smartfilming

Exploring the possibilities of video production with smartphones

Tag: iPhone

#58 Shocking: The downfall of a brilliant mobile video editing app on Android & iOS! — 26. February 2023

#58 Shocking: The downfall of a brilliant mobile video editing app on Android & iOS!

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It’s time for another rant. As you might be well aware of, I’ve been a big fan of the Korean video editing app KineMaster (available for Android and iOS/iPadOS) which was the first video editor on Android that could actually be described as fairly „advanced“ – at least when judging it by mobile app standards. It launched in December 2013 and I still remember praising it in a presentation at the original MoJoCon event in Dublin in 2015. The UI was absolutely brilliant for touch screen use, it had a rich set of features to work with and it was also widely available for basically all Android devices. But ever since the original lead engineer and some team members left the company in 2017, development of the app has become very sluggish and mostly disappointing. Even darker clouds in terms of user experience have been accumulating over the last months…

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#57 What is this tiny green/orange dot on your smartphone’s screen? — 23. January 2023

#57 What is this tiny green/orange dot on your smartphone’s screen?

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Remember the 3.5mm headphone jack? You know, the port on your phone where you put the cable of your headphones in before Bluetooth headphones became all the rage? Given all the differences between Android phones and iPhones, both in terms of hardware and software, this was, for quite a while, a somewhat unifying factor. For the mobile content creation community this meant that you could use certain external mics (like the original iRig Mic) with both kinds of phones. Then Apple and in its wake many/most others smartphone makers decided to get rid of the headphone jack and rely on a sole physical port for accessory hardware connections: the Lightning port (Apple) or a USB-C port (Android phones). While we’re still waiting for the iPhone to finally give up its proprietary Lightning port and switch to the universal USB-C, I found a little something on the software side that works the same on both mobile platforms. It’s something lots of people might not even be aware of and those who do may not know what it’s actually about. But it’s useful and interesting.

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#53 What’s new and useful in iOS 16? (by Marc Blank-Settle) — 2. October 2022

#53 What’s new and useful in iOS 16? (by Marc Blank-Settle)

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Preface

Last year, I hosted for the first time an article on this blog that wasn’t written by myself but by BBC Academy mobile journalism (“MoJo”) trainer Marc Blank-Settle whom I have met on several occassions and keep constantly in touch with via Twitter. His yearly insights into every new iteration of Apple’s mobile operating system iOS from a journalist’s point of view have become a much respected staple of the community so it’s no surprise he’s done it again for iOS 16. If you are an iPhone user, you should definitely dig into this and don’t forget to follow Marc on Twitter for the latest updates or to ask him a question. I’m also using this opportunity to apologize for my own relative silence on this blog in the last months but life’s been extremely busy. Hopefully the near future will allow me again to post more content here. But for today, I’m handing things over to Marc Blank-Settle. – Florian from smartfilming.blog

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#49 What’s new and useful in iOS 15? (by Marc Blank-Settle) — 24. October 2021

#49 What’s new and useful in iOS 15? (by Marc Blank-Settle)

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Preface

So far, all the blog posts on smartfilming.blog were written by myself. I’m happy that for the very first time I’m now hosting a guest post here. The article is by Marc Blank-Settle who works for the BBC Academy as a smartphone trainer and is highly regarded as one of the top sources for everything “MoJo” (mobile journalism), particularly when it comes to iPhones and iOS. His yearly round-up of all the new features introduced with the latest version of Apple’s mobile opearting system iOS has become a go-to for journalists and content creators. iOS 15 just came out, so without further ado, I’ll leave you to Marc’s take on the new software for iPhones and don’t forget to follow him on Twitter! – Florian – smartfilming.blog

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#45 The Smartphone Camera Exposure Paradox — 11. May 2021

#45 The Smartphone Camera Exposure Paradox

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Ask anyone about the weaknesses of smartphone cameras and you will surely find that people often point towards a phone’s low-light capabilities as the or at least one of its Achilles heel(s). When you are outside during the day it’s relatively easy to shoot some good-looking footage with your mobile device, even with budget phones. Once it’s darker or you’re indoors, things get more difficult. The reason for this is essentially that the image sensors in smartphones are still pretty small compared to those in DSLMs/DLSRs or professional video/cinema cameras. Bigger sensors can collect more photons (light) and produce better low light images. A so-called “Full Frame” sensor in a DSLM like Sony’s Alpha 7-series has a surface area of 864 mm2, a common 1/2.5” smartphone image sensor has only 25 mm2. So why not just put a huge sensor in a smartphone?

