We ran across a small but cool Mac application several weeks ago. It’s called Magnet. It allows the user to set tracking points through which a video will be distorted. In a sense, it’s another Morph software title. One license costs US$39.99.
Learning how to use Magnet isn’t that difficult. Besides, there is a free 4-minute video tutorial at software developer’s website. When you start off, the very first thing to do is to import a video file. Magnet supports various media formats including AVI, MOV, MP4, MPEG, VOB and WMV. As I tested several multimedia formats, I found out that the only format that Magnet doesn’t support is MKV (Matroska). Anyway, all you have to do is to just drag and drop a video file onto the application window. Or you could click on the Media Browser button at the top and pick a movie file from iPhoto Library. Well, that’s what the PDF manual says. (See Page 10.) But I couldn’t drag a video file from iPhoto Library and drop it onto the screen. Magnet rejected it no matter how many times I tried.
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So I imported an MPEG file (Director: Gordon McDowell, Producer: R4NT.COM), which I found at Internet Archive. The next step is to insert tracking points, which the software developer calls probes. At the top of the window, you will see two Mouse pointer icons. (See Screenshot 03.) Click on the one to the right. I wanted to place a probe on each eyeball of the female figure. In order to relocate a probe, you need to use the other pointer to the left. When you are finished placing the first set of probes, click on the button that says Trace Probes. (See Screenshot 04.) By the way, there is a checkbox with a label that says Dual Way. I don’t know exactly what this feature does. I checked the PDF manual, but it doesn’t mention it at all.
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After clicking on the track button, you should preview the video and see how the probes are tracked. And, if necessary, correct the locations of the probes and track them again. One problem with Magnet is that you cannot forward or rewind the video frame by frame. If it were QuickTime, you could just use arrow keys. Magnet has two commands under Tools. If you choose Go to Next Keyframe, you will jump to the next keyframe. But if you want to go forward by one frame, you will simply have to use the play head to manually slide it to the right. (See Screenshot 05.)
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Then what? It’s time for special effects. Magnet comes with 11 special effects, which they call compositions. Pick one from the composition library at the top. And drag and drop it onto the screen. If you open Inspector, you can customize the effect.
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It’s an interesting software application. But Magnet has several serious problems. No.1, you cannot set in and out markers. So probes will appear over the entire video. Therefore, you have to edit your video before ever importing it to Magnet. By the way, Magnet doesn’t support audio. So the resulting video will have no sounds. Another major problem is that Magnet cannot deal with a camera position change. If you see our sample video, the camera suddenly zooms in roughly at the 2/3s of the duration. And the composition can never keep track. You cannot dynamically resize and rotate the composition anyway.
Anyway, I eventually ignored the camera problem and decided to go ahead and export a project to QuickTime. Then I ran into another major problem. In order to produce a movie, you will just need to click on the button at the very top left corner. (See Screenshot 09) Magnet gives you access to QuickTime settings. So you need to pick a video compressor of you choice. Last time when I used Magnet, I chose H.264. So I chose H.264 this time and clicked on the Render button. Then Magnet crashed. I didn’t save the project. So I had to start from a scratch. And I eventually clicked on Render again after completing a new project. Then Magnet crashed again. And again… Well, I was fed up, so I decided not export it to QuickTime. So I clicked on the Cancel button. Then Magnet started compressing the video. That’s really odd. (See Screenshot 11)
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In conclusion, I found several major problems with Magnet 1.5. It crashes when you try to export a project to QuickTime. So you probably want to make sure that you have saved your work before video compression.
I figure that Magnet will be only useful when you have a short video with no major scene change. When the camera moves, Magnet will fail to move compositions in line with the probes. And Magnet doesn’t support audio. So, if necessary, you have to embed an audio track from the original video.
Finally, let me mention that eX-cinder is one of those software developers who want your credit card information without revealing its company information. It seems that their office is located in Buffalo, New York. I wouldn’t give out my credit card information to a totally stranger with no address.
Magnet 1.5 is a product of eX-cinder.
Click on the button to watch a sample video created with Magnet 1.5.
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