debriefed

1. What Debriefed does

Debriefed is a variable-speed video scrubber for iPhone. You pick any clip from your Photos library, and then drag a single finger across the video to move through it — horizontal movement seeks through time, vertical position on the screen sets the speed. High up gives you fine, one-twentieth-speed control for landing on an exact frame. Low down lets you rip across a long clip at 3× real time.

The mental model is a variable-speed jog wheel from a professional video deck: you're always in direct, continuous control, and you get to decide how coarse or fine that control is moment to moment.

It was built for coaching debriefs — wind-tunnel skydiving, sports technique review, music practice, film study. Anyone who needs to pore over footage frame by frame will find it useful.

2. Getting started

1. Open Debriefed. Tap Choose a video. iOS will ask for permission to read your Photos library — this is required for the picker to show you anything. Grant it.
2. Pick any video. It loads straight into the player.
3. Drag your finger across the video to scrub. Try a slow drag near the top of the screen, then the same drag near the bottom, to feel how vertical position changes your speed.
4. Tap the video once to show the control bars. Tap again to hide them.
5. To save a frame: scrub to the moment you want, show the controls, and tap the camera icon. iOS will ask once for permission to add to Photos; grant it, and the JPEG lands in your Photos library.

3. The scrub gesture

The scrub gesture is the thing Debriefed exists for, so it's worth understanding in detail.

While your finger is down on the video, two things are tracked:

• Horizontal travel. Every pixel your finger moves left or right translates into a seek through the clip.
• Vertical position. The Y coordinate of your finger — where it currently is on the screen — sets the speed multiplier, ranging from 0.05× at the top of the video (twenty times finer than real time, for picking an exact frame) to 3× at the bottom (for fast overview). The mapping is exponential rather than linear, so the top half of the screen covers the precision range (0.05× → ~0.4×) and the bottom half covers the fast range (~0.4× → 3×) — each feels equally "wide" under your finger.

The key thing to notice: you can change speed mid-gesture without lifting your finger. Start fast at the bottom to land somewhere in the ballpark, then slide your finger up the screen to slow down and pick the exact frame. It's one continuous motion.

The gesture area is clipped to the video rectangle. The black letterbox bands above and below (in portrait) or left and right (in landscape) are where the controls live, and dragging there won't accidentally start a scrub.

If you'd rather drag right to go backward and drag left to go forward, the direction can be flipped in Settings.

4. Top bar reference

In portrait, the top bar sits in the black band above the video. In landscape, it collapses into the left-hand margin. Tap the video once to show or hide it.

5. Bottom bar reference

In portrait, the bottom bar runs full-width across the black band below the video. In landscape, it stacks into the right-hand margin.

6. On-video gestures

These work directly on the video rectangle, with the controls showing or hidden.

7. A / B loops

A/B looping lets you replay a specific span of the clip over and over — useful for drilling a single move or comparing across several takes.

1. Scrub to the start of the span. Tap A.
2. Scrub to the end. Tap B.
3. Tap the loop icon to enable looping, then press play.

Playback will jump back to A each time it passes B. You can move a marker by tapping it again at a new time. Long-press a marker to clear it.

8. Zoom and pan

Pinch outward on the video to zoom in (up to 5×), pinch inward to zoom back out. The zoom anchors on the midpoint between your two fingers at the moment the pinch began, so the content you targeted stays under your fingers as they spread.

Once zoomed, a two-finger drag moves the video within the frame — useful for zeroing in on a specific performer, hand position, or piece of equipment.

If you pinch below about 1.1×, the view snaps back to 1× and recentres automatically.

9. Saving a frame

Scrub to the frame you want, show the controls (tap the video once if they're hidden), and tap the camera icon. Debriefed writes a full-resolution JPEG of exactly that frame into your Photos library.

The first time you tap the camera, iOS will prompt for Add Photos permission — this is distinct from the read permission it asked for earlier when you picked the video, and it grants only the ability to add photos, not to read any others. Once granted, subsequent saves are silent.

