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iPhone 3GS Video Recording Technical Breakdown

By , Monday, Jul 6, 2009 at 3:41 pm
12

Automatic Filmmaker -- you may remember the from the Technologic Overkill music video filmed entirely with an iPhone 3GS -- have put together a technical breakdown of what they think so far as well a comparison with the Flip MinoHD.

If you've been putting the iPhone 3GS video camera through similar paces, let us know your results as well.

Rene Ritchie

Editor-in-Chief of iMore, Executive Producer at Mobile Nations, co-host of Iterate and ZEN and TECH, cook, grappler, photon wrangler.

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  1. Mart says:

    Did I just hear Philip Glass?

  2. Simon says:

    What is and what causes the 'jelly effect'? That is weird lookin.

  3. icebike says:

    @Simon:

    What is and what causes the ‘jelly effect’?

    No, it has nothing to do with the two babes that walked across the screen.

    Watch the video. When they mention Jelly effect, and shake the camera, the buildings look deformed, like parallelograms instead of rectangles.

    Its because the scan-to-pixels of the CCD is so slow that the building has moved on the CCD in the interval between the scan of the top line and the scan of the bottom line.

    Each successive line is offset by a large enough amount that the building's vertical edges look slanted.

    Faster CCDs will either lock the frame and scan the whole thing, or scan fast enough that this is not a problem.

    You can even see this in still images taken with the iPhone. See this sample I took at dusk where you can see video tearing because of camera movement: http://i479.photobucket.com/albums/rr151/icebike/photo-3.jpg [IMG]http://i479.photobucket.com/albums/rr151/icebike/photo-3.jpg[/IMG]

    With video its even worse. My Olympus locks the frame while it scans it, as do most cameras, but apparently Apple's camera allows the image to flow across the CDD as the scan progresses.

  4. Gavin says:

    You showed us some great stuff... but didn't explain how to access it... how do you change the exposure, etc.

  5. David Henley says:

    this fireworks show was shot on my 3GS. I thought it was great night time shooting.

  6. Al says:

    Very interesting, despite the shortcomings, the 3GS video recording seems incredibly solid for a phone camera. Makes me wish I had the money to buy out my 3G contract :( Oh well, the 3G is a perfectly capable phone too.

  7. Chobbs1 says:

    Exposure and focus are selected before you start the video. Exposure depends on what part of the picure you focus on. It is pretty much automatic.

  8. srh says:

    Its a phone the camera is really good!!

  9. @icebike Is the locking of the CCD a hardware feature or something in the software? I would assume that in this instance locking the frame would prevent 30fps but I'm just guessing.

    Even with the imperfections I am still exceptionally happy with the camera/camcorder aspect of the 3G S. If I wanted amazing quality I'll bust out my actual camcorder or dSLR but for quick pics and videos on the go or in very impromptu situations the 3G S is perfect IMHO.

  10. Mike says:

    Zürich rocks!

  11. Adam says:

    The iPhone's orientation sensors should allow for horizontal videos to be recorded without problems...or an option for orientation. YouTube wants widescreen, not tallscreen letterboxed in.

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