You can now annotate live video in Microsoft Stream

A new Microsoft Stream feature lets you annotate live footage captured via your Android or iOS smartphone. It is one of the latest major enhancements to the app, which helps users get the most out of their phones’ video cameras.

A powerful Office 365 video service

Microsoft Stream is an Office 365 tool that enables enterprises to collaborate with video. The additional ability to annotate video in real time suits the app to numerous use cases, such as peer-to-peer information sharing in a learning application.

So, while capturing live video with Stream, you can now insert text comments, perhaps to mark notable events or provide brief notes. According to the update release notes on the App Store, you may also annotate your footage before or after recording.

Camera flipping

The ability to switch between front and rear cameras while recording video with Stream has been elusive for some time.

Now that Microsoft has added the camera-flipping feature to Stream, there will be a button you can tap to swap between the two smartphone cameras without interrupting your recording session.

Enterprise server integration

Stream lets you store your videos in the cloud, thanks to its integration with Microsoft 365. The app now allows you to retrieve all uploaded footage from your company server.

Other new Stream features are:

make stickers from photos

view clips in chronological order

drag-n-drop any clip to your recording to stitch into a new order

trim to shorten the overall length

Currently, there is no Windows 10 app with the video recording capabilities of Stream. Maybe Microsoft is considering building a tool like that for its upcoming dual-screen devices, especially the Surface Neo, which will run on Windows 10X?

Still, there is no technical reason why Stream should not support the Surface Duo, an Android device.  If the gadget comes with more than two cameras, it will be interesting to see how Microsoft optimizes the video recording app for the futuristic mobile form factor.

You can go to the Google Play store to download Microsoft Stream for Android.