac OSX 10.4 (Tiger) or 10.5 (Leopard).
A small problem arises for Snow Leopard users: Some components of SimpleMovieX are still PowerPC binaries, and they will probably not migrate to Intel anytime soon. In Leopard, Rosetta, the PowerPC emulation tool, would transparently take care of this. But Rosetta is not installed by default in Snow Leopard.
Therefore, Snow Leopard users that haven’t installed Rosetta will be invited by SimpleMovieX to do so, otherwise MPEG functionality will not work. I’m referring to MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 here. MPEG4 WILL work.

Supported Operating Systems:
SimpleMovieX 3.9.2 will continue supporting Mac OS X 10.4.11 and higher. There is no intention to drop 10.4 support soon, at least until new major version 4.0 comes out.

Grand Central Dispatch, OpenCL:
SimpleMovieX will take advantage of those technologies passively: GCD and OpenCL will not make SimpleMovieX perform better per se, but the OS and QuickTime can be faster and SimpleMovieX will benefit.
SimpleMovieX will require a major rewrite before it can use them directly. I believe that version 4, a paid upgrade due next year, should really take advantage of the new “state of art”.

QuickTime X:
Here Apple has done a good job confusing everybody. QuickTime X refers to a new player/editor application and also to a new framework.
The application is very limited in editing functionality. If you need anything beyond basic trimming, you will need to install QuickTime 7 application or better, use SimpleMovieX.
Framework-wise, Snow Leopard comes by default with both QuickTime X and QuickTime 7.
SimpleMovieX does not take advantage of the new framework, because of very strong limitations as of 10.6 release. QuickTime X is a work in progress that will need, I predict, 5 years or more to supplant good’ol QuickTime 7.
The bottom line for SimpleMovieX users: It is not necessary to install QuickTime 7 app in Snow Leopard (or to have a QTPro key) to make SimpleMovieX work.

Conclusion: SimpleMovieX 3.9.2 will be equivalent to earlier versions in features and performance. Snow Leopard lays the foundation for the next ten years on the Mac platform, but profound changes are needed in SimpleMovieX to take advantage of it. Version 4.0, a major release due next year, will bring the promise of those amazing new technologies.

Current version 3.9.1 of SimpleMovieX is not prepared to work with Snow Leopard.

Version 3.9.2, a free upgrade for 3.x users, will surface sometime during September, bringing back compatibility with the latest and greatest, ie Snow Leopard.

Tiger and Leopard will continue being supported, whereas Mac OSX 10.3 Panther is no longer supported, version 3.8.1 being the last release working with Panther.

Snow Leopard brings amazing new technologies that can make SimpleMovieX shine. I can think of Grand Central, Open CL, H264 hardware decoding, and QuickTime X.
But to digest all this, SimpleMovieX will require a major rewrite. I believe that version 4, a paid upgrade due next year, should really take advantage of the new “state of art”.

Stay tuned for more info about the future of SimpleMovieX.

SimpleMovieX is actively developed and supported because people keep purchasing copies. For your computer safety, to get support, to get free upgrades, and for the warm feeling of supporting an independant Mac developer, and because you’re using SimpleMovieX on a weekly or daily basis, please consider buying a license.

I have assembled a “official warez page” (credits to Lux developers for the original idea) where people searching for serials will land.

People with no money to spend on software or with no ethics will not be impressed, I know.

But people who occasionally go to the pirate bay to grab a cracked version of an application because the demo version really gets in the way of them trying the software. Or people willing to install one copy of SimpleMovieX on two separate machines. Or people no comfy with on-line purchasing. I wish I can convince a few of them.

Batch command lets you export files into a new format. (usually through re-encoding, a slow and lossy process in terms of quality)
Save as… lets you save the document file to a new format, for example AVI to MOV, or MOV to MP4. A fast, lossless process, because we use native saving.

But what if you want to Save as… in batch mode? in other words, change the format of a collection of files?
Imagine that we have 20 AVI files to save in MOV format.

The answer is not obvious: You have to combine 2 apparently unrelated features of SimpleMovieX: Merging and Splitting with chapters.

1. Drop all AVI files in a blank document window
The files are merged and a chapter marker with the filename is created for each file.

2. In Chapters pane, do Split into movies…
Select the folder, MOV as format, then specify $name$ as filename to have SimpleMovieX use the chapter name (in fact the original file name) as filename.

3. It should work.

The design philosophy of SimpleMovieX is to keep things … simple. I prefer to limit the number of commands and options, but you can still achieve great results, if you combine them together.

Merging and Splitting is a way to apply an operation to a collection of movies. First putting them together, applying the operation, finally stitching them back and saving.

Other applications of “Merging and Splitting”: Set identical tags or movie information to a collection of files. Resize them. and so on…

And I’ve tried to do it the SimpleMovieX way: simple, inobstrusive and competent.

The main challenge was to avoid an intimidating, bloated interface, and to make the flow evident. After many days of work, I’ve finally discovered that “Media Kind” could be the perfect selector for data layout. And that with a small lock you could customize your template. I had a design.

