Your best ally for corrupt card recovery: Disk Utility

When your memory card gets corrupt with tens or hundreds of megabytes of footage, video clips or movies, you have not one but two problems:

• Extract data from the magma that has now become your P2 card or your SDHC. (I told you not to buy the cheapest!)
• Organize this data into playable movies.

For the second problem, I have the solution: Treasured for diagnostic, then a Repair Kit that I develop for you.
But for the first one, until recently, I could just recommend to use a data recovery software. Stuff relatively expensive, and that would give average-to-good results only: Data Rescue 2, FileSalvage, Stellar Phoenix 3, Boomerang, UnDelete Plus, Recover4all, …

I also would have proposed to use photoRec, a free, open source utility, that seems to give the same average-to-good results as commercial products mentioned above. (But most people will not feel comfortable with its command line interface)
I even went as far as recording a rudimentary tutorial to help you use photoRec.

Until I discovered Disk Utility!
Disk Utility is a program that sits in your Utilities folder. It ships with every copy of Mac OS X.
And it’s not even a data recovery program.

This small program is capable of creating a disk image of your damaged card. It’s like copying the card, but instead of copying the files as the Finder would do (remember, it’s corrupt, it won’t help), Disk Utility copies the card, as is.
Imagine instead of a corrupt card, a damaged book with some missing index pages. The Finder would say it can’t copy anything because without index it doesn’t know where the chapters are.
Disk Utility would just photocopy the whole book, without asking questions.

Creating your Disk Image from the damaged drive…

This disk image, a .dmg file, contains all the recoverable media. Because it contains all what the card contains.
The beauty of the disk image is that we no longer have files, just raw data.
So if you use Treasured on the .dmg file, you can preview all the media. From all files as if they were just one.

Image Format: read-only
Compression: none (or it won’t work!)

Finally, the Repair Kit, working on the .dmg file, will restore in one shot all the media contained in the card: All the clips will be merged into one playable movie file.

Now let’s be a bit more technical:
Why does Disk Utility work better than data recovery products?

• First and foremost, because Treasured and Repair Kits work on raw media data, so the file structure is not helping (and their lack-of is not disturbing).
• And because data on cards is usually not very fragmented: Usage model is to fill the card (shoot until you can), then empty it, then fill again: Data layout is most likely linear on the card.

I discovered this by chance! Disk Utility was not on my radar, until a customer, Karen, told me she had done a disk image of the card, just in case.
Suddenly, a flash in my mind: Why not using the image on Treasured?
And it worked beautifully!

Thanks Karen.

SimpleMovieX official warez page

Making the software better and respecting the users with a hassle-free purchase and licensing process, is what I consider the proper way to fight piracy.

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 save as… with SimpleMovieX

SimpleMovieX can do a lot of things if you combine two or more operations. Let’s see an example:

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…

SimpleMovieX and your iTunes collection

It took me more time than I had anticipated and it is still far from perfect.
Call it metadata, tags, or movie information: Now it’s part of SimpleMovieX!

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.

Templates for Chapters in SimpleMovieX

Sebastian, a SimpleMovieX user, recently asked how he could automatically insert a chapter marker every 5 minutes.

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.

SimpleMovieX and Metadata

Since version 3.7, SimpleMovieX has been able to detect and display the metadata inside a movie file.
Metadata, also called tags, is information about the movie. Typically, it contains the name of the movie or the TV show, episode, season, director, actors, and a picture to represent the movie in a collection (like a movie poster, the DVD cover, or any picture that looks good in your iTunes library)

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 ?

Can I make movie repairs effortless?

A couple of weeks ago, I’ve released a new version of Treasured with some long-awaited improvements.
It’s not yet fulfilling my vision of a diagnostic and repair application, but still a huge step in the right direction.

Having a damaged movie repaired must become natural and almost effortless.

Remember two years ago, when all was done manually? I had to give instructions on how to extract a sample of the file, upload it. You had to spend one hour of your time, maybe more, just to do the first step. And only a few hours later I would send you a preview and propose a deal.

