We liked the video stabilisation app SteadyLens a lot when it was released, if you haven't heard of it check out our review and the video demo we made below (comparing it to iMovie 11's stabilisation feature).

Updated Features & Pricing

SteadyLens developers midnox have just released a new, updated, version of the app and changed its name to Luma.

The name change reflects the new features which go beyond just (very good) video stabilisation. The big feature is the price - Luma is now free (dropping the $2.99 / £1.99 in-app upgrade), but we also like the live filters and manual controls.

The price drop alone means we recommend you grab the app now and try it out, but here are the rest of the new features that make it one of our highly recommended iPad (and iPhone/iPod Touch) video apps:

- Real time filters
- Pinch to zoom
- Portrait recording
- Stabilized viewfinder
- Lock exposure, focus and white balance

iPhone and iPod touch features:
- Medium quality recording mode

iPad features:
- Full 720p recording

Luma from midnox on Vimeo.

Well, it's Friday and, for many people desperate to get to the weekend, that means trawling YouTube for silly cat videos. What better way to justify watching a silly cat video than this creation from soon-to-be-YouTube-star bjseverns which was made 100% on his (jailbroken) iPad.

From the description (see below) it looks like a lot of work went into this video, and it made us laugh, so we hope it brightens up your Friday too:

And here's the description of how the video was made without leaving the iPad:

Here is an original movie I made 100% on iPad. I used Photopuppet HD for the animation, iMovie to put everything together, Garageband for the song, iMovie Extras for titles, iFile to move the GB audio to iMovie without iTunes and Reel Director for Zoom/pan and to transcode the Photopuppet video into a format that iMovie likes.

We love Photosmith, the Adobe Lightroom companion for iPad. If you haven't seen it yet, check out our in-depth review of Photosmith.

To help Photographers see why they need this app on their iPads the guys at Photosmith have created this swanky new video (there will be more soon) which we think nails it. Enjoy - and check out Photosmith on the App Store.

Here's Apple's own iOS 5 overview to whet your appetite for the official release this Autumn. It is the usual high polish, and often parodied, affair with mostly Scott Forstall (naturally) talking up the new iOS developments.

We must admit to being quite excited about some of the new features, but we think one of the biggest developments for wider iPad adoption will be the independent activitation of the device. No computer needed. That's the future folks!

What about you? Is there anything you're particularly looking forward to following the iOS 5 and iCloud announcements?

For those who are curious to see the new iOS5 features running on the iPad, 9to5mac.com have posted this video of the Developer Beta in action. Looks good!

This week's posts in case you missed anything:

Photosmith - An Essential iPad App for Lightroom Users - Our in-depth look at this great new Adobe Lightroom companion for the iPad.

Video Find: Code Station iPad Dock Prototype - We want this prototype for real, check it out!

"I've just touched the tip of what the app is capable of letting me create!" Artist Shawn Harris gives us an inside look at the creative process behind the amazing music video he created with Brushes on the iPad for the song 'Thank Each Mistake' .

S1 and S2. Sony's first iPad competitors - Does the iPad finally have some serious competition, we take a look at Sony's new tablets set for release later this year.

SteadyLens. Smooth out your iPad 2 video footage in realtime - Can an iPad app really stabilise hand-held video in real-time? We have a video comparison of the SteadyLens app in action so you can see for yourself.

Video Find: Miniot Cover Review - Buying Decisions - The beautiful but troubled iPad 2 Miniot Wood Cover is reviewed highlighting some of the issues with the Cover's practicality.

GarageBand: The Strokes, 'You Only Live Once' - A simply amazing cover by the very talented Yuri Wong, more so because it was recorded entirely on GarageBand for iPad, and the video is very well put together too. 

NAB -On The Floor - How To Make A Padumentary from Manhattan Edit Workshop on Vimeo. 

