Okay, I have recorded this already.

It was way too long, so I'm gonna try keep it short,

but there's a lot of information here.

So here it goes.

I've been looking into double masking

and this looks like a lot of work for double masking.

And it obviously looks a little scary,

so I'm going to try, take you through it

and in a quick way show you my thinking.

So basically where I started was kind of like

looking into how we mask in our current app.

And at the moment we actually have two ways to mask.

The first one is by using the green screen mask layouts

and the second one, which can sometimes achieve

the same result and alongside here,

is by using the portrait bulges and kind of like playing

with this background and this foreground,

these little toggles and these sliders.

And so what I kind of realized by doing this

is that you can actually get some really interesting

looking layouts in the app at the moment,

but to do that and to get to these results

is really complicated with this kind of interaction.

And I feel like we should remove this completely.

I think that this is a lot of power,

but I don't think that the user needs to see this.

And it definitely shouldn't be the only way

for them to get to these results.

So it kind of got me thinking like we have this

current portrait filter way of masking.

And when I think about masking, I think about cutout,

I think about portrait, I think about background removal

and those kinds of words.

And I can't help but think that the masking concept

belongs more in the portrait filter

or like the cutout effect area

more than it belongs in the layout area.

And so that's kind of where my thinking started to begin.

Especially because this is a picture and picture layout,

but it has a portrait mask on it.

And you can kind of achieve that same green screen layout

using this tool.

So I also then kind of delved into like, well,

before thinking about how to do this,

like what are we actually trying to achieve

and what sort of look would we want to actually achieve

with double masking?

Like what kind of cool look does that do,

especially for a portrait video?

So I started playing around with some styles here,

which you can see just to kind of gauge

like what ingredients would we need?

I think the one thing that came out quite apparently

for me in this was the canvas background.

When you cut out two people,

you kind of left with that blank space behind you.

And what do we do with that?

And how do we make that cool?

And one of the things I thought would be really cool

is these like blurry backgrounds

that take primary colors from your sources

to make it feel like it all belongs together.

And there was some more interesting things explored here

around like potentially, you know,

not when you apply a shape.

Maybe it's not to both sources.

Maybe it's just two one.

Maybe there's sometimes a circle

but the other one's not a circle, things like that.

And then also like shadows were really interesting

and colors.

Yeah, so just moving on quickly,

what I kind of like, I came up with quite a few insights

and I thought the one thing that was interesting

to think about was what's going to make double masking

and exciting and discoverable feature.

And these were some of the things I came up with.

Better canvas backgrounds was one

because when I'm masking two people,

what's behind them becomes really important.

Better layouts combining the two segmented people.

So like now that people are cut out,

like how do they work together,

especially in a portrait sense so that it looks cool.

Depth effects like shadows, so when you're,

you know, when you're cut out,

you kind of maybe want to create that depth.

Matching of colors, so when you have backgrounds

that you need to use, can we be smart

about using the right colors so that it looks like it's cohesive?

Very much simplifying the experience.

So I think that with our current way

of using portrait filters is very complicated.

And I feel like that's where we need to simplify a lot,

especially if double masking is going to live there.

And then also potentially being able to start

with something so like if we communicate this feature

and we show people like what kind of videos you can get,

how will they go from that goal of like,

I want a video that looks like that

to downloading IAP and then getting to that in a faster way.

And potentially there's a way to start with a certain look

so that that connection is a little bit more seamless.

Cool.

So the key thing to kind of take in at this point

is that what I've decided to do is put masking

as a concept within a effects tool,

a portrait effects tool, and keep masking out of layout.

So I think layout is about positioning of your sources.

So I'm choosing where are they going to be.

And then portrait effects and shape effects

are more these like visual changes to my sources

that are kind of bringing it to life.

So I thought that within the portrait effects,

we could have the double masking

or the masking of sources,

potentially the segmentation with the blur background,

potentially choosing a color for your source background.

And I think things in here could,

we could add the AI stuff in here,

we could add some more filters as a category in here.

