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Now news videos can be created by software

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Now news videos can be created by software

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By Charles Miller

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You may not have quite got your head round robo-journalism yet - although the idea that computers are nudging journalists out of jobs is hardly new. In September, BBC News reported on how sports stories are being written by software from Automated Insights, a company in North Carolina.

But now there's a new frontier: Wibbitz, a tech startup in New York, has developed a program to create videos automatically by adding footage and stills to an audio track that it generates. You get a flavour of their ambitions from the promotional material: "We envision a world with a video for every story, let's videoize yours". (Ouch! "Videoize"?)

To find out more, I spoke to Wibbitz's marketing director, Hilary Kay. She told me the company's artificial intelligence (AI) software starts by shortening written news stories, usually to about 40 per cent of their original length, to create the commentary script for the film. At the same time, it identifies key figures in the story and what kind of story it is - such as news, sport, finance or entertainment.

Wibbitz has also set up partnerships with large media libraries to provide stills and video to illustrate the stories. So Getty Images, for instance, has signed up with its enormous stills collection.

With software developed and content partners in place, it takes Wibbitz just 10 to 15 seconds to turn a piece of text into a finished video, complete with computer-generated narration.

But is it any good? Here's an example Hilary sent me:

Well, maybe not bad for 15 seconds of work?

The video was created by Wibbitz as part of a demonstration for the BBC, to show how a text story from the BBC website could be turned into a film. You can read the original story here.

Here's the same piece, this time with a human narrator, an alternative that Wibbitz offers:

Wibbitz doesn't claim its software is perfect. The company has mechanisms to remove any shots that shouldn't have crept in to an edit, inviting viewers to alert it to mistakes through a tab on the video, for instance:

As a business, Wibbitz offers its software to existing media companies so they can create online videos from their journalism. That way, editorial responsibility is with the corporate customers, rather than Wibbitz itself. A Wibbitz-using business can put in place whatever checks it thinks it needs before publishing a video, and can customise it too. So it can go through the video shot-by-shot to edit out anything it deems inappropriate and pick alternatives from the Wibbitz library. And if it has its own media library, it can add that archive to the mix, giving its videos a unique resource.

The company plans to make money through ad revenue-share agreements with the media companies who use its software. With online video a big growth area for media - as Nic Newman was discussing on this blog - Wibbitz would seem to be onto a good thing.

So is this bad news for human beings, especially those paid to create news video? Hilary was ready for my question: "These videos still require some human touch to give them the brand's voice," she said. In fact, Wibbitz makes an editor's work more interesting, she claims, because the legwork is already done, "making the annoying parts easier". Wibbitz is creating short-form news pieces, not in-depth documentaries. In fact, if the editing process for these becomes easier, it may even free up resources for more costly activities like investigative journalism, Hilary suggested.

The Wibbitz video editor is designed to be something that "anyone across the organisation can use", Hilary said. She showed me the interface (above), and it was clear that the emphasis is on ease of learning and use rather than sophisticated editing features. So, in terms of jobs, it may be that editors will find more people encroaching into their area, rather than that human beings are cut out of the loop altogether.

But before you get too complacent about the impossibility of automating complex creative jobs, it's worth reading Martin Ford's powerful argument in Rise of the Robots - that middle class occupations in developed countries are the most at risk from AI software and robotics.

Next month will be exactly five years since IBM's Watson computer defeated two Mastermind-style champions on the US TV quiz show Jeopardy. Since then IBM has been adapting what it learnt from the project into AI products for the legal, medical and financial sectors.

With progress like that, it's plausible to believe that Wibbitz's software will develop at a similar pace. So, what next? When will we see the first start-up dedicated to making videos for robots - to help them learn to write better stories?
Hilary Kay from Wibbitz has kindly offered to let the Wibbitz software try its hand with this piece of writing, so I hope to be able to share the videoized version of this blog post before long.

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Now news videos can be created by software

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You may not have quite got your head round robo-journalism yet - although the idea that computers are nudging journalists out of jobs is hardly new. In September, BBC News reported on how sports stories are being written by software from Automated Insights, a company in North Carolina.

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By Cathy Myers

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It was a good week to be talking about data. First there had been that exposé about suspected match fixing in tennis (involving data analysis of more than 20,000 matches); then we learned that the pollsters may have collected data from the wrong people in the run up to last year's general election.

So when some of the most innovative people working in the field of data and media assembled for the BBC Academy's latest Data Day conference, expectations were high and the line-up didn't disappoint.

Happily speakers were less keen on crunching numbers and more interested in revealing the storytelling possibilities that data is already throwing up, as well as some of the head-spinning potential just round the corner.

There was inevitably some challenging ethical debate around privacy and data collection - not just about what that means for Amazon and Netflix but also now the BBC.