We saw this video via @tapmaguk on Twitter and thought you might find it interesting. The rig is pretty substantial but it does show the potential of the HD video camera on iPad 2. You can see more of Manhattan Edit Workshop's videos from NAB on their Vimeo channel.

One of the key reasons to upgrade to iPad 2 for many is Video Mirroring, especially those involved in Training/Education (or Gamers!). But what if you simply cannot afford to upgrade or justify spending out on the iPad 2 because you spent all your hard earned cash on the original iPad?

If you are willing to Jailbreak your original iPad and buy a $3 app that has been around for a while in the Cydia store, then you can get something close to what those lucky iPad 2 owners have got.

Although not 1080p, you can see from the video demo by Insanely Great Mac that the Display Out app provides a workable solution, and it might just ease the pain of not being able to upgrade for some.

Anyone tried this for themselves? Please let us know how you got on in the comments.

Within just 24 hours of its launch the first ever Music Video shot entirely on an iPad 2 (actually 4 of them) had been released, and we've been in contact with the Artist and Video Producers to get the inside track on this unique video.

Remedy Films created the video for NEED a song by independent artist Eddy from her EP Start An Uproar [iTunes store link]. Remedy Films and Eddy have worked together before on videos for several of Eddy's songs using DSLRs for video recording.

You can watch the video below, but first a few words from Chase Andrews at Remedy Films about the video shoot, using the iPad 2 to shoot and edit professional video and a few photos courtesy of Eddy herself. 

iPad Creative (iPC): Why did you decide to use the iPad 2?

Remedy Films (RF): We always try to do fun and creative things using the newest tools in different ways. We were at another music video premier for a video we had just finished the week before. We were just talking about how awesome the new iPad was looking... I mentioned that it would be funny to film another music video with Eddy using only the iPad 2. Eddy left that night then called me later and said that they wanted to go ahead and do it. 

iPC: How did you plan the shoot having never seen or used the iPad 2 beforehand?

RF: Since we couldn't get our hands on one early, we just assumed the video would be similar to the iPhone 4's video. We did some practice shots using the iPhone and some test edits in iMovie on the iPhone.

iPC: We there any issues with the cameras on the iPads or using the devices as your production cameras?

RF: There weren't any issues while using the iPads. I was super impressed with the battery. Shooting video is probably one of the things that would use up the battery but it lasted the whole time on one charge right out of the box. We actually had 50-60% battery left on each iPad after filming for a few hours. 

I knew it wasn't designed as a professional video camera in the slightest, so we would be stuck with whatever results we got. We probably shouldn't have filmed in a dark setting, but it actually worked well in a "party" environment, plus it fit the song perfectly! We still treated the cameras as "professional cameras." we had one mounted to a steadicam rig, one was on a Kessler Crane Cineslider, and the other one was on a DIY hand held rig. The fourth iPad was held by Eddy for a few shots of her singing and dancing.

iPC: Was any of the video edited on the iPads?

RF: We started the edit on the iPad. We synced all the iPads to a Mac Pro, then organized the videos into one folder and then synced that folder back to one iPad so we had all the footage on one iPad. Remedy films had two editors going, one on the mac pro and FCP, and the other, myself, on the iPad 2.

I was able to get the into done on the iPad, but once it came to syncing the vocals up to the song it became very hard to be so precise and creative. We wanted to be quick with this edit so we ended up bailing on the iPad iMovie edit. If we had a longer turn around time it could have been done. It wasn't bad for a 5$ video editing app though. So in the long run we ended up only editing in FCP. 

iPC: Is there anything else about this project that you would like to comment on?

RF: After being in line for 8 hours, buying 3 iPads, filming for 5 hours, and editing for 12 hours, we were exhausted. Looking back at the whole project, I am very glad that we did it. It was a great experience, and fun doing something first, that was history making. Thanks goes out to everyone who made this happen and helped along the way.

Thank you to Chase Andrews - President of Remedy Films for letting us know more about this landmark video and to Eddy for supplying all the images in this post. Congratulations to you both on a really fun video which we think captures the feeling of the song really well.