Essentially what this is is like the visual look of your video

and layout would be like this foundational aspect

that kind of informs a lot of what you do later.

So like layout is just kind of where they are placed

and there's not really like a cut out effect in that tool.

And then the canvas is where we could be smart

and kind of provide some really cool backgrounds

that actually work with a cut out effect.

And then one other thing that I thought would be interesting

to explore is like using these toggles on the canvas

for really simple actions such as adding a shadow.

So for example, like if you toggled this on and off,

you would get this shadow on the segment,

you can't really see it here,

but here's a better example.

You would get the shadow and if you toggled it off,

you wouldn't and the same for potentially the layout.

You could toggle a shadow on an actual layout canvas

or a frame.

So you could kind of play with shadows

to create depth in the sense,

but this is like not double masking.

This is kind of just like thinking about

how to take double masking into a very cool looking role.

But yeah, that would be like a little additional thing.

Yeah, so the thing I want to show you essentially is

how would someone jump into the app

and get from this very standard side by side layout.

So they've recorded a multiplayer video

and they want to really make it look super cool.

So they want to take it from that to this,

how would they get there?

So what they would do is go,

well, let me change my layout.

So they might go, okay, I'd rather prefer to have one person

being in one person small.

Then next to that, I think we should have effect

and inside effect, I would be able to then visually

style my video.

So I could add a mask and mask both people.

I could potentially use a segmented blur

so the background of the sources would blur.

I could potentially use a color.

I would have to think about how the color works here,

but I could maybe change the color of the background

of the actual source.

And I could maybe potentially toggle

which source gets that particular effect.

So maybe I don't want the mask on all of them.

I could actually toggle which one gets it.

So if I wanted just a green screen with a person here,

I could actually choose this one and then toggle

the mask so that it only applies to one source.

And then with shape, I would be able to then also choose

like visual changes such as a fade shape

or rounded edges or circular or device

really depends on whether you've chosen a mask or not,

whether these some of these are gonna look good.

But shape would kind of like stay the same

and be within the effects tool.

Just because it feels like it's more of a visual thing here.

Yeah, and I could also potentially toggle a shadow.

So this was another toggle where I could toggle

a shadow on and off which would then apply

to the segmented view in this particular tool.

And then in order to now that I've changed my layout

and have applied effects to my sources,

I would then wanna change the canvas.

So in this instance, I think with our current options,

it would be very unrelated to what is actually happening here.

So any of these options would kind of just look

quite strange and I think people would struggle

to find something cool here versus something like this

where we could potentially use the information

from the sources to generate some really cool backgrounds

here that actually look like they might be in context.

I think that would help us or help the user

to create a really interesting effect.

And so now they've gone from this very boring side by side

layout to this very interesting cool looking

double-mossed layout.

And then the one other thing that I thought would be

an interesting approach as well is to think about

how people start in the app.

So as you can see, even with all of those steps,

it's quite a lot of steps to get from what we would do

with Multiplayer, which is like,

those standard sources with their backgrounds

to something visually interesting.

And I thought maybe starting with a few presets would be cool.

So maybe when you start, you have your goals,

but you also have some layouts or some ways to kind of

like set the fade, I mean, set the shape and the mask

and the canvas backgrounds, et cetera, before you even start.

So you kind of like set up with something that's really cool.

In this context, these are all Multiplayer.

So that wouldn't really work.

I think we would have to have some single player layouts in here.

But maybe when you tap to this Multiplayer icon,

there could be, while you're waiting for your guest

to join or inviting your guest,

you could actually select a layout that works

or a look that works for your video

and then it would kind of use those presets.

Yeah, but they thought like maybe a starting point

like this could be interesting too.

Yeah, and that's where I am so far.

Hopefully this is not as long as it was before,

trying to keep it short.

There's a lot of information in here,

but yeah, would love any thoughts on that approach so far.

I think in a nutshell, what I would like to do

is just really simplify portrait filters

because I think they're really complicated at the moment

and decide that masking is actually something

that lives within portrait and layout

is kind of the separate placing of the different sources.

Yeah, let me know what you think. Thanks.