Frames are saved at the video's native resolution, including 4K, with HDR metadata preserved where present.

10. Orientation

The home screen is always portrait.

Inside the player, Debriefed locks the device orientation to match the video: landscape clips are played in landscape and portrait clips in portrait. You don't need to do anything — when a clip loads, the app rotates the phone to fit, and stays there for the duration of playback.

This keeps the video filling as much of the screen as possible and puts the control bars where they belong (above/below in portrait, left/right in landscape) without you having to fight the device's auto-rotate.

11. Haptic feedback

Debriefed uses the Taptic Engine to make the interface feel physical rather than visual. You'll feel:

• A soft tick when a scrub starts, when it reverses direction, and whenever you tap a button or chip.
• A firmer thud when your scrub hits the start or end of the clip.
• A light selection tick when a frame save succeeds and when the playback rate changes.

Haptics are iPhone-only and will be silent on iPad or in the iOS Simulator. The overall intensity (off, light, medium, firm) can be adjusted in Settings.

12. Settings

Tap the small gear icon in the top-right of the home screen to open Settings. Your choices are saved automatically and persist across app launches.

Reverse direction

By default, dragging your finger to the right moves the clip forward in time. Some users — particularly those used to a traditional film-editing jog wheel — prefer the opposite. Turn this on to flip the mapping: drag right scrubs backward, drag left scrubs forward. The vertical speed control is unaffected.

Haptics

Choose between four levels:

• Off — no Taptic Engine feedback at all.
• Light — every interaction uses a quiet selection tick. Bound bumps and frame saves don't punch any harder than a button tap.
• Medium — the default. Scrub ticks stay quiet; impacts (frame skip, hitting the start or end of a clip) feel noticeably firmer.
• Firm — selection ticks become a soft impact, and impacts become a heavy thud. Best for users who want unmissable feedback.

Auto-hide

Sets how long the control bars stay visible after you tap the video. Options are 2, 3, 5, 10 seconds, or Never — the last is useful when you're studying a clip in detail and don't want the controls disappearing under your finger.

Double-tap distance

Sets the time jump for a double-tap on the left or right side of the video. Options are 3, 5, 10, or 15 seconds. Shorter values suit fast-paced sports footage; longer values suit lectures or interviews.

13. Tips & troubleshooting

Why is scrubbing faster near the bottom of the screen?

By design. Vertical position controls speed. High up = fine, low down = fast. This is the same metaphor as a variable-speed jog wheel on a professional video deck — you're not choosing "slow mode" or "fast mode" ahead of time, you're modulating it continuously with where your finger is.

A clip looks slightly washed out

You're likely looking at an HDR clip on the iOS Simulator, which doesn't render HDR colour correctly. On a real iPhone it'll look right.

My video won't play

Debriefed can decode anything iOS natively supports — MP4 (H.264 / H.265), MOV, HEVC. If a clip plays in the stock Photos app, it'll play here. If it doesn't play in Photos either, the file is likely corrupt or uses an unsupported codec.

Does it remember the last video I watched?

No. Every session starts from the home screen where you pick a clip. An earlier beta had a Resume feature but iOS's Photos sandboxing made it unreliable — it worked most of the time and silently failed the rest. Picking again is one tap, and we'd rather have a feature that's always right than one that mostly works.

Can I trim a clip in Debriefed?

Not in this version. Trim is on the roadmap but requires a custom native module (iOS has no high-level API that covers it well), which is a larger piece of work than the scrubber itself. In the meantime, the Photos app handles trimming, and Debriefed can pick up the trimmed output.

It feels slightly laggy when I scrub backward fast

Some codecs — particularly H.265 / HEVC — are heavily dependent on forward decode order, which makes backward seeks expensive. Debriefed rate-limits its seek calls to avoid piling up decoder work; the feel should be smooth on most devices and clips. If it's noticeably slow, try a short H.264 clip to confirm it's codec-specific and let me know.

14. Privacy

15. Contact

For support, bug reports, or feature requests, email vistas.promo-7e@icloud.com.