The iOS app Videolicious was launched a couple of years ago with the idea of allowing you to quickly create multimedia stories on-the-hoof. Last week journalism and technology website Poynter revealed The Washington Post asks journalists without multimedia backgrounds, to use the app.
How it helps you
This app is great for putting together quick packages whilst out in the field, press conferences, Marches or gigs. In Poynter’s demo Andrew Beaujon uses it from a technology and journalism conference.
Once you’re happy with your piece, you have the option to add licence free music and even filters. If you upgrade from the free version you can add licensed music and logos to make your video more professional. You then have the option of sending to YouTube or it can be shared directly via Videolicious’ own player and dashboard.
In practice
I created a quick dispatch based on an event I covered last week. It was relatively quick to put together, although I retrofitted it and had to spend time downloading the elements to my phone. The app requires you to do your post in one take, so I had to do quite a few retakes. This arguably, is good practice but not so good if you’re used to sorting out problems in the edit suite. Also the camera is really unflattering (especially if your shooting from a desk upward) and I was much more comfortable with just audio. A good point is that you can upload a high or lo-res version depending on whether you’ve got good phone coverage or not.
My attempt to upload to my YouTube account didn’t work.
Drawbacks
Surprisingly, even though it’s a few years old, Videolicious does tend to crash. But then my iPhone is in need of an upgrade and it might deal better with images and video shot on the phone. I would have liked more of a chance to fix things retrospectively but the video can upload to a dashboard where potentially a multimedia editor could pick it up, check and re-edit if need be.
Summary
An app with real potential, but it needs practice. And possibly a recent smartphone.
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