This post was published more than a few years ago (on 2010-07-03) and may contain inaccurate technical information, outmoded thoughts, or cringe takes. Proceed at your own risk.
Shot entirely on iPhone 4 in natural light, and mostly un-modified, aside from an editing pass through Final Cut Pro. Only two shots were blown up (because I foolishly shot them in portrait mode), no color correction or any other effects applied except the single text title on Shot 2. (Of course Flickr has added a layer of compression when I uploaded it here, so it doesn’t look as good as it could.)
I was going to edit it on the iPhone as well, but trimming 7- and 15-minute-long clips was tedious enough that I abandoned the idea. Perhaps next time when I remember to film in tight, concise clips.
Things I learned while doing this:
- iPhone 4 shoots at roughly 30fps, but the real rate seems to vary wildly. I got as low as 24, and I don’t think any of the clips were exactly 30.
- iPhone 4 does apply orientation to the video, so no matter which way you hold the phone, it will remember which was was up on your final video, landscape or portrait.
- Yes, you can tap-to-focus, but it also tries to refocus on its own if it thinks too much of the frame is out of focus.
- iPhone 4 saves the video as roughly 10.5 Mbps H.264, and embeds a geotag in the video file as well.
- Exporting the final video with the “AppleTV” preset from QuickTime works great if your 1280x720 video is at 24 fps. Anything above that and it dumps down to 960x540.