In terms of creative opportunities - immediately clear or otherwise - here are just a few of the ideas that caused a buzz among the audience of journalists, programme-makers and technologists in the BBC's New Broadcasting House:
This BBC R&D prototype allows TV drama narrative to be varied according to audience preference Visual perceptive media
Say you're a shy but creative fan of indie music who could be in the mood for some Nordic Noir-style colour grading in your TV drama. Once you've punched some profile data into a mobile app (personality traits, music collection, age and gender), a BBC Research and Development (R&D) prototype will customise the look, sound, feel, narrative, character focus and even shot choices of the film to suit or challenge you.

It might even react to your mood in real time by slightly varying or re-ordering the programme's media components or 'objects'. Objects are assembled in your web browser using the app data as a guide. Repeat viewing of the customised film could also be altered by your location, time of day - or your mood.

This prototype model (above) obviously requires some extra production effort to supply the variations, but it is just that: slight variations rather than new versions. Ian Forrester, the senior producer running the trial, insists: "It's a new content experience, not a new service."

Forrester explains more about this 'perceptive media' experiment on the BBC R&D website, where there is also more about what's meant by ' object-based broadcasting' .

Will enough people be in the mood to make further development worthwhile? It's very early days for this particular project and initial feedback from invited participants is still being assessed, Forrester says.
Ad-free and unsensational, De Correspondent mines data for everyday truths. De Correspondent
In their self-styled mission to "redefine journalism", the founders of dynamic Dutch start-up De Correspondent and its limited English version have a love-hate relationship with data.

They love what it reveals about the "structures" that don't usually get the attention of daily news providers: "We didn't see the 2008 financial crash coming because we didn't look at the structures behind it," says editor-in-chief Rob Wijnberg. However they steer away from collecting personal data from the 45,000 paying members who fund their ad-free "online journalism platform" because "we want their expertise, not their demographics," adds Wijnberg.

The website's ethos is that what happens every day, the "foundational", influences lives and world events much more than the "sensational", what happens as a one-off today. The former is revealed by solid data journalism that interrogates patterns of development; the latter is likely to be an untypical and usually negative occurrence that will grab that day's headlines. That's 'news' and what they're aiming for is 'new'.

De Correspondent has 20 of its own specialist correspondents and around 300 guest contributors, with in-house journalists acting as "conversation leaders".

Wijnberg says: "We tell them that their real work starts when their story goes online.

"Three thousand doctors who may be among your members know more than one medical journalist," he reasons.

They vow to stay ad-free, have two million unique users a month and make no claim to objectivity. They're also link-free. They don't want readers going off to examine supplementary data on someone else's website. Instead, they provide layered context in side-notes, within the De Correspondent story.

But can such a model - a "sort of Medium for journalists", one questioner suggested - survive further expansion without being hijacked by "crazy comments"? Harald Dunnink, creative director, is defiant: "I don't think size interferes with [our principles]. We can easily ban people, or ask them to be more constructive. It's our platform."
Structured stories and the art of repackaging
In case you were wondering "data is just structured stuff", explains Tristan Ferne, executive producer in BBC R&D. So you can split stories into re-usable components, structure them, label them and put them back together in new ways - a kind of smart digital recycling.

He cites the popular Home Front Story Explorer (above) on experimental platform BBC Taster. Based on BBC Radio 4's epic daily First World War drama, it allows users to track storylines, follow their favourite characters, replay key moments and remind themselves about timelines and how characters interconnect. In theory the same technique of break down and rebuild could work with any TV or radio drama, as well as factual programmes and news.

The Home Front pilot went down well, with both fans of the series and people discovering it through BBC Taster. Just think what the same treatment could do for War and Peace, Ferne suggests.

'Atomised news' is another extension being tested at the BBC: "News events don't start and stop - some are part of a bigger story and the BBC doesn't tell stories in one way - so there's a lot of media to play with," he says. "Rather than create more stuff, we can re-use well-labelled components."

Reconfiguring the 'atoms' of a news story could let mobile users skim events or dive deeper into much more detail - even tailor results to personal preferences, context and devices. As BBC R&D development producer Barbara Zambrini explains, if your mobile loses bandwidth, a video explaining the story could be substituted with a captioned picture or an audio version if you've got your headphones plugged in.

Expect trials of that soon, which might help Ferne and his colleagues answer conundrums like which stories work best and perhaps the million dollar question: "Can we ever tell stories this way as well as hand-crafting them?"

This blog will be following some of the other intriguing developments glimpsed at Data Day in future posts but, if proof were needed that data can be revelatory, open data expert and Imactivate founder Tom Forth had a persuasive example: "We all know that Heathrow is the UK's hub airport. Right? Well no, it's Schiphol airport, Amsterdam, according to some fairly simple data bashing by Forth. Undoubtedly the 'stuff' of headlines.
Our section on investigative journalism Our section of digital journalism Our data journalism blogs by Jonathan Stoneman #BBCDataDay: Scoops, skills and surprises of data journalism

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It was a good week to be talking about data. First there had been that exposé about suspected match fixing in tennis (involving data analysis of more than 20,000 matches); then we learned that the pollsters may have collected data from the wrong people in the run up to last year's general election.