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#44 Split channels (dual mono) audio from the Rode Wireless Go II in LumaFusion — 4. May 2021

#44 Split channels (dual mono) audio from the Rode Wireless Go II in LumaFusion

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Rode just recently released the Wireless GO II, a very compact wireless audio system I wrote about in my last article. One of its cool features is that you can feed two transmitters into one receiver so you don’t need two audio inputs on your camera or smartphone to work with two external mic sources simultaneously. What’s even cooler is that you can record the two mics into separate channels of a video file with split track dual mono audio so you are able to access and mix them individually later on which can be very helpful if you need to make some volume adjustments or eliminate unwanted noise from one mic that would otherwise just be “baked in” with a merged track. There’s also the option to record a -12dB safety track into the second channel when you are using the GO II’s “merged mode” instead of the “split mode” – this can be a lifesaver when the audio of the original track clips because of loud input.

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#41 Sharing VN project files between iPhone, iPad, Mac, Android (& Windows PC) — 23. March 2021

#41 Sharing VN project files between iPhone, iPad, Mac, Android (& Windows PC)

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As I have pointed out in two of my previous blog posts (What’s the best free cross-platform mobile video editing app?, Best video editors / video editing apps for Android in 2021) VN is a free and very capable mobile video editor for Android and iPhone/iPad and the makers recently also launched a desktop version for macOS. Project file sharing takes advantage of that and makes it possible to start your editing work on one device and finish it on another. So for instance after having shot some footage on your iPhone, you can start editing right away using VN for iPhone but transfer the whole project to your iMac or MacbookPro later to have a bigger screen and mouse control. It’s also a great way to free up storage space on your phone since you can archive projects in the cloud, on an external drive or computer and delete them from your mobile device afterwards. Project sharing isn’t a one-way trick, it also works the other way around: You start a project using VN on your iMac or MacbookPro and then transfer it to your iPhone or iPad because you have to go somewhere and want to continue your project while commuting. And it’s not all about Apple products either, you can also share from or to VN on Android smartphones and tablets (so basically every smartphone or tablet that’s not made by Apple). What about Windows? Yes, this is also possible but you will need to install an Android emulator on your PC and I will not go into the details about the procedure in this article as I don’t own a PC to test. But you can check out a good tutorial on the VN site here.

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#38 How to anonymize persons or objects in videos on a smartphone – new app makes things a lot easier! — 16. January 2021

#38 How to anonymize persons or objects in videos on a smartphone – new app makes things a lot easier!

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There are times when – for reasons of privacy or even a person’s physical safety – you want to make certain parts of a frame in a video unrecognizable so not to give away someone’s identity or the place where you shot the video. While it’s fairly easy to achieve something like that for a photograph, it’s a lot more challenging for video because of two reasons: 1) You might have a person moving around within a shot or a moving camera which constantly alters the location of the subject within the frame. 2) If the person talks, he or she might also be identifiable just by his/her voice. So are there any apps that help you to anonymize persons or objects in videos when working on a smartphone?

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#35 Using external microphones with iPhones when shooting video — 1. December 2020

#35 Using external microphones with iPhones when shooting video

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I usually don’t follow the stats for my blog but when I recently did check on what articles have been the most popular so far, I noticed that a particular one stuck out by a large margin and that was the one on using external microphones with Android devices. So I thought if people seem to be interested in that, why not make an equivalent for iOS, that is for iPhones? So let’s jump right into it.

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#34 Apple is about to give us 25fps in the iPhone’s native camera app (finally catching up to Windows Phones) — 17. November 2020

#34 Apple is about to give us 25fps in the iPhone’s native camera app (finally catching up to Windows Phones)

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One of the things that has mostly remained a blindspot in video recording with the native camera app of a smartphone, is the ability to shoot in PAL frame rates, i.e. 25/50fps. The native camera apps of smartphones usually record with a frame rate of 30/60 fps. This is fine for many use cases but it’s not ideal under two circumstances: a) if you have to deliver your video for traditional professional broadcast in a PAL broadcast standard region (Europe, Australia, parts of Africa, Asia, South America etc.) b) If you have a multi-camera shoot with dedicated ‘regular’ cameras that only shoot 25/50fps. Sure, it’s relatively easy to capture in 25fps on your phone by using a 3rd party app like Filmic Pro or Protake but it still would be a welcome addition to any native camera app as long as this silly global frame rate divide (don’t get me started on this!) continues to exist.

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#12 Recording video with multiple cameras simultaneously on a smartphone (incl. Update 2021) — 17. April 2018

#12 Recording video with multiple cameras simultaneously on a smartphone (incl. Update 2021)

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2017 marked the return of one of THE big pioneers in the history of mobile phones to the smartphone market: Nokia. It’s not really the same company from the days of feature and Windows phones anymore (a company named HMD Global has licensed the brand name for their phones) but that doesn’t mean we should just ignore it. After launching a bunch of affordable entry-level and lower end mid-range devices (Nokia 3, 5 & 6), the Nokia 8 was the first quasi-flagship phone following the brand’s reboot.

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