It is certainly an impressive demonstration of the iPad 2's new video capabilities using a creative approach.

Finally, here is the end result, Remedy Films' video for Eddy's song NEED and if, like us, you like the song you can download a free copy directly from Eddy's website:

Continuing our mini-series of posts about the potential benefits of the iPad 2, released this Friday, we take a look at how Teachers and other Educators could benefit from the upgrade.

The Scenario

Let's fire up the 'dream machine' and take a little trip into an imaginary scenario. You are a Teacher taking a 30 strong group of 12/13 year old kids on a Museum tour (Ok 'nightmare machine').

You want to do something other than the printed-list-on-a-clipboard assignment you do every time and your Institution has a bunch of 3G iPad 2 units you can use on your field trip (we did say 'imagine').

You decide to split your students up into groups of 3 or 4 and give each group an iPad 2 with 3G. Their assignment? A 21st Century Treasure Hunt using the following technologies:

Video Chat Check-in (FaceTime (WiFi) / Skype (3G))

You locate yourself somewhere in the Museum, where doesn't matter. You ask your groups to call you once they find each item on the list and show it to you via the video conference (FaceTime or Skype) so you can confirm their find before they move on to the next 'treasure'.

If you want to be really comprehensive you could ask them to switch to the front facing camera and show that all 3 or 4 of them are there so you can confirm no-one has wandered off. By the way, you don't need to have an iPad you could just use your iPhone 4/iPod Touch 4th generation (WiFi only) if you have one, or an older 3GS for Skype calls.

Virtual / Augmented Reality (AR) Learning

You have cleverly chosen to visit a Museum that has developed an iOS App that uses a map of the Museum and GPS to ascertain the students' location and AR overlay giving information on what is being seen by the onboard camera. You could even do this in a City Centre if they have something like the Museum of London's AR App.

Alternatively, an App that uses a 3D model to create a virtual version of the Museum so the students can touch the room they are in and see information pertinent to their location, perhaps using the camera to line up a frame in the centre of the screen and overlay information that they can use to learn about the exhibits or displays.

Movie Creation as an Assignment

As part of the assignment you ask your students to put together a 3 minute iMovie with voice over and sound, detailing the items they found in the museum and their search. You ask them to make sure all of their group appear in the video (another verification method).

This will then be presented to the rest of the class when they return and groups will vote for their favourite video (you could even assign extra credit on the assignment for the winners).

You could even go as far as having a YouTube or Vimeo account or Facebook page setup where they can upload their movie. This would act as submission of their assignment.

You, meanwhile, could be sat anywhere working on other tasks, waiting for the submissions to appear in the account.

Video Recording & Review

What if you could video your students delivery of a presentation or demonstration of a skill and give them direct feedback, even including other students in small group peer assessment? This can be a very powerful teaching tool and encourages critique and critical thinking whilst the activity is fresh in everyone's minds.

In fact, on our recent post 'iPad 2 and Video Makers', one of our readers, Axis, told us this is exactly what he plans to do with iPad 2:

"As a martial arts instructor I would be putting the video capabilities of the iPad 2 to use on a daily basis. The value of being able to record a student and then show them the video almost immediately is incredible. Students progress so much faster when they can see what you are seeing. Telling a student a technique not quite right is one thing, but when that student sees it for themselves something powerful happens and that technique is perfected exponentially faster. Being able to record and immediately analyze your performance is priceless. We do it now with the iPhone, and many times transfer the video over to the iPad and it's much larger screen, but that adds quite a bit of extra time, I can see the iPad 2 greatly streamlining this process."

