Live Streaming on iOS

In our work, we often need to implement video streaming from iOS devices in real-time or near real-time. A common example is the use of iOS devices as surveillance cameras or creation of streaming applications like Periscope. Problem statement often imposes additional requirements like enabling of stream playback on another device or running the app smoothly in the browser or VLC player, low latency (video streaming in near real-time), low resource consumption (long battery life), no need in a dedicated media server, etc.

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How to Optimize Waveform Rendering in iOS

In the article we are going to share our experience of finding the optimal way to visualize a waveform in an iOS app, choosing between CAShapeLayer and drawRect(), and certain nuances of using Swift. The publication is targeted at those who create complex custom UI components for sound processing, but also any iOS developers wishing to broaden their horizons. Continue reading

Faster Than Real Time Stabilization of Smartphone Videos

Casual videos shot with a smartphone can often suffer from shakiness. ‎Software-based video stabilization methods have been actively developing over the ‎last years and can make such videos look much more professional and fluid. We ‎have just released Deshake, our video stabilizer app for iOS that can enable faster ‎than real-time video processing. In this article, we are going to ‎overview the video stabilization techniques available and discuss some of ‎engineering challenges we have faced during the development.‎ Continue reading

How to remove shakiness from a smartphone video

Technology offers a variety of means by which we can now capture special moments, all in the palm of our hands using our mobile devices. At the same time, our devices offer functionalities that would have been unthinkable a mere ten years ago. One such feature would be the anti-shaking functionality on videos. While most smartphones don’t offer some form of video stabilisation function, mobile companies have not yet perfected it. Continue reading

One app story

For quite a long time I was sure that most of my University skills could hardly be used in my business. Just try to think of any use for military- KGB-ideology kind of stuff, taught for 5 years, mixed with development courses in rare devices. No, I didn’t think so either.

I like to think though, that the first part has helped me to deal with complex situations. Next to that, the ideological stuff put me in a lot of very funny situations and they say laugh extends one’s lifetime span, so… The surprise was that my knowledge of development of very specific devices became very helpful. Even better; that knowledge led to a new app creation. Continue reading

How to make a great app preview video

If you are reading this then you most likely know that Apple released a new version of iOS 8 which allows app developers to publish short 15-30 seconds preview videos of their apps. As you know, the App Store is very crowded so making a great app preview video is something you’ll want to do as soon as possible!

In this article I will guide you through the process of making an app preview video as well as share some lessons I learnt while making a video for the Together app using Adobe Premiere Pro CC. The process took almost a whole day and I’m pretty sure that this post will save you a lot of time and make your video better! Continue reading

Data Syncing in Core Data Based iOS Apps


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In this post, we would like to discuss possible issues that you may face while implementing data syncing in iOS applications, and how you can tackle such issues with various approaches and tools. We are going to approach the issue from different angles, trying to make a generic overview of the topic. Still the main focus for us are applications that have a data model that is sophisticated enough to need a structured database and the Core Data framework.

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How to Use UIDynamicAnimator in iOS7 Apps

With the release of iOS 7 developers got empowered by many new tools to make fascinating effects and animations in their apps. However applicability of many of them is still in question. As soon as we made ourselves familiar with them, in our new project we decided to make a new animation, similar to that used by Apple in Messages. Continue reading

How to configure Jenkins CI on Mac OS X to build Android- and iOS Phonegap/Cordova apps and deliver them to TestFlight/HockeyApp

In most cases, mobile apps development is a very exciting experience, particularly if you really enjoy what you do. As we are involved with a substantial number of external projects (mostly custom application and website development), with our native applications also rapidly growing in numbers, we took to minimize the time and effort we spend to build our releases and pre-releases. If you have multiple developers, testers, and lots of projects, the cost to build apps may become substantial. Therefore, to avoid time wastage and focus on really important service-oriented effort, we propose a guide on how to create a system to automatically build your apps. This approach we practice in our apps which we offer to your attention: Together, PhotoSuerte, Veranda. Continue reading