Over the years, SimpleMovieX has become a better iTunes companion. Metadata was just of the missing piece of the puzzle.

Now you can do in one step what previously required 3 or 4 applications and a large dose of patience:
Edit a movie, add chapter markers, add metadata and cover art, and save natively in an iTunes-friendly format: All in a single SimpleMovieX session.

Simple editing matters because we’re not competing for Academy Awards. We just want cut those commercials in the middle of the TV show, or do a simple de-rushing. And such a basic task should just take seconds.

Metadata matters because our media collection (music, movies, …) grows bigger every day, and we all have now terabyte hard disks with capacity for hundreds of movies and tens of thousands of songs, so good indexing is very important. iTunes library allows for music and movies to be “tagged” with useful information like Title, Director, Album, … and nice touches like Cover Arts, used in Front Row and in cover flow animations to pick a movie or song.

Now all the movie information can be entered directly in SimpleMovieX’s metadata pane. Besides basic features, I’ve also added templates, to allow recurrent information to be filled automatically. Information can be pulled from Amazon database, including cover art, rating, year of release…

Movie information, also called metadata or tags, is written inside the media files. So that when you move or copy the file, this information is carried over. The fact of embedding the metadata, instead of having it stored in a separate database, also has the advantage of making it usable for any application, not just for iTunes.

Another distinctive feature of SimpleMovieX metadata:
It’s one of the few programs that can write metadata to files bigger than 4GB. And it works for MP4 and MOV container formats. Have you tried to add metadata to an AVI file and export it to AppleTV? It just works!

iTunes has become an important piece of our digital life. It’s the “mother ship” from where contents are moved to our iPods, iPhones and Apple TVs. To take advantage of all this cool stuff, there are some restrictions on formats: Only MOV and MP4 files, respecting some “profiles“, can be moved to those devices. Otherwise, the files have to be converted first. (Gory details here)

SimpleMovieX has native MP4 editing and saving built-in. So any compliant source will remain compliant. No re-encoding needed.

One last trick to save time:
Save your movies directly inside iTunes folder:
/Users/bjoossen/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Movies/
This way, when you drag the file to iTunes application, it doesn’t need to copy it, it gets added to the library instantly.

The short answer: It’s not possible … directly.
There’s no such thing as an entry in the Chapter action menu that says: “Insert every 5 minutes”.

The design guideline I’m trying to follow in SimpleMovieX is: Keep it simple. Instead of adding a lot of options and features, I try to add ways of collaborating with other applications. So that SimpleMovieX leverages their power instead of getting bloated.

For chapters, this design philosophy is embedded in the Copy and Paste Chapter Markers commands. Not very visible, but very efficient.

The idea is that the contents of the Chapters table is transcribed in a regular text document. You can use a text editor to create or modify it. Then the text can fill back the Chapters table.

So, back to Sebastian’s question: How can I insert a chapter marker every 5 minutes?

(Higher quality movie available here).

First, you create a text template that tells to insert a chapter at the beginning, after 5 minutes, after 10 minutes, and so on… Launch you favorite text editor and type:

[00:00:00.000]
Chapter #1
[00:05:00.000]
Chapter #2
[00:10:00.000]
Chapter #3
[00:15:00.000]
Chapter #4
[00:20:00.000]

One line indicates the time in the format [hh:mm:ss.xxx] where hh, mm and ss stand for hours, minutes and seconds. And the next line indicates the name of the chapter.

Once the template is created, you save it.

Second and last step: You copy the text, go to SimpleMovieX, and do Paste Chapter Markers.
Automatically, the table content is replaced by our template. Chapters nicely located at 5 minutes intervals.

If the movie has a duration greater than 25 minutes, then you will write a template that goes until 3 or 4 hours. When it is applied to a movie, for example a 90 minutes movie, the chapters will go beyond the end of the movie.

But that’s not really a problem, as by doing Edit > Trim, the chapters in excess will be deleted.

Most importantly, SimpleMovieX is one of the rare applications that keeps the metadata intact after editing, saving or exporting the file. Imagine you have an MP4 file already “tagged”. Fire SimpleMovieX, add chapters, remove the credits at the end of the movie, and save. The edited movie is written in MP4 format, with metadata, chapters.

Now, the problem: SimpleMovieX is not able to modify metadata. Other free applications, like MetaX or iTunes, are pretty good at it. But you need to switch between apps, write the file 2 times, and so on.

So what about adding metadata editing to SimpleMovieX?

I’m quite adverse to bloat. SimpleMovieX shall remain a simple application. I don’t want it to become a jack-of-all-trades. But adding metadata editing seems a logical move anyway.