Of course, as Axis mentioned, HD video recording is not unique to iPad 2, the iPhone 4 did it first, but here is what iPad 2 brings to the table:

• Screen size - a larger playback image helps you see the detail more clearly, plus share it with more than one person
• Video Editing/Recording - This is new to the iPad and as such eliminates import or transfer of video from another device/source
• Video Mirroring - which could display the resulting video on an even larger screen, no matter what app you are using (a major improvement over iPad 1 & iOS 4.2)
• Front and Rear Cameras - Enables a learner to show what they see, but also feature themself in the video, opening up a more contextual recording of the situation or events. Including them in the video could add to the experience, for example, showing their reactions or the scene behind them as they run away from something (think Media/Graphic students and Cloverfield).

Video Mirroring as an IT demo tool

The new iOS Video Mirroring, an iPad 2 only feature, has its obvious application in the classroom as a demonstration tool, but we can see Video Mirroring being used in future roll-outs of iPad programs. Think how it could be used to demo to Faculty staff and large groups of Students in a lecture hall projected onto a large screen for example.

How useful would it be to have everyone sat with their new iPad 2 in their hands, watching a live demo of accessing the App store for example, or using Safari to log in to a VLE and access courses, resources or submit assignments?

You could then back this up with printed or electronic instructions, but there is nothing like being shown how to use something whilst having hands-on practice yourself. As an IT Instructor of nearly 15 years, this has never failed to be the most impactive learning activity, in my experience.

Over to You

Again, these are only a few examples, we haven't mentioned the enormous potential of GarageBand for example or WiFi interactive sharing or using Skype for visiting speakers or inter-school activities.

We would love to hear your ideas. Have you got anything you plan to use the new iPad 2 for? What can it help you do that you cannot do now? Let us know in the comments.

With the announcement yesterday of the two cameras on iPad 2 all sorts of creative possibilities have opened up for iPad users. From the obvious ones like FaceTime and messing around with Photo Booth, to guerilla film makers using the HD video recording and iMovie app to create on the spot films, documentaries and short pieces that are published 'from the field' directly to YouTube, Vimeo, etc. It is the latter that has us most excited.

The Back Story

It might take a while for you (and others observing you) to get used to waving around what is essentially a big screen with a camera on the back when shooting video, but many video producers currently use a screen around the size of the iPad to monitor video feeds 'in the field', they are usually not attached to the camera though.

Instead of screwing up one eye and looking through an EVF type viewfinder or an iPhone sized video monitor (perhaps even smaller) on many cameras, iPad 2 gives you both a decent sized monitor and HD capture in one device.

Now consider the addition of iMovie on your iPad 2 with its precision editing, 3 track audio displaying waveforms, audio fades, effects, titling and other controls previously only found in the desktop version. This one device now becomes a serviceable editing suite complete with onboard video rendering and export to multiple destinations.

No (traditional) computer involved, it is a mobile Video Studio, that is thinner than an iPhone and it only cost you the iPad you were going to buy anyway (let's face it) plus another $4.99!

Scene One - Video Podcasting

Let's pretend for a minute that someone like the makers of OWLE have produced an iPad sized device to stablise it when used to shoot video and mount an external mic. You are attending a trade show and you want to shoot as much video as possible, edit it and upload it to your Podcast Feed / YouTube / Vimeo asap to get the news out there to your readers (or perhaps we should say viewers).

This has been possible for a while with the iPhone, especially iPhone 4 with its HD video recording. But to be honest, depsite some stellar programming from Apple engineers, it is still difficult to see the detail clearly and editing in iMovie on the iPhone is decidedly fiddly when you are in a hurry.

Imagine the 9.7" screen of iPad 2 filled with your video image, using it as one of the larger monitors available for a portable video recorder to see the detail when shooting. Editing becomes a joy with all the extra screen space, dual core processor plus '9x' Graphics processing power chomping through your effects, transitions and theme rendering in no time.

You could probably do most of your editing on the way back to your hotel, set the movie(s) rendering and exporting in the background, ready to upload your mini-masterpiece as soon as you unlock your hotel room door. Truly portable video making, for the price of an iPad and a $4.99 app.

That's why we are excited about iPad 2, and this is only one example.

