TOKYO (MacHouse) – We’ve been quite productive this month as we have released four software title so far. All of them are now available at Apple‘s Mac App Store. We also submitted our 5th software title of the month to Mac App Store several hours ago. This new software submission is called Look4Faces.

Imagine examining a security video to find suspicious individuals. Spotting human faces on a long video clip can be a tedius task. Look4Faces is a desktop application that lets you scan a QuickTime-readable video clip (M4V, MOV, MP4) to find frames containing faces. As a result, Look4Faces will list all frames with one or more faces. Select one frame shot under the Pictures window, which you can save as an image file. Or select several or even all hundreds or thousands of frame shots with faces and let the application export to a folder you specify.

Look4Faces comes with a built-in video player. And you can click on a particular screenshot with faces to locate the exact frame over the video player. Furthermore, you can take a screenshot at any play head position by just clicking on a button.  

Available at Mac App Store

Features

1. Scan the selected video clip for faces every 1/4 sec, 1/2 sec, 1 sec, 2 secs, 3 secs, 4 secs or 5 secs.
2. Border each frame to increase the likelihood of identifying faces around the edge.
3. Use the built-in video player to take movie screenshots with a click on a button.
4. Export one frame shot you select at a time under Pictures.
5. Export all selected frame shots under Pictures at a time to a folder you specify.
6. Save timecode numbers as a text file or an XML file. Also, print out timecode numbers by choosing Print Timecode under File.
7. Click on a frame shot under Pictures so that Look4Faces can locate the same frame over video under the Player window.
8. The application supports the Retina display.
9. The application supports the FullScreen.
10. Languages: English and Japanese（日本語）
11. Application file size: 2.3 MB
12. The application comes with a complete user’s guide written in English. (Choose Help > User’s Guide.)

System requirements

1. Mac OS X 10.7, 10.8, 10.9 (caution required)
2. 64-bit system

Limitations

1. Supported video containers are M4V, MOV, MP4. You may be able to read other multimedia containers including 3GP and 3GP2 using the drop box. What really matters is the video compressor inside the container. And it’s up to the System to decide which video stream can be decoded. The application should be able to decode video if it’s compressed with MPEG-4 (Part 2) and H.264. (MPEG-4 Part 10) The application may not able to decode some MPEG-4 video under OS 10.9 when it can under 10.7 and 10.8.
2. Available export formats are BMP, GIF, JPEG, JPEG 2000, PNG, TIFF.
3. Look4Faces refers to OS X’s Core Image framework to detect faces. Any object (sometimes, even a wheel frame) with three or more distinctive dark spots that are positioned like a triangle can be falsely identified as a face.

Important!

AV Foundation is the framework (a collection of libraries) that Look4Faces uses for its built-in video player. It uses CoreMedia for CMTime, which is a movie property. It is possible that these foundations require bug fixes by Apple, Inc. under OS X 10.9. Under Mavericks, Look4Faces may fail to decode the same H.264 video clip that it can decode under OS X 10.7 and 10.8. Actually, it’s not just this application. Even sample projects (i.e. AVSimplePlayerOSX) that they offer can fail to open H.264 video clips under Mavericks. If you can, we would like to advise that you run this application under OS X 10.8 till Apple, Inc. checks out our bug claim. Yes, a bug report has been filed.






Version history

1.0.1 (January 23, 2014)

1. Fix: When the user opened Player, even when the export folder that they once selected did not exist, the application failed to display the invalid symbol.

User’s guide

Application user’s guide is available (only in English). Click here to access it online.






Trial/Demo version

Click here to download a trial version. Meanwhile, if you regularly review Mac software, you may be eligible for receiving free coupon codes, which can be redeemed at Mac App Store. Click here for more information.






Video tutorial

A video tutorial with text commentary is available in the form of a QuickTime movie. Click here. The data size is 125.1 MB, and the movie duration is 13 minutes and 37 seconds. The video dimensions are 1,440 x 900 pts. The public-domain MP4 video used in the desktop movie above comes from Internet Archive.






Look4Faces is a product of MacHouse.