{"id":287558,"date":"2013-06-18T09:00:01","date_gmt":"2013-06-18T16:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/?p=287558"},"modified":"2016-09-12T13:49:51","modified_gmt":"2016-09-12T20:49:51","slug":"new-blink-apps-even-creative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/blog\/new-blink-apps-even-creative\/","title":{"rendered":"New BLINK Apps Even More Creative"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following fast on the heels of its original BLINK<\/a> app for Windows Phone 8<\/a>\u2014which captures a burst of images when you take a photo so you can select the best shot\u2014Microsoft Research Redmond<\/a> is releasing an updated version of BLINK (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, <\/em>along with a new app called BLINK Cliplets that lets you creatively manipulate video clips. In addition, it\u2019s easy to share what you create using these apps with your family and friends.<\/p>\n

\"BLINK

With BLINK, a Windows Phone 8 user can select from a collection of shots at the bottom of the display to get precisely the shot she wants.<\/p><\/div>\n

The updated BLINK app takes that burst of images\u201416 shots that start before you press the shutter and extend to about a second afterward\u2014and creates a photo flipbook, known as a \u201cBLINK.\u201d By moving through that little bracket of time, your series of photos becomes a dynamic animation. It\u2019s the perfect time span for capturing just a bit of motion\u2014your baby\u2019s breaking smile, perhaps, or a back flip off a diving board. The new app can be used with any camera on any device.<\/p>\n

Windows 8 users also can download and try the new BLINK Cliplets app, which lets you combine and loop static and dynamic elements from short video clips. The resulting Cliplets can range from artistic to ingenious to outlandish. Fans of Microsoft Research apps will recall Cliplets for Windows 7 (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>. Now, the new version, with more sophisticated features and new sharing capabilities, is designed for use on the touchscreen of any Windows 8 (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> tablet, laptop, or desktop device.<\/p>\n

Users can share their BLINKs and Cliplets on their Facebook wall, via Twitter, through email, and on Socl (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, a social network from FUSE Labs (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> at Microsoft Research that enables users to curate, collect, and share visual media.<\/p>\n

Both BLINK apps are free, from the Windows Phone Store<\/a> and the Windows Store<\/a>, respectively.<\/p>\n

A New Way to Capture the Moment<\/h2>\n

The BLINK project team, led by Michael Cohen (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> and Matt Uyttendaele (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> of the Interactive Visual Media Group, quickly realized that users of the original BLINK enjoyed flipping through the frames of photos and reliving the moment as much as they did choosing which frame or frames to keep. And those users were clamoring for more creative ways to use and share their images.<\/p>\n

Krishnan Ramnath (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, the main developer of BLINK, came up with the name, as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted something that was easy to say and was also related to the app,\u201d Ramnath says. \u201cI thought, \u2018BLINK, and you won\u2019t miss a thing!\u2019 I said it aloud a few times and was convinced that the app should be called BLINK.\u201d<\/p>\n

A fortuitous choice, it appears.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople seem to love BLINK, and I hope they\u2019ll enjoy this update, which gives them a lot more creativity,\u201d says Cohen, who notes that, in its first couple of months, BLINK quickly became one of the most popular photo apps for Windows Phone 8, with more than 317,000 downloads, by users from nearly every country in the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy goal in this work has always been to allow people to truly \u2018capture the moment,\u2019\u201d Cohen says. \u201cA moment is not just an instant in time, but rather a specific memory that is constructed from a few seconds of experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cohen himself came to appreciate the power of BLINK during a family trip to Italy last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust as when you pick up your camera on vacation and start to see framed \u2018shots\u2019 to take, knowing you are capturing BLINKs makes you very aware of the tiny bits of motion around you, and you are drawn to them,\u201d he says. \u201cAs a photographer, once you know you are capturing BLINKs, your mind starts to \u2018see\u2019 the world in a different way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Getting Creative with BLINK Cliplets<\/h2>\n

The BLINK Cliplets app offers an even more sophisticated level of visual creativity.<\/p>\n

To illustrate, Cohen has created a series of tutorials (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> that show how easy it is to create Cliplets from bits of video\u201410 seconds or less\u2014that you upload to the app. One tutorial shows a girl leaping out of a toy store while a mechanical Pinocchio doll rides a unicycle beside her. You can make each moving element in the video have its own layer\u2014so, for example, you can freeze the girl mid-jump while the doll continues to pedal along. Or you can have her jump out and back repeatedly while the doll keeps pedaling forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a video, it\u2019s not a photo\u2014it\u2019s this combination,\u201d Cohen says. \u201cYou can get more creative and create a fun postcard to send off to somebody.\u201d<\/p>\n

The possibilities for humor and play are endless. Memes that have emerged already among the research team include making a person\u2019s eyes roll in opposite directions, having birthday candles get blown out and relit repeatedly, and playing with the temporal sequence of events in a video clip to create unlikely juxtapositions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Cliplets app is really great for adding more life and expression,\u201d says Cohen\u2019s colleague Neel Joshi (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, one of the creators of Cliplets.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always really liked the idea of the Harry Potter photo that is always alive and moving, and Cliplets makes it really easy to make these kinds of imagery.\u00a0Another big appeal of Cliplets for me is that it\u2019s a great way to make videos that are easy to consume.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOften, the best part of a really long video of a party or event is just a brief moment,\u201d Joshi says, \u201cand Cliplets gives you a way to highlight that and share it with your friends and family.\u00a0Cliplets allows you to focus a person\u2019s attention on what you think is important or what you want to convey as the person who experienced the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPersonally, I find I make a ton of Cliplets of my dog,\u201d he adds. \u201cCliplets capture her personality so much better than still photos.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sophisticated Underlying Technology<\/h2>\n

