Facebook and 
Twitter. We're always keen to hear how you're getting on and if you've created any cool videos we'd love to see them."When all else fails, read the instructions" - My Dad
Our philosophy when designing Smoovie was that it should be both straightforward and enjoyable to use. If, as we hope, we have achieved the first of these goals, then a comprehensive help document here will be somewhat superfluous. And if you only get to grips with Smoovie after days and months of constant usage, then supplying you with a detailed and dry set of help will only have made us fail even more in our second goal; who can honestly say that they have been so engrossed in a good help document that they couldn't drag their eyes from the screen?
We could, as we did in version 1, provided detailed instructions of how to play your smoovie:
To play your smoovie, do any of the following:
We're pretty sure you'd be able to work this out for yourselves (or will have kids who can show you how). So rather than bore you to distraction with tedious documentation, let us show you briefly what Smoovie is, some of the things you can do with it, give you a few pointers and then let you get on with enjoying yourselves. To make things even easier, click this icon for a demonstration whenever you see it in the text.
If you're still struggling, want to know more or enjoy reading help, check out our website. Here we have a list of frequently asked questions as well as an on-going series of blog posts giving tips and tricks on using the software, news on updates and anything else we think might interest you. And of course you can always get in touch and we'll do our best to help.
You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter. We're always keen to hear how you're getting on and if you've created any cool videos we'd love to see them.
Anyway that's enough talk, so let's get on with the show...
We hope you enjoy Smoovie!
"An original idea. That can't be too hard. The library must be full of them." - Stephen Fry
The Library
The Library is where you'll start. It lists, alphabetically, all the smoovies you have made. From here you can select a smoovie for editing, create a new smoovie, play your smoovie in the Theatre or share your creation to the world.
There's not a lot more to be said about the Library - let's move along to the Editor where the action happens.
"The essence of cinema is editing. It's the combination of what can be extraordinary images of people during emotional moments, or images in a general sense, put together in a kind of alchemy." - Francis Ford Coppola
The Editor
The Editor is where you'll spend most of your time in Smoovie. From here you can capture images, arrange content, adjust the properties of your smoovie and apply effects.
On the far left-hand side of the screen you'll see your list of scenes. The order in which the scenes play can be changed by dragging one scene above or below another. In addition, you can change the speed at which an individual scene plays back by adjusting its frame rate. For example, in our video from before ( ) we set a frame rate of one frame per second on the "5,4,3,2,1" count-in scene, followed by a smoother 15 frames per second on the rocket take-off scene.
To the right of the scene list, the frame list shows all the frames within your currently selected scene. Here you can drag and drop, duplicate, cut, copy and paste to your heart's content. You can even drag and drop frames into other scenes. If you don't like anything you've done then simply select Undo from the Edit menu.
On the right-hand side of the screen you'll see the Inspector (if you don't see it, click the Inspector button in the toolbar). The contents of the Inspector will change depending on whether or not the camera is running. Whilst the camera is off, the Inspector will display information about the current smoovie and the currently selected scene. You can add music to your smoovie by dropping an audio file into the music drop zone in the Inspector or, even simpler, just drag and drop some music from iTunes.
Once the camera is turned on, the Inspector displays a drop-down list from which you can select the camera you wish to use (assuming more than one camera is connected). You'll also notice that the bar at the bottom of the screen changes to give you a capture button. If you press this button you'll capture the current camera's view as a new frame, but this can also be done by pressing the space bar on your keyboard.
On the right-hand side of this bar is the slider for adjusting the onion skinning, which allows you to see the previous frame overlaid on the live camera image. Onion skinning can be a really useful guide when you are trying to position the object you want to capture (or when you knock your camera over halfway through a scene and need to reposition it exactly where it was).
Smoovie 2 introduced live effects which can be used to change the camera's image on the fly. The great thing about Smoovie effects is that they can be chained together to give almost unlimited possibilities. For instance, by selecting Sepia followed by Invert you could achieve a pretty cool X-ray effect. The order in which effects are applied will also make a difference; so applying the Invert effect before the Sepia will result in something quite different. If you have your effects in the wrong order you can simply drag and drop them within the Inspector to rearrange.
To remove an effect, select it in the Inspector and select Delete from the Edit Menu, just as you would to remove a frame. Or use the keyboard short-cut ⌘⌫.
One effect which can be a lot of fun is Chroma Key, which you may also have heard of as green screen or blue screen. This effect replaces green (or blue if you choose) areas from the input image with a background of your choice. When you watch the weather forecast on TV, this is the effect being used to create the animated weather chart behind the presenter.
To select a background for your Chroma Key effect, simply drag an image from Finder into the image in the Chroma Key properties within the Inspector. You could even drag an image from your web-browser and drop it straight in, or select a frame from the frame list, copy it to the pasteboard and then paste directly into the Chroma Key properties in the Inspector.
Time Lapse has to be one of the most requested new features in Smoovie 2. Using this technique, long periods of time can be condensed into just a few seconds. Images are captured at set intervals and when played back the result is a smooth animation of the event.
Why not try capturing clouds floating across the sky or over mountains as the day passes by? Or, if you're feeling really ambitious and have the time, film a plant growing from a seed. To give you a rough guide, capturing an image every 20 seconds for 5 minutes will give you 1 second of footage when played back at 15 frames per second. Capturing one image per hour for a week would give about 11 seconds at 15 frames per second.
If you create something cool, or just want to share a thought, tell us about it on Facebook or Twitter.