How Weiland VHS: Cassette app sorted videos on the iPhone

Why simply when it comes to complicated: This premise follows a new video app for the iPhone. Cassette from the independent New Zealand developer Devin Davies Is a “Home Video Player” that sorts the iPhone photo media library in a very special way: Similar to as you know this from VHS cassettes. The tool designed in retro design turns existing clips virtual home videos.

Taptic Engine imitates the insertion of a video

These are organized in terms of time, sorted into BASF, 3M, TDK & Co., and can then be inserted into a “video recorder”. There are then the usual buttons of a VHS device and in pixel script for the information and recording location and the location as soon as you have driven a clip. Also funny is the “Take Me Somewhere” button, with which you can see a random video from the archive. The player also has a shuffle button.

The haptic feedback is also nicely made: the app even imitates the removing and inserting the cassette using TAPTIC Engine (vibration engine of the iPhone). The reproduction is either in a small “television” directly on the main screen of the app or in full screen. Fortunately, Maker Davies has not implemented a VHS filter that explicitly worsens the picture. Cassette is reminiscent of similar approaches for playing music, for example the Solos appthat is based on music cassettes.

Access to the photomediathek

Davies offers cassette for free, but the app then has some deficits. So you cannot explicitly select individual videos. If you want to unlock the app – and also support the maker – pay 8.99 euros for a one -off activation. Originally, monthly and annual subscriptions (99 cents or 6.99 euros) were also planned, but these can no longer be called up. In order for cassette to work, you have to give the app access to the photomediathek. However, the developer does not collect their data.

Cassette can also pass on videos via AirPlay to TVOS devices and other compatible reception hardware. By the way, the idea behind Cassette comes from a friend of Davies. The latter had complained that looking at home videos on the iPhone was no longer as beautiful as once with physical video cassettes.