Unlocking iMovie: June 2010

Made with iMovie for iPhone: Apple of My Eye

This is really impressive. Michael Koerbel and team shot and edited this entire film on his iPhone 4 using iMovie for iPhone. Even more impressive? He did it all in less than 48 hours. The behind-the-scenes footage at the end is fascinating. Check it out:

"Apple of My Eye" - an iPhone 4 film - UPDATE: Behind the scenes footage included from Michael Koerbel on Vimeo.

iMovie for iPhone: How much footage can your iPhone hold?

Posted by Aaron at 9:23 AM | Labels: iMovie for iPhone

The last thing you want to happen is to be out on vacation, relying a lot on your shiny new iPhone 4 to capture your kids' fleeting moments, and find out your magical little powerhouse is full to the brim. I guess you'll have to tell people about the Disney Teacup Ride Incident rather than show them.

Now that the iPhone 4 is out, and the thing shoots pretty impressive 720P HD video, we can figure out just how much footage your iPhone can hold as you're out and about.

First, there's no setting to downscale the footage your iPhone 4 records. Everything you shoot will be recorded in the highest quality--720P HD. (Of course, you could do all the recording using the front-facing VGA camera which records to smaller file sizes at lower quality. But, unless you're pointing the camera at yourself, you won't be able to actually see what you're filming.)

Knowing this, what we really need is a good rule of thumb for sizing up our iPhone's free space by how many minutes of footage we can shoot. Let's start with the basics:

The iPhone 4 records 720P video using the H.264 video codec at a little over 10 megabits per second. The sound is recorded as mono AAC format at 44,100 Hz.

Without showing my work, what you basically need to know is that one minute of video clocks in at about 75 Megabytes.

All this means that 1 GB of free space on your phone will fit just over 13 minutes of video. (All of these calculations are approximate since the iPhone doesn't record at a fixed bitrate.)

So let's say that I have a 32GB iPhone 4, and about half of it is filled with apps, movies, and music, leaving me with 15GBs of free space. In all, I could shoot just over 200 minutes of video, or about 3.3 hours.

Is that enough? For most people, it's more than enough. In my short time working with it so far, it's clear that iMovie for iPhone simply isn't designed for making really long movies. So, three hours of footage would either mean 1) a project that's way too long, or 2) way too much video to sort through.

This all changes a bit if you're using a 16GB iPhone 4 that only has a few GBs of free space. In that case, you might need to manage what you put on your iPhone a little more. Still, just a few GBs of free space can give you room for 30-40 minutes of footage.

Of course, don't forget that you can always take the video off your iPhone and put it onto your computer. This means it won't be there for editing in iMovie for iPhone, but then that's why you have the much more powerful iMovie '09.

I'll leave you with this handy reference chart to know about how much footage you can fit with the free space available on your phone. Remember, because the iPhone records at a variable bitrate, these times are approximate.

iMovie for iPhone: Questions Answered

Posted by Aaron at 7:42 AM | Labels: iMovie for iPhone

Apple put iMovie for iPhone into the App Store last night. Along with that, they've posted a whole series of questions and answers about how the app works.

iMovie for iPhone - FAQ

If you're fascinated by the tiny details surrounding iMovie for iPhone, here is a good place to start.

(via TUAW)

iMovie for iPhone: It's going to be big.

Posted by Aaron at 9:52 AM | Labels: Commentary, iMovie for iPhone

iMovie community, I hope your bathrooms are clean and that your fridge is well stocked. You're about to get some new move-ins. With the introduction of iMovie for iPhone, Apple is welcoming millions of new iMovie users, in one fell swoop.

Two things make this a really big deal:

Millions of people who've never used iMovie before will be using the iPhone version by the end of the month. That's just plain amazing. I hope Randy Ubillos and the iMovie team realize how cool this is.

Apple is pushing the iOS to new heights. Putting the iWork apps on the iPad was a good first step, but iMovie on the iPhone is mini revolution. iMovie has always been one of Apple's flagship products, a hallmark of what makes the Mac great. I still remember my 1999 iMac DV, which came with iMovie preinstalled. It was a pivotal moment that laid the groundwork for the YouTube generation.

That Apple figured out a simple, but capable way to put iMovie on an iPhone marks another big change: the day when the iOS is no longer just a way to surf the web and play $.99 games. It's a big move from enjoying stuff to making stuff.

(The iWork apps for the iPad are impressive, no doubt, but people have been doing office document stuff on phones and PDAs for a while now. Great looking personal video is a whole new level of stuff to make.)

I was one of the lucky 600,000 people who got an iPhone preorder in before Apple started pushing back shipping dates. (Who'd have thought that being one of over half a million people made you lucky?) That means I'll be sharing tips, tricks, and thoughts about iMovie for iPhone as soon as it's available.