Clapperboard iOS app and photo extension
An iOS photo app extension that adds a clapperboard style first frame to videos for easy identification. Developed iteratively with feedback and released as a TestFlight beta.
Overview
My mobile app photo extention is a photo extention which allow’s user’s to add a Clapperboard to the video they are on. This is to help the user locate the video quickly in the photos app as video’s are typically quite hard to find since they are usually the first frame of the video
Problem
The problem which my friend faced was when they were recording city skylines and their music performances it was hard to go back and organise them as the first frame wasn’t enough to help them locate the image. This was annoying for the user when they wanted to share the clips on social media or with their friends since the clips first frames look quite similar so they had to check it manually each time.
Solution
My app solves this problem by adding a Clapperboard style image as the first frame which includes the director’s name, title, scene, take and director which the user inputs. Then the user can press the blue check button to start the export process which adds the Clapperboard to the first frame.
Key Features
- Adds clapperboard-style first frame
- Works as iOS Photos extension so no context switching
- Ablity to set the default director’s name
How I built it:
MVP planning
I planned the MVP by messaging my friend asking about the requirement’s for the photo extension and his suggestion’s to fix, then we agreed what should be included. I then started researching what I will need to create the application and figured out I would need to use Photo Kit to create the photo extension part of the project and that I would have to use AVFoundation to handle making the Clapperboard image.
I then started the development of the project creating the basic app UI and then moved on to creating the main logic for creating the Clapperboard using AV Foundation which I found quite hard as someone brand new to Swift and Swift UI.
Feedback after the first sprint
After my first sprint I gathered some feedback from my friend which was around the app design and the Clapperboard text image being a bit small which I plan to improve next sprint.
Tech Stack
- Swift / SwiftUI
- PhotoKit / Extensions
- User Defaults
Challenges & Learnings
I found AV Foundation the hardest thing about making this application as I have had zero experience with it before creating this app. I also learned during the process of creating the app how to communicate with users and how to gather their requirements effectively and how to tell them how you can’t do certain things in code due API restrictions etc.
Outcome / Results
The outcome of this project was a working Clapperboard app which my friend uses which I managed to publish onto Apple TestFlight for my friend to test and try out.
Future Improvements
Future improvements I would like to make to the app is to have a way to bulk add the Clapperboard to it so my user can do a batch of them to catch up quicker. I also would like to fix the issue where app doesn’t append the the Clapperboard but replaces it. I would also like to look into seeing if I can make the image and export more performant.