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How to save online evidence and why it matters: Part two

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How to save online evidence and why it matters: Part two

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By Paul Myers

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In part one of this blog I discussed the need for journalists to save evidence they find online and some of the techniques for recording that information. In part two, I'll focus on some of the issues journalists face when it comes to saving information from social media and mobile devices.

How, for example, can you record exchanges that take place on WhatsApp or Skype? How do you capture a live medium like Twitter?

Even before you save any information from a social network that requires you to log in, you may want to consider protecting your own privacy. Imagine you wrote an article about the social media activity of a violent extremist group and illustrated it with a screen grab from Facebook. If you'd logged under your private login, your user name and possibly the names of some of your friends and colleagues may be visible on the screen shot. Before you use any such image, check that any compromising details have been obscured.
Saving information from Facebook
When a story breaks and you need to investigate the person who will be grabbing the headlines, it's important to get in early. Social networks are notorious for removing controversial content.

When German pilot Andreas Lubitz deliberately flew a plane full of passengers into the Alps, his Facebook account had been deleted even before his name had been released. I suspect this was at the request of the police. Luckily a basic version of the page existed in Google's cache and it provided us with a low resolution copy of his profile picture.

That's all we had until the page reappeared. The family of a Facebook member who's died can apply to have their account preserved as a 'memorialised' page. In this case, that gave us a brief window to grab more details, before the page was eventually taken down for good.

During that window I saved his timeline, the pages he liked, the photos he had posted and, since his friends list was private, a list of the people who clicked 'like' on his photos.
Andreas Lubitz's memorialised Facebook page with my Facebook user name pixelated to avoid identification.
Facebook can be searched and manipulated into providing a wealth of information beyond what is normally provided on a user's account. You can, for example, find a list of people who 'like' a company you are investigating. You can find mutual friends of two Facebook members. You can find their mutual 'likes'. You can trace the movements of an individual, find the comments they have left on others' posts, the photos they like etc. Once you have conducted your search, save the results page for later reference. A previous article outlines how to carry out such enhanced searches.
An advanced Facebook Graph search for mutual friends of John Prescott and Alastair Campbell. Beware of the 'filter bubble'
The above example highlights a problem of using your personal Facebook account to conduct research. The Facebook search has skewed the search results by putting the accounts it thinks are of most interest to me at the top of the list. It assesses this by looking at my interests, friends and likes. This personalising of search results is often referred to as a 'filter bubble' and can be an unwanted feature. Most researchers prefer search results to be ordered by relevance rather than any personal connections. To avoid this, search Facebook using a blank, generic account with no friends and no likes.
Check that saved pages work
Whenever you save a page from the internet, it's a good idea to open it up immediately to check that it saved correctly. Some saved Facebook pages have failed to render properly when opened and older versions of Internet Explorer had a nasty habit of saving the wrong Facebook page. If you have problems with saved pages, try switching to a different browser.

It's always best to save a webpage as an HTML file (by holding down control + S). However, if the worst comes to the worst, Google Chrome will allow you to save a web page as a PDF document. You can do this by typing control +P (as if you were printing the page), then choose PDF as the destination.
Google Chrome allows you to save web pages as PDF files. Formatting may not be perfect, but at least the links are preserved. Use third party websites to save Twitter information
Many third party websites display content from social networks in imaginative, useful formats. Followerwonk, for example, lets you compare the followers and people followed by two Twitter accounts. This might be easier than saving two sets of follower lists.
Use third party websites to save Twitter information Many third party websites display content from social networks in imaginative, useful formats. Followerwonk, for example, lets you compare the followers and people followed by two Twitter accounts. This might be easier than saving two sets of follower lists.
If you just need a record of every tweet sent by a Twitter user, All My Tweets will list them on a single page. Of course, it might also be a good idea to take a copy of the original social media accounts for evidence reasons and because this is usually the most familiar way of illustrating a story.
All of my tweets displayed on one page using All My Tweets. Scroll to the bottom before you save
When saving a page from a social media account like Twitter or Facebook, make sure that all the required content has loaded, before saving. A friends or followers list will often keep growing as you scroll down. Keep scrolling until all the names have loaded - then save.
Saving from mobile devices and their apps
Most mobile devices and their apps are a little unfriendly for anyone wishing to save evidence. At the moment, an iPhone will not allow you to capture video from the screen. Instagram won't let you zoom or save images. Capturing a WhatsApp conversation can be cumbersome and the images are rather small if captured on an old iPhone.