Repairing a movie required a certain engagement. It was hard, for me and for you.

Today all this is automated. Treasured shows the preview in a matter of seconds, extracts and uploads the file in a couple of clicks. A quotation for the repair is provided to help you decide.

But it’s not enough.

Video professionals are always extremely busy, fighting to meet deadlines. When you stumble upon an unplayable clip that jeopardizes the delivery of the project, it becomes a crisis situation immediately. Every second counts.

I understand that. The value lays not just in repairing the movie. It’s also in doing it fast, and spending as little of your time as possible.

Treasured is just the tip of the iceberg. Improvements in Repair Service are mostly underwater:

Today, where do you spend/waste time?

• 1. Finding my service, and deciding to try it.
  If you need to do 20 Google searches, follow 50 links, try several products, until you finally find the one that works, you’ve probably wasted half a day.
• 2. Getting started with Treasured and sending a repair request.
  This one is already well optimized. Not a priority today.
• 3. Waiting for the Repair Kit.
  Developing a repair kit takes time. As I’m accumulating experience and building powerful repair tools, the lead time tends to go down.
• 4. Getting the Repair Kit to work.
  Repair kit can quickly become unfriendly applications. I know what are the common pitfalls when you try to use the kit for the first time. Big improvements can be done here to shorten this phase.
• 5. Getting through payment.
  I’m using a standard solution here, that works well.
• 6. Entering the code and running the repair again.
  I see it technically feasible to remove this step. Watermarks could be removed from movies in a breeze.

Therefore, my vision of an effortless movie repair experience is still far from reality. But if I keep the same pace of work during 2009, I can probably walk half the distance.

Codecs gone missing?

Since QuickTime 7.5 update, the older codecs (so called “legacy”) are hidden by default in the export dialogs.
In your SimpleMovieX session, for example, Cinepak used to appear as an option for video encoding. It’s no longer the case.

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.

AVI: Not worth your time

Recently I’ve started to receive several complaints from customers. All of them related to AVI editing and saving.
Some are experiencing audio loss after saving, others see their movie become several days long (!!!), others can’t even finish the saving operation, as SimpleMovieX stalls.

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.

A fix for mp4 merging problem

Versions 3.8 and 3.8.1 have a bug that prevents merged mp4 files from being saved as mp4. Only mov format is proposed.
This problem, whose origin is explained in the previous blog post, is solved in the 18 december “night build” that you can download from my web account:

http://idisk.mac.com/getclockworks-Public/
file name: SimpleMovieX18Dec.zip

More improvements and bug fixes are also present in this version (still labeled 3.8.1)

• Movie resulting from merging several mp4 clips can no longer be saved in mp4 format. Fixed
• Merge operations between movies with chapters and movies without chapters gives wrong result. Fixed
• New Option to add chapters when merging in Preferences.
• Removed “Unsupported media” popping up with some kinds of MPEG-2 files
• Files open in a SimpleMovieX session are locked, cannot be deleted, until we quit SimpleMovieX, even if the documents has been closed. Fixed
• Movie loading and document closing made faster.

The official release will take place after Christmas break.

How to screw a release

Two days before SimpleMovieX 3.8 was released, I was approached by a potential customer, Jon, that said he would buy my app if I added a small feature: drag multiple clips at the same time and stitch them together in order.
SimpleMovieX could already do that, but you had to drag them one by one, and paying a lot of attention to where the playhead was or the movie would be inserted at the wrong place.

Needless to say, I had already be warned against those “last minute”, “sneak-in”, “one line of code” features. And I had also experienced it the hard way a couple of times. But the flesh is weak, and I finally included it. It worked great.

So great that Jon saw a possible improvement: order the files by name or by dates. A few more line of code, and it was done. Even greater, if I could add chapter markers automatically to make the multiple movies visible once they’ve been merged. Yes, Jon I can do that. It’s just one more line of code.

