Watch Out, GoPro: Auto-Editing Is the Future of Video
Upstart camera and app makers could beat GoPro at its own game.
Credit:
Graava
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Smartphones and GoPros have made it so easy to take hundreds of photos and videos that you can quickly get bogged down when it comes time to edit. If you're like me, you probably just dump your photos and videos onto your hard drive and forget about them.
Big names like Apple and Google, along with a bunch of startups, have begun offering services that organize and/or edit your photos and videos for you. But while auto-editing works well for photos, it doesn't always work well for videos—it's just the difficult nature of the medium.
{{amazon name="Sony HDR-AS200V/W Action Cam", asin="B00R1COCVI", align="right"}} After all, you need software smart enough to find the best parts of your footage and stitch it together in the right order, all while syncing it to music. It's a tall order, but some brilliant minds are attacking this challenge head-on.
The latest company to get into the auto-editing game is Graava, which makes a small action cam of the same name. Graava uses multiple sensors and artificial intelligence to pick out the most important clips, and creates a video for you in the cloud.
It works by utilizing data from the camera, a microphone, an accelerometer, GPS location data, and your heart rate (if connected via Bluetooth to an Apple Watch or Android Wear device). When you're done filming, you connect Graava to its charging cradle, where it connects to the cloud and begins working on your video.
A companion app allows you to set the length of the video and choose the music you'd like to use. When it's done editing, you can share your video to any number of social networks.
Graava's camera won't give you the image quality or durability of a GoPro. It's water-resistant—not waterproof—and maxes out at 1080p, but it can capture 4K time-lapse videos using its 8 megapixel sensor. When set to 1080p with WiFi off, it's estimated to last 3 hours on a single charge.
Graava's cradle uses magnets to both charge the device and hold it in place, and when it's in the cradle, the camera can act as either a security cam or a baby monitor.
You can currently pre-order Graava for $249, but the price will jump back up to $399 come September. Either way, the camera won't actually ship until Q1 2016.
But Graava isn't alone in trying to make video auto-editing work, and work well. Another newcomer is Shred Video, which released a Mac app that will auto-edit GoPro videos with just a few clicks. The company also offers an iPhone app that makes 15-second Instagram videos.
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Like Graava, Shred analyzes your video to find the best clips and syncs them up to a song of your choosing. The app also allows you to edit and rearrange the clips if you don't like the ones it picks.
While these newcomers are trying to make a splash, GoPro is working on its own editing suite. TechCrunch reports that the company is planning to release a mobile editing app before the end of the summer that will make it much easier for GoPro users to create and distribute compelling videos.
In an interview with GoPro CEO Nick Woodman, TechCrunch found out that the company is also working on a cloud storage and editing service, which will make it easier for users to share their content online. Woodman made no mention of auto-editing, but he did discuss a feature that could automatically create highlight reels.
Regardless, between tech titans like Google and newcomers like Graava and Shred, GoPro will almost certainly have to offer auto-editing if it wants to stay competitive.
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