Simon’s Blog

I’m happy I shot some colorful, detailed footage of bumble bees last week because it made great demo material when people asked about the video recording capabilities of the iPhone 4. I am really impressed with it’s ability to focus on nearby subjects. But I didn’t feel like I really pushed iPhone to it’s limit, to get extreme macro shots. Today I shot these bees up close, like in their face close. The minimum focal distance of iPhone 4 seems to be about 4 or 5 inches, and that’s enough to see bee hair and flower bugs.

iMovie is $4.99 and only works on the iPhone 4. Earlier iPhones do not have the CPU power to edit 720p video. Here is a one minute video I cut together. It demonstrates all the features of the app. Theme transitions, background music, titles, titles with geotag information (Washington Monument), and Ken Burns style pictures.

I uploaded this video from the phone. Unfortunately the iPhone 4 can not upload 720p video to YouTube, for shame. The video on my previous post was uploaded from my computer which is why it looks so much better (720p > 360p). A Macrumors forum post mentioned an app that can upload to YouTube in 720p.

Throughout the first part of the video I am demonstrating how you can tap-to-focus to bring any part of the video into focus as you shoot. The 3GS had tap-to-focus but after you hit record the video remained fix-focused. I can get incredibly detailed macro shots of those bees with my iPhone 4.

iMovie is pretty good for short simple videos. It’s feature set is quite basic considering I can demonstrate every feature in a one minute video. I start off with the default cross dissolve transitions then later use theme transitions. The modern black theme is the only one that doesn’t have lame fruity effects, it’s got slick transitions and sleek titles. One of the titles uses the geotag information in the video added by the GPS when it was shot, I was about a mile from the Washington Monument.

I added some awesome background music and I noticed iMovie performs automatic audio ducking. You can really notice how it decreases the volume of the music when the fountain is making noise, this would preserve dialogue clarity over music.

There is very little fine control and NO audio control. I can’t control crossfades between clips so undesired audio might spill over into the next clip. I can’t decrease the volume of a clip but I can disable it completely like I did for the water fountain because it was super loud. The music has to start at the beginning of the movie, why can’t I slide it over to start at some later point? They could easily add this with an update.

I can however trim video to specific frames by moving my finger really slowly. I can also position beginning and end placement of photos for the Ken Burns effect to get that perfect Batman reveal.

Overall I really like it. The amazing camera in the iPhone 4 deserves a video editing app.

I shot this at the Smithsonian garden.

Download UStream Live Broadcaster from the app store for free.  Then point your phone at something and click broadcast.  A live video stream will be streamed to UStreams website where it can be shared with the world.  Quality varies and video size is only 320×240 but hey it’s free live video streaming from your phone.  I’ll let you know next time I broadcast a live cat vs. dog battle royal.

I just saw this dude on the highway. That guy must be so cool.

Look at all the trees in here!

The Gaylord National Resort is fancy.

Check out my retina.  The dark spot is my iris, the bright spot is my optic nerve, all those blood vessels are helping me see stuff.  Please don’t replicate a bionic eyeball using this image and access the secure wing of Black Mesa.

The Molla store has all the fanciest computa stuffs.

Molla is Albanian for Apple.

Yawesome. When I first got my 3GS I tried to strap it to my RC car, but I have a mini RC car so the 3GS was heavier than the car. Maybe I can strap it to my cat.