What's new · version 0.2.0

Photos, cut to the beat.

The biggest release since the beta began: Beatknife now cuts photos as well as video. Seven changes in 0.2.0. Beatknife updates itself, so if you're in the beta you already have them.

01 · Photos

Your photos, cut to the beat.

Add a folder of photos and mix it into the cut, beside your video or on its own. On the timeline, photo slots look like prints.

The Beatknife window with a roll of portraits. On the left, the roll tree and its contact sheet. On the source monitor, a portrait with a FACE box and a SALIENCY box; on the program monitor, the same portrait framed on the face. The timeline shows the photo slots as small prints, and the deck's Photos page shows Placement, Motion, Playback, Order and Framing for the roll.
02 · Motion

Photos that move with the music.

Each roll moves its photos one way: Ken Burns, Punch, Snap, Shake, Drift or Static. Here four rolls take turns, two beats a photo: Punch zooms in on every beat and eases off, then Ken Burns, Snap and Drift. The orange dot marks the beat.

Five program frames of one photo, a motion study of a fencer, across one beat. On the beat the photo is zoomed in; 67, 167, 300 and 433 milliseconds later it eases back out.
03 · Smart crop

Faces stay in frame, in any format.

Beatknife finds the faces and the subject of each photo and keeps them in frame, in 16:9, 9:16 or 1:1. Crop overlays on the source monitor show what it found.

On the left, a portrait on the source monitor with its FACE and SALIENCY boxes. On the right, the program monitor in 9:16: the same portrait cropped to a tall frame with the face on the upper third.
04 · Premiere

Keep cutting in Premiere.

Export the Premiere XML and the photos come in as the stills themselves, with their moves as keyframes: every zoom and pan, frame for frame. Or as rendered clips, if you'd rather.

05 · Rolls

A whole archive at once.

Add a folder of folders: each folder is a roll, and every folder above them holds all their photos. ⌘-click to pick several rolls and mix them in together. Here, four rolls play under the VHS look.

The Beatknife window with an archive added: the roll tree shows Met Archive with Dance, Portraits, Seaside and Streets inside it, four of them selected, and the button Mix 4 rolls into the sequence. The program monitor shows a beach photo through the VHS look; the Editor timeline shows the photo slots as prints; the deck's Master page shows VHS, Degradation and Analog events.
06 · Scanning

Cleaner cuts in your tapes.

Tapes are read frame by frame when you add them. On our test tapes a slot straddles a shot cut 1.5% of the time, down from 11.7%, and auto-trim now cuts the FBI warnings, logos and title cards off either end.

07 · The deck

Tidier controls.

The deck has pages: Master, FX, Photos, Titles and Section. Analog events is one card now, with its event types and footage beside it. Also new: Clear, Undo and Redo in the timeline's gutter, clearing one section, a cap on the photo cache, and no more black frame between two clips.

The deck's Master page: the VHS card with its Strength dial and flavours, the Degradation card, and Analog events as one wide card with Overall density and Min gap, then Event types (Transitions and Disruptions with their chances), then Eligible footage (Blue field, Snow, Tracking, Color bars).

The photos in these captures are from The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Open Access collection (public domain).

Get 0.2.0.

Free while it's in beta. Already in? The app updates itself.