And finally, I proudly released version 3.8, advertising “Merge several movies in one shot” as one of the top improvements. There’s just a small problem. This “one more line of code” that creates the chapters on the fly, also breaks a much more important feature: Native saving, the capability of saving the merged movie in avi or mp4, whichever format the original movies had.

Don’t get me wrong: I want more Jons, more customers with great ideas to make SimpleMovieX better. Thank you Jon.
But the bottom line is: Many new customers will be turned down when they try the “merge in one shot” and discover that they can’t save. What failed? Validation, due to overconfidence. Never underestimate one line of code. Even in small apps like SimpleMovieX that you’ve written end to end.

PS: I’m currently working on the fix, it’s almost done. There’s a simple workaround: Drop your files one by one as in previous versions. Once I’ve a fix, I’ll publish a download link.

Will a lower price tag sell more?

When it comes to pricing, software is a mystery.
SimpleMovieX, my flagship product, is no exception. Along all 2008, I’ve used a unique price tag world wide: $35

But in the last 18 months, global currencies have fluctuated quite a lot: Euro and Dollar, to take the prominent ones, have ranged from 1.25 to 1.60, a 25% variation. If we remove low and high peaks, we have sustained exchange rates between 1.35 to 1.55, still a 15% variation.

How does this affect sales? In July’08, SimpleMovieX was 25% cheaper to a French customer than in October’08. Furthermore, this variation breaks psychological price thresholds, like the 30 euros barrier: 27 euros in July, 33 in October (including VAT)
In the meantime, the US customers don’t see a price change, so they can be considered the “reference group”.

Let’s do the statistics on the sales between May’07 and Oct’08, a period of 18 months that sees an increase of Euro of 15%, then an abrupt decrease of 25%.
I plot a XY chart of quarterly average values. In X, the Euro/Dollar exchange rate, in Y the ratio of sales to US customer to sales to Eurozone customers.

Conclusion: No correlation between the two factors. (I was expecting a line, I get a cross!)
Euro customers don’t purchase more when the price of SimpleMovieX goes down.

Classic economic theories of demand/offer balanced by price do not seem to apply here. Software pricing remains a mystery.

SimpleMovieX 3.8

I’m almost done with the new version of my “flagship” product.
Several relevant improvements, all coming from users feedback, have made it in version 3.8, a free upgrade for all registered customers.

First of all, the Search Pane has been completely revamped, and most editing operations can be done from there directly, using the tiles as visual cue to find the segments to remove or to keep. Thanks to Krystal for this idea: It’s so evident that I wonder how it took me four years to implement that!

The Contact Sheet, a kind of overview of the movie, is exported in rich-text format, with pictures, and you can edit it, archive, send by email, save in PDF or JPG formats, print, all from a rich-text savvy editor like TextEdit, Pages or MS-Word.

Small details like those are what make SimpleMovieX unique. And I urge all the users to submit more ideas: It’s your lightweight movie editor.

Treasured is finally out!

That’s a breakthrough in movie repair technology. For the first time, you can preview your damaged files and decide what deserves to be repaired.

It’s early to tell if all the goals of Treasured have been met, but for sure the landscape has changed for me:
Ten to twenty times more people contact me for a movie repair now. Treasured is definitively the hook that my Movie Repair Service needed.
But two thirds of them are not actual customers, they are just playing with the app and uploading a trashed DivX or WMV file.

The remaining third is a mix of my traditional customer base of video professionals, and a new category of customers. By lowering the barrier to request a repair, I’m attracting new types of repairs, new types of files, for which Treasured was not initially designed or optimized.

Bottom line: My claim of 90% accurate diagnostic, 80% with preview, that I religiously checked before Treasured was released, is wrong due to the diversity of movies I’m seeing now.

Google Chrome: Apple’s “Sputnik moment” ?

Remember that Sputnik scene of “The Right Stuff”?

I can imagine some Apple execs running frantically in the hallways and meeting in an underground war room in Cupertino headquarters. In the dim light, they start analyzing Google Chrome features (of lack thereof) and suddenly Steve slams the table with his fist and yells: “Safari is dead if we don’t change the direction now.”