Let’s review the features of MetaX and see what a metadata-capable SimpleMovieX would look like:

• An interface to enter dozens of informations about the movie (title, director, season, rating…)
• Autofill through look-up in Internet database
• An interface to add a picture (either found looking for movie posters in Internet, in Amazon, or selecting a frame of the movie)
• Barcode scan
• An archive with all movies ever tagged and their information.
• A Template system to define presets that can be applied in one click
• Saving tagged movie is fast. Lightning-fast the second time, as we write the file in place.
• Support of big files, with a size greater than 4 GB
• QuickLook, Spotlight plug-ins.
• Queue (tag all files, then write them in one shot)
• iTunes plug-in
• Sends to iTunes after tagging.
• Filename tagging
• Chapter renaming

Now, the advantages of a future SimpleMovieX with metadata editing capabilities:

You can add, modify, remove chapter markers. Not just rename them.
You can edit the movie (add, remove clips)
You can convert, then add metadata. For example, save an AVI file to MOV format, and add tags.
You can add, remove, select audio/language tracks
And finally, an already existing advantage: A file with metadata will keep them after editing, saving, converting.

What are the limitations of such SimpleMovieX ?
I assume that SimpleMovieX implements tagging on top of current architecture. This brings limitations:

• Saving is fast, like after editing, but not lightning-fast (because write-in-place is not supported)
• No queue, allowing saving all modified movies in one shot.
• SimpleMovieX interface is centered on movie image and timeline. Metadata editing would not be centric, interface-wise.

Therefore, I foresee that it would be a useful addition to SimpleMovieX for users that need to modify a movie, then tag it. For pure tagging, for big volume of files, MetaX is better: more features, optimized performance, dedicated interface.

Who would be those users?

People creating their own movie, like a screencast, that needs editing, chapterizing, and tagging.
People capturing video broadcasts, that need some editing, typically to remove not wanted clips, and use tagging to organize their collection.
and maybe also people that need to convert and add tags.

To address those use cases, only a few MetaX features needs to be implemented:

• An interface to enter dozens of informations about the movie (title, director, season, rating…)
• An interface to add a picture (selecting a frame of the movie, or from a file)
• Support of big files, with a size greater than 4 GB (already built-in SimpleMovieX)

That sounds a lot more reasonable now. It keeps SimpleMovieX small, fills the functionality gap, while requiring a small development effort.

So, will metadata editing be the flagship feature of SimpleMovieX 3.9 ?

Because QuickTime applies the “Don’t show legacy codecs” policy.

All the applications using QuickTime infrastructure for exporting, as SimpleMovieX, have the same “problem”.

To revert this, go to System Preferences, QuickTime, Advanced, and check the “Show legacy encoders”. And restart SimpleMovieX.

My first tests indicate that the problems comes from new version 1.1.3 of Perian codec. With “Good’ol” Perian 1.0 all works more or less as expected.

I’ve put a big amount of effort into AVI editing, and believe me, it’s a hard feature to program. Now I feel like it’s been a waste of time. For me, as a developer, and for those whose are using AVI format.

• For me, because despite my effort, SimpleMovieX can still fail to edit and save AVI files.
• For you, because editing AVI files will give you problems. Always. Even if you use other editing tools.

Let me explain why:

AVI is an obsolete standard, not developed for over 10 years (an eon in the domain of video). Back in that time, it was already considered as technically bad. Needless to say, nobody in the professional video world uses AVI, and for obvious reasons:
It’s not adapted to handle files over 1GB. And if it does it, it’s through a wacky extension that “kind of works”, but sacrifices one of the movie index.

Audio/Video synchronization, which is maybe the single most difficult problem in video field, is solved through a very fragile method. There’s not something like a time base in AVI files. All is referenced to audio, managed with a simple index.
“Serious” video formats, like MOV or MP4, have a time base on which each audio and video “frame” is referenced. This way, sync is guaranteed (well… almost, see footnote).

Not only AVI is obsolete, but it has been tweaked and “extended” in several directions, by many different people. For example, it’s commonly used to store variable bit-rate audio, like mp3, but AVI standard wasn’t meant do that…

You end up finding so many undocumented hacks inside AVI files that building something that works in all cases is close to impossible.

To make things more funny, at least 3 different codecs for AVI / DivX formats are popular among Mac users. Each with its own hacks and limitations.
Not to mention the fact that AVI files are usually coming from illegal sources, encoded with exotic tools.

Bottom line: The AVI standard is dead long ago, and AVI has been drifting for so many years, through so many hacks, that it’s almost a miracle when something AVI works as expected.

SimpleMovieX support for AVI can certainly be improved. And I’ll probably work on it for the next release. But the “Perian 1.1.3″ episode shows that with AVI, nobody is in control.

Therefore, my recommendation to all video users is to avoid AVI format. MP4 and MOV are always better alternatives.
AVI files can be saved in MOV format without loss of quality. SimpleMovieX does this with File > Save As function.

PS: You can find “Good’ol” Perian 1.0 in my web account:
http://idisk.mac.com/getclockworks-Public/
filename: Perian1.0.component.zip
PS2: You can also experience A/V sync problems with “serious” formats like MOV or MP4. It’s usually because audio frames have not exactly the same duration as advertised in the moov atom. When you stop playback and start again, A/V sync problem disappears, but after a while audio starts drifting.