Diver iOS / iPad App, version 1.3.2 features and instructions

The Diver app brings the original Stanford University Digital Interactive Video Exploration and Reflection (DIVER) project1 to Apple's iPad. Features of the new app include:

— A touch interface implementation of Diver's "guided-noticing" spatial and temporal point-of-view video referencing2; users can move & resize the Diver guided-noticing rectangle via the iPad's familiar touch interface (see figures 13-16).

— An updated implementation of Diver's networked/Internet sharing of point-of-view video clips3; allowing for a) dives4 directly on any YouTube video stream (see figures 6-11), and b) easy social sharing of dive clips on e.g. Facebook or Twitter (see figures 26-27).

A video tutorial of the DIVER app in action is available on YouTube:

1. For more info about the Stanford University DIVER project visit: http://diver.stanford.edu
2. USPTO Patent #7,823,058; "Methods and apparatus for interactive point-of-view authoring of digital video content"; https://www.google.com/patents/US7823058
3. USPTO Patent #8,307,273; "Methods and apparatus for interactive network sharing of digital video content"; https://www.google.com/patents/US8307273
4. "Dives" are time/space referenced video clips made by (temporally) selecting sub-portions of a video and (spatially) highlighting areas of the video's frame.
Figure 1. The iOS Diver app on the iPad; tap the Diver icon to launch the app.
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Figure 2. After the app launches the Diver login screen appears.* Enter your login email & password and tap the LOGIN button.
Tap the "browse Diver anonymously" link to enter Diver without logging in (anonymous users can browse dives, but only logged in users can create new clips).
Diver login is by invitation only, email
joro@stanford.edu to request an account. If you already have an account and forgot your password, tap the "forgot your password?" link.
*If you've previously logged in you'll automatically be taken to the browse view (figure 3) immediately after the app launches without having to log-in again.
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Figure 3. After logging into (or anonymously entering) Diver, the "Browse Dives" view opens showing a list of all saved dives with the newest to oldest clips in descending order.
Search (figure 4) or scroll, and then tap any of the thumbnails to go to the "Diver Player" view (figures 16-18) and watch the dive clip.
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Figure 4. Search/filter the entire collection of saved dive clips by entering a #hashtag keyword, e.g. search for all dive clips with the tag #PresidentTrump included in the comment.
Tap the CLEAR link (circled in green, below the search button) to clear the search and start over.
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Figure 5. Tap the menu icon at the top of the screen to open the main menu.
Tap any of the menu items to initiate the specified action or navigate to another view; or tap the icon again to close the menu.
e.g. To pick new videos to load into Diver, tap "YouTube" in the main menu. You'll be able to choose from any publicly available and copyright-free video on YouTube (see figures 6-8).
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Figure 6. After selecting "YouTube" from the main menu the YouTube website opens. Tap the magnifying glass (circled in green at the top of the page) to search for and pick a YouTube video to load into Diver.
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Figure 7. After choosing a video tap the YouTube share icon (share-icon circled in red below). Press & hold the link to copy the video's URL.
Tap the ←BACK button (at the top of the app, circled in green) to go back to Diver's main screen.
Tip: If you tap the ←BACK button without having copied a link, the URL of the YouTube video you're currently viewing automatically fills Diver's Load Video popup (figure 8).
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Figure 8. If a YouTube video link/URL was successfully copied (see figure 7) then the "Load YouTube video" popup automatically appears. Tap the LOAD button to load the video in Diver.
Note: You can also always copy either an entire YouTube URL (e.g. https://youtu.be/lNdG6iE4a84 or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNdG6iE4a84) or just a YouTube video's 11 character ID (e.g. lNdG6iE4a84) from any source, and then from the main Diver menu choose "Load Video" and manually paste (or type) the URL/ID.
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Figure 9. A few seconds after tapping the LOAD button (figure 8) the YouTube video loads into Diver. Tap the play button (circled in green below) to play the video.
