Twitter took the decision in October 2016 to kill off Vine, the video sharing app. Although, it turns out it hasn't been completely killed off at all. Vine now lives on as Vine Camera, which you can use to create short, 6.5 second clips and either save them to your video library or post them to Twitter. Sound familiar?

But what exactly is Vine Camera, what can it do, and what's happened to all the Vines made before the service was shut down? Allow us to explain all.

What is Vine Camera?

Vine Camera is an app for iOS and Android that lets you record videos up to 6.5 seconds long. You can then post those videos to Twitter or save them to your camera roll for private viewing. Any Vines uploaded to Twitter will automatically loop.

What can you do with Vine Camera?

 

Vine Camera also has a small selection of assist and editing tools. There are four assist tools available: grid, focus, ghost and flashlight. A double tap on the grid icon will bring up a level that makes sure your video remains level no matter how you hold your phone. With the editing tools you can undo or trim a clip, or reorder them however you see fit.

You can use either the rear-facing or front-facing camera on your phone to record clips, and you can mix things up for each Vine, so you're not limited to one camera for each 6.5 second clip.

So far, everything seems the same as the Vine we've come to know and love. Where the two services differ is there's now no global community. You can't directly share your new Vines anywhere other than Twitter, and you can't reshare any Vines made before the service shut down on 17 January 2017.

Where have my previous Vines gone?

what is vine camera and what can it do image 2
Vine

Vine itself is no longer active as a global community but fear not, your Vines haven't been consigned to their death. They all live on, all 40 million or so of them, on the Vine.co website. The website has been turned into a time capsule to preserve all the clips made, but you can only view them on there, you can't download them. You can search for Vines by year, category or view clips that Vine's editors have recommended.

If you had a Vine account before the service officially shut down on 17 January you can still use it to log in, but if you didn't, you can't sign up for one now.

If you do have an account, there's not an awful lot you can do it once you log in. You are able to delete any Vines you don't want anymore, or delete your account, but you can't modify any profile information including avatar, background colour and profile name.

Any Vine videos that are embedded on website pages will still work as normal "while the archive is available". Vine hasn't said if and when the archive will shut down, but the fact that line is written as it is, it suggests it may be shut down one day.