UPDATE:
Please ignore mentions of audio issues. I believe that this was an isolated problem in the Vine app during my testing. I have updated my conclusion to reflect this.
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Now that the official Vine app is available to download, I thought I'd do a little comparison between it and the popular third party app 6sec looking at the UI and features of both.
Front and centre
First up, let's take a look at the home page which is what you'll first see after logging in and where you'll see the Vines of who you follow.
On the left we have 6sec and on the right you'll see the official Vine app. Branding is an obvious one here with Rudy's now tried and true style that made its way into 6tag as well. Vine uses the same styling from their Twitter app but also having the video player take up more of the screen while 6sec adopts a more polaroid style using gestures to reach sharing options accessed via flipping the video over. These same controls are accessed underneath the video on the Vine app as well as a preview of the newest comments. Navigation through Vine, you can either use familiar swipes or by tapping the icon at the top which will take you through your home page, activity, explore and your profile with search and recording at the bottom. To access these same pages within 6sec, you'll find activies as well as your profile in the top right while explore, recording and search are found in the bottom bar.
Unique features
Rudy made quite a few heads turn with the release 6sec. Not for just releasing it but for having features that the official app didn't even have.
Two truly stand out features of 6sec are semantic zoom which allows you to "pinch" out and see a view of lots of videos at once and the ability to disable videos auto playing. The latter is extremely useful as you can choose what you want to watch rather than scrolling through and being surprised by random louds noises that are often the case for most Vines. The official app allows you to mute which is hidden away in the ellipsis menu and no where near as useful.
For the official Vine app, there is ghost. This feature is great if you're interesting in doing stop motion or just want to keep things in frame. It's very similar to panorama apps whereby you'll be able to see a faint image of what you've previously recorded so you can line things up.
Filming and Pinning
Vine got to be as popular as it is because it was easy to use and people really liked the idea of these short videos so how's the experience on Windows Phone?
*sorry for the grossness of my sweat
While recording is achieved the same way, they are both successful at different things and some not so successful in the official apps case (more on this shortly). As mentioned in unique features, Vine allows you to overlay your previous frame allowing for more accurate stop motion. The recording is also a lot smoother when using rapid taps in Vine while 6sec struggles and fails to produce a preview (in my testing). 6sec does have a few aces up its sleeve though. It can be used in either portrait or landscape as well as using the physical camera button to focus and record which the official app doesn't make use of. You can also enable the led to light up darker scenes, something else that's not found within the official app. But the biggest ace up its sleeve is that it records sound when recording. There is currently a bug in the official app that only records at the beginning and then stops. Hopefully this will be fixed soon though or may have even been a bug introduced through the newest update.
With regards to pinning, both will display a static image of the most recent video but Vine will flip back and forth from this to its logo. The live tile also has a text overlay if there is any. Both apps also allow you to pin individual users but Vine is a little more flexible here as it will scroll throw a users latest videos while 6sec will only display the latest. Vine also allows the camera to be pinned from within the app.
Come explore with me
Not really much to say here other than that I feel 6sec trumps the official app when it comes to the explore section showing more categories on the page while Vine has large icons taking up a larger portion of the screen for little reason which isn't helped by the fact that they come across looking blurry and low-res. Once going into a category, the semantic zoom found in 6sec. Trending is also given its own pivot within 6sec while relegated to the bottom in Vine.
Conclusion
While Windows Phone is often mocked for its lack of apps and even quality, the release of the official Vine app is testament to how good some developers can really be. Rudy is a superstar within our community and rightfully so. While it's great to have official apps, when done right the 3rd party apps can absolutely trump them. If you're someone who only has a Windows Phone and hasn't used 6sec but loves the idea of recording a lot of short videos and experimenting, the official Vine app is the way to go. The ghost feature is fantastic and hopefully the app will be updated to incorporate features found in the Android & iOS apps. Vine also do a great job with each version having its own unique look to fit in with that platform rather than just take something that exists and porting it over with minimal amount of work. I do feel that 6sec really does trump the official release though in a lot of areas that I've listed above as well as others that I haven't even mentioned here. For me, I'm going to keep the camera pinned from Vine but use 6sec for general viewing.
