By Graham K. Rogers

Although I usually work with still photography, the iPad, my iPhone and the Nikon D7000 camera I use all have video capabilities. Particularly with the iOS devices, ever since I had the iPhone 3G, I have made use of a number of apps that manipulate the photographs giving some interesting effects. Echograph allows output of what appears to be a still image with video content.

Introduction

A recent (and featured) arrival in the iTunes app store, Echograph, seeks to merge the media of the still photograph with the video: allowing a user to create an animated section within an image. This requires working with video and adjusting the clip, rather than adding motion to a still photograph.

It wasn't so much the description on the iTunes app store that convinced me to download this ($2.99) app as the video clips the developer had put up on the Echograph website. Along with the examples, there were several clips of the developer staff discussing the concepts behind the app. While one or two of these were a little flowery, the enthusiasm conveyed was infectious.

As well as information about the app, there is also a link on the website to Echograph's own adapter for the iPad. I used the Apple camera connector to import video to the iPad and this seemed to work fine.

Echograph

The View option reveals two buttons: My Library which contains any clips edited by the user; and Staff Picks, with a selection of animated images created by the Echograph team. Create, has three options: Capture Video, Choose from Library, and Try a Sample Clip.

The developers have thoughtfully provided a selection of clips that I was able to practice on. There was also access to the Photo Album where I did have a couple of clips of my own that I was able to try. I also imported a short video from my Nikon D7000 using the Apple adapter and the SD card. The video was imported into the Photo Album and was then available in the app.

The Capture Video option uses the iPhone camera. Steadiness of the clip used is fairly important (as well as quality) and the iPad may need some support if the camera is used with Echograph.

Processing

When the length is reduced enough, the area that is to remain animated is selected, using a process similar to erase. I have also used such a touch tool in apps like TiltShift and Dash of Color (adding colour back to a monochrome image).

The clip selected needs to have more than one area of movement -- one person in a static scene is not enough. The clips supplied with the app are good examples and I had some success with the traffic scene, making the cars static and animating the traffic sign. The other way round (moving cars) was less effective.

I tried a couple of my own clips that Echograph identified as being available in the library, but these were less successful: a clip needs to be steady otherwise movement outside the selected area will be noticeable. As I had found with iTimeLapse, support for the camera is essential with such imaging.

Exporting

Once created, an export panel is opened by pressing an arrow (top right). There are options for email, Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. The top of the panel also has a "Get Featured" option that requires a login and account creation.

I used the email option to export a Lo-def image that arrived as a 1.3MB GIF image with a size of 392 x 294 pixels. Another "Hi-Def" animated GIF image that was from a video made on the Nikon was sent by email and appeared as a file of some 815 KB (400 x 300).

I could see no information about this in the app, but the Hi-Def creations are 800 pixels and are MP4 files. I am informed by Echograph (see below) that exporting these by email will produce the same 400 pixel GIF output.

To access these files, the iPad needs to be connected to the computer using a cable. When the device is available in iTunes, opening the Apps panel shows a list (at the bottom) of those that can transfer data to the computer. Once the Echograph icon was highlighted, a list of all images in the app were available and I transferred two of the MP4 files I had made.

These MP4 files of 1.1MB and 1.2MB respectively displayed fairly well on the Mac. Opening them full screen (15" MacBook Pro) showed no artefacts (lines or pixels), although they were slightly less sharp than the normal 800 x 450 display.

Comments

I also found that the app did not self-quit and I came back to the iPad on several occasions during the day to find it still running.

I sent a note via the Echograph support pages (as shown in iTunes) with a comment on the file size/format restrictions, and the really quick reply told me that Email sharing by default is a 400px GIF. The Hi-Def Echograph is created at 800 pixels. I was also told in the email how the larger images could be transferred (they may also be used with Twitter and Facebook). This is the type of information that needs to be easily available for users, either through online help or in-app instructions.

The app is simple enough to use but may benefit from alternative output options: file types and size. I would also prefer the ability to save to the Photo Album so that I could work on this in other apps or export more easily myself.

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs.