I recently switched to iOS after using Android for years and live photos are a huge draw for me. I don't care if they're stabilized or loopable, I just love the context they add in (audio, movement) while also having a still photo.

I sorely miss the real Live Photos I had on iOS for the same reasons as you. There are camera apps on Android that do it (like Camera MX) but the UX isn't really comparable and you can't use Motion Stills on stuff taken outside the app.

has existed for years

But doesn't this mean videos can only be shared/viewed within the app? How does one share videos with users that are not on Android 5.1+ then (and who therefore can't even install the app)?

>> "immediately"

The GPU texture mapping thing is the strategy employed for immediate feedback in the app. The stabilized video can still be rendered to a file in the background (and/or while plugged in) later.

It's 2017, I feel like "hit spacebar in VLC and screenshot" is a really poor way of extracting still images from video. So what is the highest-quality way to extract a still from a video?

Premiere or Final Cut can easily export single frames as stills.

As for doing it with free tools, I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are a number of good ways.

If you want to do it programmatically, what do you want that ffmpeg doesn't offer?

This isn't about 'stealing' or who 'came first', it's about everyone getting everything.

It's just giving Android users a handy app to loop videos.

Is this an MMS issue or something?

I think the issue is just the design of MMS. It was designed back when dumbphones ruled, so it was designed to have cell networks transcode media into a compatible format for the target device. The cell networks don't want to spend the cpu cycles or perhaps engineer time to do it properly. Perhaps RCS[0] solves this issue, but I think everyone will have switched to WhatsApp, et. al by then.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services

Either way, the app is neat and I think this is just an artifact in the MMS stage rather than the files.

They're still trying to get you to be excited about their stuff, but they try to meet you in the middle by giving those who are interested the opportunity to dig into some details. That's how you market to nerds.

Let's say this has been by far the #1 app request for the past year, and the reason you've built it is literally because it's what people have been asking for. And as a team, you're actually excited to ship it after months and months of development.

Really curious how else to phrase it? Without sounding immature or unprofessional ("it's here WOOT!") -- or too self-absorbed ("Drum roll please...").

Which both annoys me because you are telling me how I should feel and it's a new feature what other emotion are you hoping for in a customer.

Genuine answer:

The version used in the motion stills press release already sounds rather self-absorbed to my ears. Might be cultural (non-US, non-English), just like everything that follows.

Compare "We listened to your feedback and today, we're excited to announce" to "Today we release the Android version, implementing the #1 feature request we received".

The latter sounds less personal, but nobody ever listened to "my" feedback on such things. "Your (plural) feedback" is always in aggregate, and unless you're talking to your database of customer sentiment, it's as unpersonal as can be, it just hides that fact better through linguistic ambiguity.

> And as a team, you're actually excited

Every 3 years old is excited to show off their paintings to their parents.

Except for a few, everybody knows that you're excited about shipping things. But since we're customers and not parents, barely anybody cares. Those who do are probably your team members' parents.

tl;dr: Highlight the product, the team if you want, their hard work. Leave out the excitation (nobody cares) or how you listened to "you, the user".

However, from its initial release, the community has been asking us to also make Motion Stills available for Android. We listened to your feedback and today, we're excited to announce that we’re bringing this technology, and more, to devices running Android 5.1 and later!

This sounds perfectly normal.

It's seems ok because everyone else is doing it but it'll lack the sincerity that people respond to.