Don't despair. More modern devices capture larger images, so ideally use a new iPhone for your screen shot. Modern iPads produce even larger images.

Some apps - Instagram, for example - have a web version. There are also third party apps and web pages that make it easier to use and save evidence from Instagram. There is also a lot of cross-posting of images between social media accounts, so an image on a mobile-only app might have exposure on a different social network site's web page.

Many apps have software versions for computers. I was recently surprised to learn that the secure messaging app Telegram can be run on a PC, making it easier to grab evidence and communicate securely. It might be tricky to capture your Skype conversation on your mobile device, but it's easy to use a screen-recording programme if you switch to your PC.

App design and features vary enormously across the different platforms. If you find it difficult to save information on an iPhone, for instance, try switching to an Android device.

Finally, remember that social media content - like other material you can find online - may be subject to copyright restrictions.
This is a slightly edited version of an article published at How to save online evidence and why it matters: Part one Our other blogs by Paul Myers Our blogs by cyber security expert Alan Pearce Our blogs by web research specialist Henk van Ess Searching for people online: Advanced techniques Searching for company data: Advanced techniques Social media copyright and fair dealing Investigative journalism skills Research Clinic.

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How to save online evidence and why it matters: Part two

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In part one of this blog I discussed the need for journalists to save evidence they find online and some of the techniques for recording that information. In part two, I'll focus on some of the issues journalists face when it comes to saving information from social media and mobile devices.

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Ten apps to take your smartphone videos to the next level

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Ten apps to take your smartphone videos to the next level

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By Marc Settle

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The apps pre-installed on your smartphone are fine for most multimedia tasks - shooting video, taking photos and recording audio. But what if you want to take things a step or three further? Then you have to explore the world of third party apps.

As there are a lot to choose from, I'm going to look at some of the apps proven to help journalists, film-makers and others improve their video. Needless to say, most don't come free.

Good preparation is essential for any shoot. Journalists may not need all the apps in this section, but if you want to prepare properly then read on. Scripts Pro on iOS is a very solid app to format scripts into the standard lay-out needed in the industry. A free Android alternative would be My Screenplays.

Visualising how shots might look on different cameras can be simulated on your smartphone by using an Android app like SL Director's Viewfinder with its iOS equivalent beingArtemis Directors' Viewfinder.

You might of course want to leave the Blackmagic or Red Digital Cinema Camera at home and instead record your masterpiece solely on your mobile. If you don't think that this is being done yet then check out this trailer for Tangerine - shot entirely on the iPhone 5s.

An iPhone gives the user some control but there are noticeable limitations that might make high-end film-makers shudder. For example, you can't even listen to the audio being recorded while shooting video, nor can the focus be changed smoothly during a shot. The app is held in very high regard by many and it was used to make Tangerine. Among a wide range of features, the app lets you monitor the audio while recording, change the frame rate and shutter speed. It can also do a focus pull and much more besides.

FiLMiC Pro was used alongside another feature-rich video app - Filmakr - to produce a gloriously sleek commercial for Bentley (above). This behind-the-scenes video gives an insight into not only how the apps were used but also the huge range of gadgets and gizmos involved. Your credit card would really take a hit buying some of these accessories!

For anyone on Android, a proven recording app is the Cinema FV-5. FiLMiC Pro recently launched on Android but the fragmentation of that operating system means it only works on a limited number of smartphones.

Even if you made every effort to get your video looking just right, there may be occasions when you want to change it - either because it didn't quite end up as you'd hoped or you actively want to adjust your footage. In this case, you'll need a post-production grading app. FiLMiC Pro could possibly save you buying yet another app as it also offers a range of tweaks such as white balance, tint, exposure and saturation. More granular than that is the Video Gradeapp, which offers control over shadows, highlights and sharpness.

Most smartphones offer an editing option, but it's often limited to 'top and tail' where you can isolate the section needed and remove everything else either side of that. To do anything more complex, even putting several clips together in a sequence, again requires some investment - of both time and money. Good luck trying to edit a feature film on an older smartphone with a small screen...

Apple's iMovie is a hugely powerful tool with plenty enough options for even the most creative director, although you'll need a fair chunk of space to download the app as it's around 700MB. The nearest equivalent on Android - and again, it'll only work on some devices, not all, due to fragmentation - is KineMaster. A word of warning about this app though: you'll need to take out a monthly subscription, rather than make a one-off payment.

Happy film-making.
The BBC Academy does not endorse any of the products mentioned in this article. Our other mobile journalism blogs by Marc Settle Filming on your smartphone Our section on smartphone training for journalists Our mobile journalism blogs by Nick Garnett
Available only to BBC staff: Top smartphones, gizmos and apps

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Ten apps to take your smartphone videos to the next level

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The apps pre-installed on your smartphone are fine for most multimedia tasks - shooting video, taking photos and recording audio. But what if you want to take things a step or three further? Then you have to explore the world of third party apps.

