Video Presentation App With Automatic Pauses

September 15, 2015 6:47 AM

Is there an iOS app that lets you build pauses into a video's playback at specific points? Here's my dream scenario: a video begins playing on the iPad until it hits the first pause point, like at 0:07. The video stays paused there until the user next taps the screen, at which point it plays until the next pause point, and waits there. Is there anything out there like that?
posted by Ian A.T. to Computers & Internet (1 answer total)

I am pretty sure you can pull that off with Keynote (as you specified iOS app).
I just created a test presentation, and when you add a video to a slide, you can set all kinds of things:
(from the Keynote Help)
You can specify whether your media loops in your presentation and set when your media begins playing.

Select the audio or video file on the slide.

Click the Audio or Movie tab at the top of the sidebar on the right.

If you don’t see a sidebar, or the sidebar doesn’t have an Audio or Movie tab, click Format button in the toolbar

Do any of the following:

Trim the audio or video: Click the disclosure triangle next to Edit Audio or Edit Movie, then drag the Trim slider to change the length of the audio or video.

Set playback: Click the Repeat pop-up menu and choose an option. Choose Loop to have the media play until you advance the slide. Choose Loop Back and Forth to have it play forward then backward.

Set when the media begins playing: Select the “Start media on click” checkbox to start playback when you click. If you want the media to play automatically when the slide appears, deselect the checkbox.

Adjust playback volume: Drag the volume slider.

So you could create a slide with a movie embedded in it, which will automatically play when the slide loads. You can edit the start and end point of the entire movie, or if you want to get fancy, just had your video already diced up into smaller sections, and place each section on it's own slide. By deselecting the "Start media on click" option, the video will begin playing when you advance to each slide, and by having the movie set to not repeat (i.e. no looping), the video will play to the end and then stop, at which point advancing to the next slide will play the next video.

Does that help?
Oh, and depending on your iOS device, and whether you took advantage of it when you purchased the device, Keynote is either "Free" or $5 (I know when I bought my iPad, it was free for me, but that may no longer be the case).
posted by daq at 3:58 PM on September 15, 2015 [1 favorite]