Although BLINK apps have been built for simplicity and ease of use, the underlying technology is highly sophisticated. Before you press the shutter to take a burst of photos, for example, BLINK is already recording images into its short-term memory\u2014that\u2019s how it saves \u201ca little bit of the past and a little bit of the future,\u201d as Cohen puts it. The Cliplets app also uses advanced image-stabilization technology that removes the effects of camera shake, stabilizing your handheld video clips so they look like they were captured by a camera or a smartphone set on a tripod.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith native code support in Windows Phone 8,\u201d Ramnath says, \u201cwe were able to offload the image stabilization and rendering to the GPU, which allowed for buttery-smooth scrolling through the set of captured images.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no surprise that the magic of BLINK has come from the same computer-vision and computer-graphics experts at Microsoft Research whose groundbreaking tools and innovations include image deblurring, panoramic stitching, image-search technology, and interactive navigation through photorealistic environments.<\/p>\n

The idea that evolved into BLINK began with a talk<\/a> that Cohen gave at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2005 in which he described how future cameras would capture bursts of images that could be transformed and viewed in many ways.<\/p>\n

Cliplets started as a research project and led to an award-winning paper<\/a> in 2012 by Joshi, Cohen, Uyttendaele, and several other Microsoft Research colleagues.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really a fun, new experience for me to write \u2018research\u2019 code that then became a publically available app,\u201d Joshi says. \u201cThe development expanded in an organic way as more people got involved in the development and design process, and Cliplets took on a life of its own.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of my primary motivations for the initial research and development of the app was to empower casual users to create something fun, unique, and memorable that went beyond traditional, \u2018boring\u2019 photos,\u201d he says.\u00a0\u201cThe simple yet expressive creation tools and the ability to share Cliplets are really compelling to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

A New Kind of Sharing Community<\/h2>\n

With the new sharing capabilities on Socl, the BLINK experience has expanded into a collective creative endeavor.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe BLINK community of fans and photographers is a blast of creative energy,\u201d says Lili Cheng<\/a>, general manager of FUSE Labs. \u201cBy inspiring and riffing on one another\u2019s ideas and interests, the moments shared in BLINK and BLINK Cliplets get more creative and magical as more people experiment with the tools.\u201d<\/p>\n

Socl lets you create\u2014and meet others while sharing\u2014not only BLINKs and Cliplets but also little stories or memes (Picotale), automatic collages (Collage), and video playlists (Video Parties).<\/p>\n

For Cohen, the creating and the sharing go hand in hand.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all remember that moment when our daughter launched the ball into the goal,\u201d he says. \u201cWe can see her foot hit the ball and the ball launching off in that perfect arc. We see in our mind when she giggles as the dog laps her face. Sharing these moments requires being able to capture, edit, share, and view small fragments of time. These are what BLINK and BLINK Cliplets let you do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Download the apps, and start creating and sharing today on your Windows Phone<\/a> and Windows 8 (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> devices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following fast on the heels of its original BLINK app for Windows Phone 8\u2014which captures a burst of images when you take a photo so you can select the best shot\u2014Microsoft Research Redmond is releasing an updated version of BLINK, along with a new app called BLINK Cliplets that lets you creatively manipulate video clips. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39507,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","msr-author-ordering":[],"msr_hide_image_in_river":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[194480],"tags":[200713,212264,212285,186953,212261],"research-area":[13551],"msr-region":[],"msr-event-type":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-promo-type":[],"msr-podcast-series":[],"class_list":["post-287558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-graphics-and-multimedia","tag-blink","tag-blink-cliplets","tag-image-stabilization-technology","tag-socl","tag-windows-phone-app","msr-research-area-graphics-and-multimedia","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_event_details":{"start":"","end":"","location":""},"podcast_url":"","podcast_episode":"","msr_research_lab":[199565],"msr_impact_theme":[],"related-publications":[],"related-downloads":[],"related-videos":[],"related-academic-programs":[],"related-groups":[],"related-projects":[],"related-events":[],"related-researchers":[],"msr_type":"Post","byline":"","formattedDate":"June 18, 2013","formattedExcerpt":"Following fast on the heels of its original BLINK app for Windows Phone 8\u2014which captures a burst of images when you take a photo so you can select the best shot\u2014Microsoft Research Redmond is releasing an updated version of BLINK, along with a new app…","locale":{"slug":"en_us","name":"English","native":"","english":"English"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39507"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287558"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":291824,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287558\/revisions\/291824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287558"},{"taxonomy":"msr-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-area?post=287558"},{"taxonomy":"msr-region","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-region?post=287558"},{"taxonomy":"msr-event-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-event-type?post=287558"},{"taxonomy":"msr-locale","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-locale?post=287558"},{"taxonomy":"msr-post-option","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-post-option?post=287558"},{"taxonomy":"msr-impact-theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-impact-theme?post=287558"},{"taxonomy":"msr-promo-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-promo-type?post=287558"},{"taxonomy":"msr-podcast-series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-podcast-series?post=287558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}