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How we built a new tool for journalists in 12 hours

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How we built a new tool for journalists in 12 hours

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By Kata Karáth

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Tech-minded journalists met journalism-minded techies at City University, London, for a BBC-sponsored hackathon. The participants were challenged to develop a digital product using something called the Juicer - a program developed by BBC News Labs We asked Kata Karáth, a member of the winning team at the , to tell us what happened. to tag news content.
The Juicer is a news aggregation system. It tags articles from the BBC and other news sites based on their content. The tags are grouped in four categories: People, Places, Organisations and Things (which is everything that doesn't fit in the other three).

In the right hands, the gathered information can uncover entirely new types of stories. However, if you're not the most tech-minded journalist you will need a "front end" to use the Juicer - a user-friendly interface that lets you use its capabilities without bothering you with what's going on behind the scenes.

This was our challenge. We had to come up with a new front-end for the Juicer using different approaches to its data to target different areas of journalism.

Twelve hours over two days was our time limit. We formed three teams with a diverse mix of members from journalism, data and creative design courses. And we came up with our own Apprentice-style team names - the Hack-Athenas, the Trend-setters and the Neutrons.

So what did we do? Well, the Hack-Athenas tried to tackle some of the problems that journalists always face: finding a good and reliable source, preferably as quickly as possible. Their main idea was to use social networks to contact potential sources.

The Trend-setters wanted to help journalists to predict the future - by creating an app to track trends around certain topics and try to figure out what is likely to make big news in the near future.

My team, the Neutrons, set their sights on science journalism. Covering science news might be intimidating for some journalists. But wait: there are press releases that explain everything in simple terms and even have quotes from the scientists. However, copying press releases and using pre-packaged quotes can hardly be called journalism.

We created a prototype of a tool that would let science journalists see how many news sites were using the same quotes when covering a particular science story. The prototype would also be able to identify the quoted people and see their relationships with each other.

The idea evolved from something very different: I started by imagining a map that would show how science news coverage spread - in both space and time - after a press release is published. However, the reality of coding gave us many problems.

As we came up against these obstacles, Neil Maiden, professor of digital creativity at City, said to us "I know you want to change the world, but you can't do it until Monday".
Neutron prototype
One of our team members, Igoris Gajosinskas, was an experienced UI (user interface) designer. Together with Sylvia Tippmann and Lei He from BBC News Labs, Igoris helped us to understand the basic concepts of digital product designing.

Trimming down our wild ideas, we were persuaded that we needed to come up with something buildable. In the end our prototype, also called Neutron (below), is very much possible with the current version of the Juicer.

However, we won't stop there. At our final presentation, we sketched up for BBC News Labs how we plan to realise the original idea. I'm glad to say that our team won the hackathon. The prize is a visit to BBC News Labs. You can be sure I'll be looking for a chance to ask them about any possibilities to develop Neutron.

This was my first hackathon. I wasn't even sure what it was when I signed up. Creating something was exciting and what amazed me most was the incredible things that were born just out of 12 hours of collaboration.

I hope Neutron, if it is finally developed, will help journalists track the origins of science news coverage and start to ask more questions.

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How we built a new tool for journalists in 12 hours

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Tech-minded journalists met journalism-minded techies at City University, London, for a BBC-sponsored hackathon. The participants were challenged to develop a digital product using something called the Juicer - a program developed by BBC News Labs We asked Kata Karáth, a member of the winning team at the , to tell us what happened.

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Virtual reality, 360 video and the future of immersive journalism

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Virtual reality, 360 video and the future of immersive journalism

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By Zillah Watson

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The experiment in 360-degree filming described in Paul Adams' recent blog is part of a bigger picture - metaphorically as well as literally. The development of this kind of immersive content, which includes virtual reality, is likely to have profound implications for journalism as well as for fictional and entertainment content.

But what is the connection between 360-degree filming and virtual reality (VR)? Well, 360-degree video is just one form of VR experience, alongside computed generated (CG) experiences and games.

360-degree videos can be watched in a number of ways. It only becomes VR when viewed via a headset - the most intense immersive experience.

But it can also be viewed on a smartphone, allowing you to change the angle and view by simply moving your phone. Or you can see it in a browser, using a mouse.

When watched via VR headset, you feel part of the action. In the Calais migrant camp, you can 'look around' the squalid makeshift shelters and get a sense of the scale.

Although 360 viewing is not full VR, it does still offer a new and intense way to enjoy video. And for journalism it offers new opportunities to let audiences engage with stories.

Hype around the possibilities of 360 degree filming for VR began in California earlier this year. Like the early film industry, California, with its hours of sunshine, has proved a perfect place to experiment with 360-degree film-making. The current 360 cameras are typically GoPros on rigs, and work best in bright, even light. They can't cope with rain!