To view more images comparing the two, please visit the link below:
https://skydrive.live.com/pagenotfounderror
Please ignore mentions of audio issues. I believe that this was an isolated problem in the Vine app during my testing. I have updated my conclusion to reflect this.
-
Now that the official Vine app is available to download, I thought I'd do a little comparison between it and the popular third party app 6sec looking at the UI and features of both.
Front and centre
First up, let's take a look at the home page which is what you'll first see after logging in and where you'll see the Vines of who you follow.
On the left we have 6sec and on the right you'll see the official Vine app. Branding is an obvious one here with Rudy's now tried and true style that made its way into 6tag as well. Vine uses the same styling from their Twitter app but also having the video player take up more of the screen while 6sec adopts a more polaroid style using gestures to reach sharing options accessed via flipping the video over. These same controls are accessed underneath the video on the Vine app as well as a preview of the newest comments. Navigation through Vine, you can either use familiar swipes or by tapping the icon at the top which will take you through your home page, activity, explore and your profile with search and recording at the bottom. To access these same pages within 6sec, you'll find activies as well as your profile in the top right while explore, recording and search are found in the bottom bar.
Unique features
Rudy made quite a few heads turn with the release 6sec. Not for just releasing it but for having features that the official app didn't even have.
Two truly stand out features of 6sec are semantic zoom which allows you to "pinch" out and see a view of lots of videos at once and the ability to disable videos auto playing. The latter is extremely useful as you can choose what you want to watch rather than scrolling through and being surprised by random louds noises that are often the case for most Vines. The official app allows you to mute which is hidden away in the ellipsis menu and no where near as useful.
For the official Vine app, there is ghost. This feature is great if you're interesting in doing stop motion or just want to keep things in frame. It's very similar to panorama apps whereby you'll be able to see a faint image of what you've previously recorded so you can line things up.
Filming and Pinning
Vine got to be as popular as it is because it was easy to use and people really liked the idea of these short videos so how's the experience on Windows Phone?
*sorry for the grossness of my sweat
While recording is achieved the same way, they are both successful at different things and some not so successful in the official apps case (more on this shortly). As mentioned in unique features, Vine allows you to overlay your previous frame allowing for more accurate stop motion. The recording is also a lot smoother when using rapid taps in Vine while 6sec struggles and fails to produce a preview (in my testing). 6sec does have a few aces up its sleeve though. It can be used in either portrait or landscape as well as using the physical camera button to focus and record which the official app doesn't make use of. You can also enable the led to light up darker scenes, something else that's not found within the official app. But the biggest ace up its sleeve is that it records sound when recording. There is currently a bug in the official app that only records at the beginning and then stops. Hopefully this will be fixed soon though or may have even been a bug introduced through the newest update.
With regards to pinning, both will display a static image of the most recent video but Vine will flip back and forth from this to its logo. The live tile also has a text overlay if there is any. Both apps also allow you to pin individual users but Vine is a little more flexible here as it will scroll throw a users latest videos while 6sec will only display the latest. Vine also allows the camera to be pinned from within the app.
Come explore with me
Not really much to say here other than that I feel 6sec trumps the official app when it comes to the explore section showing more categories on the page while Vine has large icons taking up a larger portion of the screen for little reason which isn't helped by the fact that they come across looking blurry and low-res. Once going into a category, the semantic zoom found in 6sec. Trending is also given its own pivot within 6sec while relegated to the bottom in Vine.
Conclusion
While Windows Phone is often mocked for its lack of apps and even quality, the release of the official Vine app is testament to how good some developers can really be. Rudy is a superstar within our community and rightfully so. While it's great to have official apps, when done right the 3rd party apps can absolutely trump them. If you're someone who only has a Windows Phone and hasn't used 6sec but loves the idea of recording a lot of short videos and experimenting, the official Vine app is the way to go. The ghost feature is fantastic and hopefully the app will be updated to incorporate features found in the Android & iOS apps. Vine also do a great job with each version having its own unique look to fit in with that platform rather than just take something that exists and porting it over with minimal amount of work. I do feel that 6sec really does trump the official release though in a lot of areas that I've listed above as well as others that I haven't even mentioned here. For me, I'm going to keep the camera pinned from Vine but use 6sec for general viewing.
To view more images comparing the two, please visit the link below:
https://skydrive.live.com/pagenotfounderror
Last edited:
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