The iPhone’s native video recorder built into the camera app? Nothing to write home about.
It’s serviceable, yes, as best evidenced by the cool art-horror project “Paranmanjang” shot entirely on an iPhone 4 by “Old Boy” director Park Chan-wook late last year. And I’m sure if you had a well-deserved $130,000 budget you’d be able to make your iPhone shots look pretty spooky, too.
But for iPhone directors with a more realistic budget, you might want to check out the new FiLMiC Pro, which launched a week ago. For all the features it comes with, it’s a steal at just $3 and exponentially improves your iPhone’s video capabilities by giving users pro-level control.
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For starters you’ll be able to shoot using dual reticles for spot exposure and focusing (like in the photo above), with the option to toggle a torch light on and off. Frame rates can be set from 1 fps (stop motion, folks?) all the way up to the iPhone’s max of 30 fps with multiple resolutions up to 1280 x 720 pixels. You’ll also have the option to turn on a bunch of useful overlays, like a framing guide for your aspect ratios, or an audio meter that let’s you visualize what your mic’s picking up.
Also cool: optional slates and vintage-looking color bars that come in handy for desktop editors trying to find their cut.
But one of FiLMiC Pro’s most useful features is the ability to upload directly to a number of services: You have your usual array like YouTube, Vimeo and Facebook, but also Dropbox, direct FTP and even Tumblr.
Fair warning, though: If you’re shooting at higher resolutions or bit rates (quality ranges from an 8 Mbps “Economy Rate” up to a high-quality 14 Mbps option) you’ll have to wait awhile and you’ll most definitely want to do it over Wi-Fi.
Full specs after the jump, and you can download it here.