Aside from the climate, the proximity of Silicon Valley is facilitating interesting collaborations between Hollywood and the tech industry, driving interest in this new form of film-making. And some of the early 360 films have benefitted from Hollywood budgets too.

The film that convinced me of the possibilities of 360 journalism was Clouds Over Sidra (which you can download from VRSE). It shows the Zaatari refugee camp through the eyes of a 12-year-old girl. Being able to look around the school, see the bread baking in the bakery and watch her family cook and eat in their tent is an evocative and moving experience. The film later won the interactive award at the Sheffield Documentary Festival.

Nonny de la Pena is a VR pioneer who has been behind much of the interest in the possibilities of 360-degree filming and VR for journalism. She has developed journalism experiences using computer graphics, usually with real sound recordings - allowing the viewer to walk around and be in scenes such as a bomb exploding in Syria or a scene that evolves outside soup kitchen.

One of Nonny's recent projects recreates the Trayvon Martin shooting, using audio from police calls. It was deliberately created in a short time period on a low budget to explore what might be possible.
Headsets - how will we watch 360 films? Samsung goggles
The big question is whether people will want to sit in their living room with boxes strapped to their heads to get the full VR effect. It's an antisocial experience, disguised at the moment by the very human interaction provided at the start and end of VR demos at documentary festivals where most of these films are currently viewed.

It might be different and more isolating at home. Having once reported on internet fridges, I'll remain sceptical until I see the sales figures.

360 degree video doesn't allow you to walk around and be part of a scene - only to 'look' around. For the most intense VR experience, using CG, you'll need something like the Oculus Rift Crescent Bay, and the HTC Vive headsets - both of which use motion tracking (in other words, it responds to how you move your head).

I tried prototypes of both and the experiences were very powerful. But they're likely to appeal most to gamers, or perhaps schools, libraries and museums which want to offer a special experience.

The Samsung Gear VR (which uses a Samsung smartphone in a special headset) is currently popular for demonstrating 360 filmed VR content, because it is so portable and appears less pixelated than the Oculus Rift (which requires a computer to drive it).

Then there's Google Cardboard: a simple fold-out box with lenses that turns your smartphone into a VR viewer (for around £4). If this takes off it will mean that for the first time large numbers of people will be able enjoy a basic VR experience.
Google Cardboard
Cardboard is great for short-form video, and provides interesting opportunities for mobile news apps. It transforms video on a phone from a small TV into an immersive experience.

Aaron Luber from Google Cardboard says: "There isn't a headstrap for a reason. Latency on a mobile phone isn't good enough yet. So we purposefully did something that made you move your torso. That leads to content that is short and shareable, unlike the Samsung Gear VR which is designed for longer experiences."

The new Cardboard folds flat, which will be an improvement. And other versions are available. But a folding phone case might be more practical and accessible, so I hope someone invents one soon.

Sound is also very important to VR, and using headphones with smartphones offers the possibility of binaural audio in the future.
360 and VR for BBC News
Before our Calais trip with Paul Adams, we produced a number of 360 video prototypes to see what was possible without a Hollywood budget and large amounts of post-production.

But back to our BBC experiments: here's a film showing what familiar Westminster locations look like in 360, and exploring how the role of the reporter might change.

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Virtual reality, 360 video and the future of immersive journalism

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The experiment in 360-degree filming described in Paul Adams' recent blog is part of a bigger picture - metaphorically as well as literally. The development of this kind of immersive content, which includes virtual reality, is likely to have profound implications for journalism as well as for fictional and entertainment content.

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Why newspapers should take smartwatches seriously

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Why newspapers should take smartwatches seriously

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By Tom Quast

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With the introduction of the AppleWatch, sales of smartwatches have skyrocketed. It is very likely that your colleagues, friends or family are using smartwatches already.

Smartwatches are always within the consumer's reach, enabling news consumption in ways that have not been possible before. But to ensure the best reading experience, the news has to be tailored to the platform it is consumed on. So news written for mobile phones is normally shorter and has a stronger focus on visual elements compared to its web-based counterparts.

The news industry has historically been slow to adopt new technology, and only big players have been able to free resources to explore new platforms. Smartphones, and to some degree the web, were largely ignored before their value for news consumption was acknowledged. With the introduction of smartwatches to the broad public, we might witness the rise of a new disruptive technology.

However, news publishers have evolved since the early days of smartphones. News production is to a much higher degree digitised, which greatly eases the exploration of new platforms. We at Creative Vikings have integrated with several systems and provided news directly on smartwatches through the same software that publishers use every day. The next opportunity has presented itself to the publishers, and the question remains: how many will act now and seize it?