Google Chrome must have been a shock for Apple’s Safari team. Apple developers were probably quietly completing alpha stage for Safari 4.0, and suddenly, bam!

Now Safari must redefine itself, and go in a different direction, and do it fast. SquirrelFish Extreme, announced today, only a few weeks after the original SquirrelFish Javascript engine, is maybe a sign of things starting to move. If SquirrelFish was a leap forward, why announce another leap forward before even releasing it? Because of Chrome, imho.

Every day, I spend a few hours on a Windows machine, and this week I’ve noticed that I’ve stopped using Safari completely. Chrome is my browser of choice in Windows now. A threat for Safari on the Mac, for sure.

Apple will probably not conform with playing catch up, and I’m looking forward to see what exciting stuff there are preparing for January. Or maybe Safari 4.0 has to be delayed, but for good.

Frankenstein’s creature is alive

For the last few days, I’ve been busy writing a new program, code named “Ventilo”, but that could also be called Frankenstein as it’s made out of a dozen of pieces of other programs that I’ve been writing over the last year and half.
Today I’ve made big progress and the creature is finally alive.

Where I had twenty programs capable of repairing one type of damaged movies each, now I have one Frankenstein creature capable of previewing them all.

Note that I’m not saying repairing, just previewing. Because what I’ve grown in scope, has come at the cost of feature depth.

I’m happy with that, because it’s exactly what I wanted to do:
Being able to view what is inside a damaged movie file is indeed very important. It’s telling you two things:

• First, that your beloved footage is still here, latent, waiting for a repair. You can almost touch it.
• Second, that there’s someone that cares about video professionals. It’s not always a fairy tale, shit happens. And it’s good to know that someone is here to help.

The reason why Ventilo does not repair the movie is a technical one: If getting a computer to analyze the contents of a file and preview a cherry-picked frame is a hard task, it’s an easy one compared to extract all the frames, video and audio, and present them perfectly synchronized, without artefact, in a broadcast quality movie.

Preview is a feature that luckily falls at the tiny intersection of what people wish could be done, and what technically I’m able to do. And it’s also the missing piece of the Movie Repair puzzle because it’s what creates the emotion, the engagement.

Ventilo was born from an intuition:

Every day, a few hundred (unlucky) people discover that an important movie file, because it’s urgent or because it’s a piece of their memories, has been damaged and cannot be open. They seek help in friends, colleagues, Internet forums, and end up searching for a “tool to fix damaged movies” or a “software to repair corrupt film”.

What they find is a dozen of crappy products that will lead them nowhere. The problem is that quality movie repair is delivered as a service, not as a software. But people doesn’t look for a service, it looks like a strange idea.

So how can I let them know, and help them recover their movie?

Enter Ventilo. A free tool that they will easily find and use, and that will tell them the truth about their file:

“No, it can’t be repaired because the file contains only alien data”

“Yes, it can be fixed, look at the preview… but the repair is a complex task, it can only be done by a video hacker and this service can cost you between x and y.”

Ventilo also facilitates some hardeous tasks, like data extraction and transfer, and saves time both to the customer and to the repair technician.

In summary, Ventilo lowers several barriers:
Barrier to discovery (Google will find it), to use (it’s software), to gratification (free preview!), and to engagement (big hope, small time footprint).
Thus enabling many more people to get their file repaired.

As I’m working alone, instead of a specification, I prefer a small set of guidelines that let me decide quickly whether something must, can, or cannot be added to Ventilo.

My guidelines:

• Tell something interesting about all the files in my “collection” of corrupt movies, and preview 90% of them.
• Release 1.0 within one month, stable enough.
• Provide a simple user interface that makes Ventilo feel like a Mac application.
• Give an emotional touch to the Preview.

Ventilo is far from finished, the user interface work has just started. I’ll share with you in the next days the first screenshots and discuss a couple of interaction design items.

click to enlarge

Contact me if you would like to beta-test Ventilo. bjoossen at aeroquartet.com