Over to You

We have other ideas in mind, but we are sure you can do much better, so what do you think? Have you got any other ways the iPad 2 will impact Video Makers (amateur or professional)? How do you think the new video capabilities could be used creatively? Let us know in the comments.

Sometimes it is all too easy to take for granted this amazing innovation in technology which we use day in / day out, but the iPad has become such an integral part of our everyday lives that we often do just that.

So we really enjoyed being reminded of the pure excitement and promise that the original iPad launch brought with it less than a year ago as we watched this video during Apple's iPad 2 Keynote. Take a moment and revel in what has been achieved in just 11 months, and get excited about what is coming up in 2011!

When some videos created with PhotoSpeak popped up in our iPad Creative Art and Design group on Flickr they seriously freaked us out! You really have to check out that first link to see what we mean. But we were also fascinated by these videos and we had to find out more about Photo Speak.

What we discovered was a ton of fun and a great way to entertain ourselves and the kids in the dark winter hours. It also provides portrait artists with another creative outlet, if for nothing other than a bit of silly fun.

What PhotoSpeak does

As you can see from the video above, this app takes a still image portrait and renders it as a 3D animation. Using some amazing technology called Motion Portrait, the app attempts to identify the eyes and mouth as reference and animation points.

It doesn't always manage it though and we had to try a few different images to get it to work. You can scale and shrink the image to help the detection engine and we found that, depending on the image, zooming in our out gave us a better result.

Once PhotoSpeak has located the eyes and mouth it will use the internal mic to pick up your voice and animate the image as it repeats what you have said, it literally makes your Photo Speak in near realtime in response to the audio it hears, amazing stuff! There isn't curently the option of importing audio already on your iPad, though, like songs or audio in your iTunes library.

Making Movies

The app can also record audio from the built-in mic or other audio input so that you can export that audio and animation as a movie. The processed movie can be saved to your Photo Library, shared to Facebook, YouTube (although we had trouble getting this to work) or via email.

It is a bit annoying that the app only works in Portrait mode, which means videos with big black borders on the side, but we understand that the primary use of the app is with 'portraits' so it sort of makes sense.

Even with the fairly gimmicky feel of the app, in the hands of more creative minds than ours some amazing and frankly, creepy, pieces of animated art can be produced with PhotoSpeak.

(We would love to show you some of these movies here but unfortunately, Flickr video embeds still do not work on iOS. If you haven't already followed the link in the first paragraph, check out these examples in our Flickr group from some of the most creative iPad owners out there. Thanks again to everyone who has contributed to the Flickr group.)

If you would like to try this out for yourself PhotoSpeak is on sale until the end of January for just $0.99 (59p), after which it returns to its $2.99 price.

If you do create something on your iPad with Photo Speak feel free to add it to the iPad Creative group, new members are always welcome.

As for our effort, it is very poor we realise, but our excuse is it was done very quickly over a lunchtime, enjoy all 6 seconds of it below:

The StudioDock includes a power supply so it will charge your iPad whilst it is docked which is useful, but it is the shear range of connection options within the dock that impresses us and our brains are now spinning with all the things we could do with this thing including stuff we hadn't considered before with the video out. 

There has been no announcement at the time of publishing this post about pricing though, we have scoured the Internet looking for any resellers offering pre-orders but we haven't found anything yet.

Sometimes it is hard to find the words. This made us laugh, a lot. Enjoy!

It is funny what you find when trawling the Web for iPad related videos.  Over at Vimeo we found the video below, uploaded a few days ago from Alejandro Pozo.  It is a series of stills but shows how he has gone about creating his own mount after searching for a commercial solution.

Why would you want to do this?

a) Why not?

b) Imagine this as a map replacement for cycle touring or as a large screened GPS. There are a number of apps being developed for the iPad specifically, but iPhone versions of cycle apps already exist. Just do a search in the app store and you will find lots of them.