Described below are five game-changing features that enable news consumption in new ways. This is followed by some design suggestions based on our work with smartwatches:
Wearable while operational
One of the most distinguishing features of a smartwatch is that it can be used while walking or moving around. It is normally always within reach, enabling news consumption in ways that have not been possible before. Just imagine receiving a news notification while biking. Instead of fiddling to get your phone out of your pocket just to discover that it was not relevant to you, with a smartwatch you can determine this without lifting your hands from the handlebars.
Hands-free use
You don't need both hands to interact with smartwatches. Applications offer other interactions which minimise the load on the consumer, such as glances, different vibration metrics and sound notifications, to mention a few. This frees consumers to continue with their primary activity while still being able to stay in the news loop.
Sensors
At the very core of a smartwatch are its sensors. They are both measuring the consumer and the environment, which enables a personification as yet unseen. The position on the consumer's wrist enables better measurements of eg. location and orientation, and new ones such as heartbeat. Currently (also due to technical restrictions) no news app is utilising this new data. But just imagine a news app that automatically holds push notifications back when it detects the user is sleeping.
Attention-getting
A smartwatch conveys information to its user even when not actively used. Much like a smartphone, it can use subtle notifications such as vibrating or lighting up the screen. However, since it resides on the consumer's wrist, it is more likely to be noticed. This opens a new array of notification levels that can be tailored to the consumer. Imagine news notifications that adjust their vibration intensity to the user's interest eg. based on the context.
Always on
By default, a smartwatch is always on and working, sensing and acting. The user doesn't need to do anything other than wear the watch. It is available in the consumer's periphery, ready for them to take action if needed. It becomes the user's personal assistant, presenting information when needed eg. upcoming appointments. Now imagine if it not only told the consumer their flight was delayed but linked to a news article explaining why the Eyjafjallajökull's eruption causes these delays.
Designing for smartwatches
Through our work with smartwatches, we have tried numerous concepts and ideas. Just like with all platforms, there is no 'one-size-fits-all' solution. However, some general concepts have emerged which can guide the design process.
Micro-interactions
Interactions with the smartwatch are short and discontinuous. Research has shown that interaction with smartwatches rarely exceeds four seconds. This requires not only short and precise information but also easy access to that information. It should be possible to explore news in more depth - eg. by being able to hand it off to the smartphone or read more on the watch - but the main function of a smartwatch is to provide a quick overview.
Micro, visual and novel content
Good content for smartwatches is micro, visual and novel. Micro content is very short, often only a single sentence. It affords micro-interactions and gives condensed, relevant information at the right time.

Visual content is important to reduce the amount of text needed to tell a story. It is not only visually appealing but the information density in an image is much higher than text alone.

Lastly, it is important to be creative and think of novel ways to create and present content. A smartwatch is not just a small smartphone, much like a smartphone is not a small website.
Be proactive, but don't spam
Smartwatches offer the possibility of delivering news directly on the consumer's wrist, providing the latest news at the right time. However, this is a double-edged sword, since it can also be overwhelming if the news is not relevant to them. This usually leads to unsubscribing from that provider.

Therefore personalisation is core to providing news on smartwatches. It should both be possible for the consumer to set preferences and for data to be collected automatically to tailor the news presented to the consumer's needs and preferences.
The future
No-one knows what the future will bring. But looking at Apple's estimated sales combined with the qualities of smartwatches outlined here, it seems like a question of time before news publishers need to take a serious look at this field. News publishers like NYT and the Guardian have published apps for smartwatches, but they merely touch the possibilities this news technology offers.

In the end it comes down to the question: how long can news publishers afford to wait?
Smartphone journalism: Video Smartphone journalism: Audio Smartphone journalism: Photographs Smartphone broadcasting: 5 live's Nick Garnett

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Why newspapers should take smartwatches seriously

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With the introduction of the AppleWatch, sales of smartwatches have skyrocketed. It is very likely that your colleagues, friends or family are using smartwatches already. Smartwatches are always within the consumer's reach, enabling news consumption in ways that have not been possible before.

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Apple’s iOS 9: Tweaks not revolution for video, photos and audio

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Apple’s iOS 9: Tweaks not revolution for video, photos and audio

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By Marc Settle

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Doesn't time fly. It's already a year since my now-traditional blog post examining what's in the latest version of iOS, the operating system on iPhones and iPads. It's also therefore a year since the equally traditional complaint of 'preferential treatment' to Apple over Android, the operating system that runs on around 80% of smartphones globally.

However, it remains the case that iPhones are the device of choice for many leading news organisations around the world - not just the BBC - for their employees to gather and send broadcast-quality footage at a far lower cost than traditional methods.

It's also the case that this review of iOS 9 will be far more relevant, far more quickly, to iPhone owners if the pattern of previous releases is repeated. iOS 8 came out on 17 September 2014; a week later it was running on more than a third of compatible devices (as shown on the graph above).