Tap the step-buttons (circled in blue) to precisely step the video forward or backward in 1/8th second increments; or press & hold the step-buttons to more rapidly step through the video.
Time-code (circled in blue above the step buttons) is displayed (as both current playback time and total duration) to e.g. help precisely position the video before tapping RECORD (figure 10).
Note: While a video's paused YouTube sometimes displays related video links and watch & share icons; these YouTube features (circled in red) are disabled in Diver. Tap the close "X" (circled in purple below) to hide the related video links.
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Figure 10. Tap the RECORD button to make a temporal/spatial dive clip. If paused the video begins playing. The button blinks red to indicate recording is in progress. Drag or resize the guided-noticing rectangle (see figures 11-14), all of the rectangle's motion is saved as part of the clip recording. Tap RECORD again to stop the recording.
Note: Maximum dive clip RECORD time is 90 seconds; minimum dive clip RECORD time is 2 seconds. No diving is allowed on YouTube videos longer in duration than 2.5 hours.
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How to use the Guided-Noticing Rectangle
Drag, resize, and zoom Diver's "guided-noticing" rectangle. Note that that all finger taps/presses inside the guided-noticing rectangle temporarily display a transparent yellow square (to resize), double squares (to zoom), or a circle (to drag) under your finger indicating where to tap/press to initiate the desired action.
Figure 11. Drag to move Drag the guided-noticing rectangle from the center to change its position.
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Figure 12. Resize from corner Drag diagonally from any corner of the guided-noticing rectangle to resize.
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Figure 13. Pinch to zoom Pinch with two fingers inside the guided-noticing rectangle to shrink or enlarge.
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Figure 14. Default size/position Double-tap to return the guided-noticing rectangle to default position and size.
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Figure 15. After making a dive with RECORD type your comments (up to 256 characters) and tap the SAVE button to save the clip, or tap the CANCEL button to discard the clip and start over.
Note: Adding a keyword preceded by a hashtag (e.g. #PresidentTrump) anywhere in a comment makes the dive searchable (see figure 4).
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Figure 16. Tap the video thumbnail (circled in green below) to playback your recording. Dive recordings will automatically stop playing at the end of the clip. At any time tap the thumbnail again (or tap the play/pause button or move the video slider) to stop the dive clip from playback.
During RECORD playback the dive clip's in & out points are indicated by markers (circled in red below) on the time slider.
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Figure 17. For dive clips made with RECORD you can play back only the panned/zoomed area that's inside the guided-noticing rectangle's path (called "Free‑D"™) by checking the ZOOM checkbox (circled in red) below the thumbnail (note that the checkbox is only visible during RECORD playback).
You can also play dive clips made with RECORD in a continuous loop by checking the LOOP checkbox (also only visible during RECORD playback).
Tap the (circled in green) ENLARGE icon (during RECORD playback) to go from portrait to landcape mode and play dive clip videos at fullscreen (see figure 18).
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Figure 18. After tapping the ENLARGE icon (figure 17) the app changes from portrait to landscape and the video plays fullscreen.
If the ZOOM icon (figure 17) was selected before tapping ENLARGE only the video that's inside the guided-noticing rectangle plays fullscreen ("Free‑D"™). Otherwise the entire frame plays fullscreen with the guided-noticing rectangle floating on top of the video.
Tap the close/X icon (circled in green) at the top corner of the screen to exit fullscreen and return to portrait mode. If LOOP (figure 17) was not checked the app automatically exits fullscreen when the dive clip ends.
Note: The Diver app ignores the iPad's automatic tilt detection and always rotates the video 90 degrees CCW when in fullscreen playback mode regardless of the device's orientation, portrait or landscape. Hence (manually) turn your iPad to landscape/horizontal view while watching fullscreen video.
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Figure 19. After saving a dive clip it can take up to a few minutes to finish processing, longer if a) it's the first time a dive's been made from this YouTube video and b) the YouTube video's particularly lengthy (greater than e.g. 30 minutes in duration).
