I've been recording one second moments and combining them into a montage at the end of each year for a few years now. It started with a one-second-a-day project, but after the first year, an obvious issue emerged: there are many days when I have nothing interesting to show, and others when I have multiple things worth recording. What resulted was many shots of my dog being cute on boring days and missed moments on interesting days.
The adjustment I made to solve this issue was to set the recording cadence to one second whenever something interesting happened. This made the montages so much better and was a more accurate reflection of my year. I find these shots much more valuable than still images because they capture so much, even in a short clip. You hear the sounds, see the movement of people, and generally capture a lot more of the moment's atmosphere. The montage that comes out of it is also so much fun to digest when you want to reminisce about a particular year.
The only con of doing this is that I dread every January when I have to edit the clips together. I've used various video editors, both on the computer and phone. But nothing out there is really made for quick editing and stitching of short clips. But in today's world, a problem like this can be solved with the help of AI. So this year, I decided to spend a week vibe-coding an iOS app for it. It's called Moments and is purposefully designed for exactly what I need.
I started off wanting to create a React Native app so anyone could use it, regardless of the phone they have. But I quickly ran into an issue: there isn't a working package out there that can stitch videos together. Luckily, one of the best parts about vibe-coding is that I was able to quickly and easily identify this hurdle and abandon the React Native repo in favor of a native iOS Swift approach. The Apple ecosystem exposed tools that worked very well for my video editing needs, so I was back up and running after the pivot.
One mistake I made with the app was timing. I was really hoping to release it before the New Year to catch any interest from people wanting to start this one-second-video habit, but Apple had other plans. I submitted my app on December 28 and didn't get anything published until January 5. Lesson learned: Apple takes the holidays off for App Store submissions.
Regardless of whether you use my app or find another way to edit, I'm confident that adding one second moments to your life will be a great addition. It doesn't take long day to day, and you're left with something so valuable. I can't wait to show my children and grandchildren these montages of what my life was like in my 20s and 30s.
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