In stark contrast, the latest version of Android, called Lollipop, was released in November 2014 but nine months later it's still barely on 20% of devices (below).

Much of the following is aimed at journalists using iPhones in their job, although I hope non-journalists will find it informative. There's no strict dividing line that defines feature X as onlyof interest to journalists.

Finally, my beta testing was done on a somewhat weather-beaten iPhone 4s, so if you're on a newer device you may see a few differences. As an iPhone 4s also can't access all of the features in iOS 9, on occasions the information below has come from reliable third-parties who've tried it out.
Video
The three pillars of mobile journalism - video, photos and audio - remain relatively similar in iOS 9. This is in sharp contrast to the big changes that arrived with iOS 8.

There have been a number of small tweaks, though, mainly with video. Dig down into the settings and in 'Photos and Camera' you'll find an option to toggle the recording resolution of video, either full HD 1,080 pixels at 30 frames per second or down to 720 pixels HD, also at 30 fps.

The latter will result in recordings that are roughly half the size of the former - much to the relief of journalists with small-capacity devices which will now be able to record twice as much footage with very little noticeable drop in quality. (Those with iPhones that can record slo-mo video also have the option to film at 720 pixels.)

This is nowhere near as innovative as it may sound, however. It is in fact yet another example of Apple taking the best of third-party apps and incorporating that into iOS. Video recording apps such as FilmicPro and MoviePro have long given users the chance to adjust settings such as the frame rate, and much more besides.

While these changes are to be welcomed, they still don't address a major problem facing journalists who film on iPhones for transmission in the UK, EU, most of Asia and Africa: there's no option to change the frame rate to 25 frames per second. This means that footage recorded using the native iPhone camera is not suitable for broadcast on TV in the areas mentioned above. Plenty of third-party apps give the 25fps option, but not the native iOS camera. If you happen to be reading this, Tim Cook, can we have it in iOS 10?

When watching back a recording, you can now zoom into it in more detail by putting two fingers on the screen and spreading them out, as has long been the case with photos. This feature may be useful to help you see in more detail what you've recorded, but there's no way I can find to actually capture this zoomed-in view. As soon as you try to edit it the footage reverts to normal.

Staying with editing, the look and layout of the in-built editor has changed, and not really for the better. Until now, the editing 'window' at the top of the screen covered the full width of your device. It's now down at the bottom, crammed in between 'cancel' and 'done', making editing video a bit more fiddly.

Those prone to 'fat-finger syndrome' had better watch out.

When it comes to recording video, the light can now be turned on and off during a recording; previously it was either on when you began or it wasn't. While this seems a cute tweak, I'd recommend deciding beforehand if the light is needed, as turning it on half-way through will lead to a dramatic change in how the video looks - unless that's what you're aiming for.
Photos
While there don't appear to be any changes to taking photos (unlike iOS 8 which brought in filters and lots more besides), new options abound once the image has been captured.

When viewing a single photo, small thumbnails of the rest of the images you've taken will be visible underneath, meaning you can whizz along to find exactly the right shot. 'Selfies' (photos taken with the front camera) and 'screenshots' (a grab of what's on your screen) get their own folder, making them easier to find.

The cap on the number of photos that can be attached to an email has been lifted from the previous limit of five. But it's worth checking the file-size limit of the recipient. For example, BBC emails are capped at 10MB, so even if you can send files that are larger than that they won't arrive.
Audio
As for audio recording, so often the poor cousin of video and photos, Apple seems to have left the Voice Memo app exactly as it was in iOS 8.

On the face of it, then, it's a lot of tinkering around the edges rather than anything revolutionary. That's certainly true about what iOS 9 can do for the range of devices currently out there - the big unknown is how these changes will work with the new iPhones also due to be unveiled very shortly.

I'll write another piece once the iPhone 6plus S or iPhone 7, or the iPhone Tim (unlikely, I admit), or whatever it's called, is officially confirmed. The mass of leaks and speculation point to a vastly improved camera on both the front and back of the device, with the rear one able to record in 4K.
In part two of this blog tomorrow, Marc Settle assesses other changes in iOS 9 for mobile journalists, including battery life and keyboard display. What does Apple's iOS 8 offer journalists? 1: Camera and editing What does Apple's iOS 8 offer journalists? 2: Messaging and location features Our other mobile journalism blogs by Marc Settle Our section on smartphone training for journalists Our mobile journalism blogs by Nick Garnett Focus iPhone, record and send - instant video hit from storm-lashed Sardinia

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Apple's iOS 9: Tweaks not revolution for video, photos and audio

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Doesn't time fly. It's already a year since my now-traditional blog post examining what's in the latest version of iOS, the operating system on iPhones and iPads. It's also therefore a year since the equally traditional complaint of 'preferential treatment' to Apple over Android, the operating system that runs on around 80% of smartphones globally.