The dive processing takes place remotely and won't slow down, block, or otherwise adversely affect performance of the app. You can playback the dive clip (see figure 17) while it's still processing, however the SHARE icon (figure 24) won't appear and you won't be able to share the dive clip (figure 25) until the processing completes.
While the dive finishes processing its thumbnail icon will indicate "IMAGE PROCESSING" in the Diver Browse view (as circled in the screen capture below).
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Figure 20. To check if the dive clip's finished processing, refresh the Browse view.
Scroll to the top of the view and then pull straight down. Make certain you pull all the way down from the very top of the Browse view until both activity spinners (circled in green below) appear, then let go. The Browse view automatically springs back into position and refreshes.
If the dive clip has completed processing the thumbnail will change from "IMAGE PROCESSING" to a still image of the start frame from your dive (circled in red below).
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Figure 21. If you previously created and saved dive clip you can delete, edit, trim, or render it at any time. You can only delete, edit, trim, or render the clips you own; you can't perform these functions on someone else's clips.
Tap DELETE to permanently remove the dive clip. Tap EDIT to edit the dive clip's comment.
Note: The DELETE, EDIT, TRIM (figure 22), and RENDER (figure 23) icons (circled in red below) are replaced with the ZOOM, LOOP, and ENLARGE icons (figure 17) while the dive clip is playing. When the dive clip stops playing, DELETE, EDIT, TRIM and RENDER will appear again.
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Figure 22. Dive clip TRIM
Tap the TRIM icon to open the dive clip trim editor.
Tap the left-side step buttons (circled in green below) to trim the dive clip's IN-time in 1/8 second increments, or tap the right-side step buttons (circled in blue) to trim the dive clip's OUT-time. Press & hold the step-buttons to more rapidly step through and trim the video.
Alternatively, you can drag the marker triangles above the slider to change the IN/OUT times. The time-code indicators help to more precisely trim the dive clip.
Tap the SAVE button to save the trimmed clip, or tap CANCEL to revert the changes and close the dive clip trim editor.
Note: Dive clips are limited to a minimum 2 seconds and a maximum 90 seconds.
Pro Tip: Double-tap a triangle marker to reset to the saved IN or OUT time. If the markers overlap or are too close together to select & drag, tap a step button or tripple-tap a marker to toggle the markers front to back.
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Figure 23. Dive clip RENDER
Tap the RENDER icon, the dive clip render popup opens.
Tap the RENDER button in the popup (circled in green below) to place the dive clip into the rendering cue, or tap CANCEL to exit without rendering.
Rendered dive clips are self contained video files that can play anywhere even without the Diver app.
Rendering can take several minutes to complete. You'll be emailed a download link as soon as the clip's ready.
Note: You can only render the dives you own, you can't render someone else's clips. Additionally, if the dive clip was created prior to Diver version 1.3.0 the render function will not be available.
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Figure 24. After saving a dive clip the SHARE icon appears (in the lower right corner below the dive comment)*. Tap the SHARE icon to show the share popup. Tap the COPY button to copy the dive link/URL to your iPad's clipboard; or tap the CANCEL button to close the popup.
You can paste a copied dive clip's URL into a e.g. blog, Twitter tweet, or Facebook post.
*When saving a dive the SHARE icon won't appear until after the clip completes processing. It can take up to a few minutes for dives to process (see figures 19-20).
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Figure 25. Example, share on Facebook...
Pasting a dive SHARE (figure 24) link into a Facebook post automatically populates the post with a link to the dive. If Diver is installed on the iPad tapping the link automatically opens the dive clip in the Diver app.
An example dive clip shared on Facebook:
dive-share-facebook
Figure 26. To view the current version # for the Diver app (e.g. "v 1.3.2 13201018182116") go to the "Diver Player" view and tap in the extreme lower left corner directly below (and to the left of) the comment box, the version # will appear (circled in green below). Tap the lower corner again to hide* the version #.
*After approximately 10 seconds and if not tapped again the version # will automatically disappear.
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Build # 13201018182116;  © 2002-2024