The potential for writing off our iPad concerns us a bit, given the likelihood of a fall when cycling especially in the Winter, but maybe if a sturdy enough casing was used this would be better.

What do you think? Do you know of any other good solutions for Cyclists? Let us know in the comments below.

DIY. How to mount an Ipad on a bike. from Alejandro Pozo on Vimeo.

Making Future Magic: iPad light painting from Dentsu London on Vimeo.

This video demonstrates an enchanting and mind blowing 'painting with light' technique that uses movies played on the iPad, photographed with stop motion and multiple exposure techniques to produce floating block shaped text.

This short video from Vincent Laforet shows how the iPad can help Creatives do their job by simply offering a place for collecting all those bits of paper, resources and Internet connectivity in one, fairly lightweight device with a big enough screen to make documents, photographs and illustrations useable, whilst remaining mobile.

As Vincent says in the video, these things carried separately in their 'analogue' form are easy to lose or misplace, but with the iPad, it is always there (or downloadable) when he needs it.  Although we have just discovered it on Vimeo, this video is from a few months ago so there are probably any number of apps that Vincent now uses to assist his workflow, and the pace of new app development is picking up fast as more and more people get their iPads, providing good future prospects for the device.

Over to you

What about you?  Have you seen or heard any good examples of how Creatives are using their iPads to help them in their activities?  We would love to hear from you in the comments.

You may have seen this already, but we loved this and wanted to share it with you.  Jordan Hollender (Flash only portfolio site), a New York based commercial photographer and all-round creative artist, has produced this humorous video to accompany Scott Harris' cover of 'Eye of the Tiger'.  It was created as part of a promotional exercise for commercial production company Zbabam Productions (another Flash based portfolio site).

Of note for us though is that all of the music was created using iPad music apps, and then the video was shot with Canon DSLRs (a 5D Mk II and 7D) over a couple of days and edited in Apple's Final Cut Pro. 

We have been banging the drum (pun intended) for music creation on the iPad since we started this blog, and here is another fine and fun example of what can be accomplished with a few apps and a very healthy dose of creativity.

What do you think?

A couple of days ago we posted about how great the new iPhone 4's HD footage looked on the iPad screen.  If you wanted to show someone else how good the video looks or grab a frame from that great looking video you could try waiting until just before the right moment, press the Home and Power buttons at the same time, switch to the Photos app and check the frame grab to see if you were fortunate enough to capture the moment you were after.  If not, you have to switch back to the video start playing it again, wait for the right moment... and so on.

Or, you could spend £1.79 (or $2.99) on VideoPix for iPad [iTunes link] from See It With Us.  This app is an iPad specific version of the previously released iPhone app.  (Non-DRM) Videos on your iPad can be played back as slowly as 1 frame per second, giving you absolute control over the image that you then capture.  The app keeps recent frame captures in its own library and you can email up to 20 frames in one go for sharing purposes.

Once you have grabbed your frame you can then crop the image and add a few basic effects, i.e. Black & White and Sepia.

Source videos can be those already on your iPad (i.e. synced from iTunes), as long as they are not DRM'd, you can transfer video over Wi-Fi from another device, or alternatively import video via the Apple Camera Connection Kit.

720p is the recommended maximum resolution for this app, they don't recommend 1080p video due to concerns over slow performance, so if you do try this on your iPad let us know how it goes.

There are a number of uses for this kind of app such as grabbing frames from movies for your own personal uses (like wallpapers), the company cites the example of golfers wanting to analyse a video of their swing frame by frame to spot the point at which they wobble, etc. but really it is useful to us to grab a screencap from a video to illustrate a blog post or to play back a video in slow motion to see the detail captured in our HD footage.

If you have any questions about what you can do with this app and your iPad there is a very useful FAQ on the See It With Us website so take a look, and if you get this app and find it useful we would like to hear how you have used it. Let us know in the comments below.

The video below shows the iPhone app in use, but it gives a good idea of how the app works: