Video from iPhones

[Rob C]

Hi, as this is a question about motion, albeit with the iPhone system, I thought it might make more sense to post it here than in the iPhone section.

I’ve been considering buying an iPhone 17 when it comes out, mainly because of the expected improved longer focal length, but it struck me that it might help make it a more sensible investment (investment, he writes: I expect zero return, so probably the wrong word) if I think in terms of motion, too.

I have only once in my life, probably in 1966, attempted filming anything. That being the case, take me as a motion virgin, or at the most generous, a semi-virgin, a concept first met in the movie What’s New, Pussycat. My question, when I finally get round to asking it, is this: does anyone know of a very basic, inexpensive box of tricks that will let me play around with iPhone video on my desktop computer (Windows 10 and Photoshop CS2)? I have no interest in sound, just basically editing sequences and sticking them together to make up some kind of simple visual story. Perhaps what I ask is actually far from simple - I just don’t have the knowledge or experience to know.

Thanks for any information or advice you can offer.

Rob C

[Christopher Sanderson]

Rob, I have zero experience with video on Windows but your question caught my interest since as an old video guy I thought I should have an answer. I don't - since the options are too great and the software recommended doesn't co-relate to my Mac-only experience. (I did see however that the Photos app in Windows 11 has some basic video editing capability)

This site seems a good place to start looking. I like its short strokes analysis. ClipChamp looks interesting

[Rob C]

Thanks Chris, as you suggested, a good place to start looking for the means to do it.

Unless I'm slowly - or perhaps rapidly - losing it: I am sure that yesterday I read a post on this thread from Manoli that has now vanished.

It must be the heat; Spain is quickly turning into a fireball, the national news covering hardly anything else. Looking out from the verandah I see the abandoned old cornfield on the other side of my hedge, the field leading to the foot of a hill, covered with pines, with a dead end road winding up it, with very expensive housing on both sides. A fire would demand great speed and agility from the "folks who live on the hill" for them to escape with their lives. All that glisters may not be gold, and it can sometimes kill you. Lesson for the day, as the Revd Murray McLeod may have said to us kids during enforced Sunday church attendance in our years of incarceration in boarding school. They say those places build character: I wonder if that would be a legally valid excuse?

[Manoli]

Hi Rob,
You did indeed read a post but I soon deleted it as it wasn’t the solution to CS2 you were looking for.

I did add a few (unsolicited) pointers though.

Strong suggestion to download the Blackmagic Camera App (freebie) and an app called Lilt, description best reviewed on the App store (part freebie, worst case £14.99 lifetime purchase).
Also worth noting that a lot of your ‘needs’ (editing, trimming, cropping etc) can very effectively be done within the iPhone Photos app.

Another solution that may work is, of course, Black Magic’s DaVinci Resolve (freebie) . Problem here may be whether your computer has the horsepower to run it. Again, you don’t need the latest turbocharged ‘mean’ machine.

If you can run it, that’s the app I’d go for. You'll only touch the surface but even that’s more than you’ll ever need for assembling and exporting your timeline / clips.

Hope this helps.

Edit:
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/event/davinciresolvedownload

[Manoli]

Rob,
Chat GPT to the rescue ..

and at the end add Lossless Cut (screenshot wouldn’t fit!)
(https://www.videohelp.com/software/LosslessCut)

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Rob, here is the most succinct advice I can think of:

Don't.

[Rob C]

Rob, here is the most succinct advice I can think of:

Don't.

Spent some time searching through the various links kindly offered, and frankly, there really are no simple, inexpensive and uncomplicated ways because even the basic computer I have looks to be unfit for filming purposes… Doing any editing in the cellphone is not a thing I want to do: getting the “work” into the computer and at a reasonable size for my aged peepers to see it is vital. I don’t have a presence on Instagram or anything else like that: it’s not my area of interest, so there really is a big question hanging over this thinking: what on Earth’s the motivation for it? I don’t know, beyond it being something new.

Well, that's not entirely true, either: I have been very impressed by the title sequences for various tv shows such as The Sopranos, Justified, and Braquo, for example. Of course, the music adds a lot, but the apparently disconnected series of video clips add up to an exciting whole. I like that. Obviously enough, finding en equivalent in Mallorca that doesn’t sink into a series of tourist beauty shots would be a challenge, at least without a driver. We got slums, baby, gypsy drug cartel distribution districts etc. but not anywhere this octogenarian would be daft enough to walk. Perhaps being spotted in such areas with a camera inside a car’s enough to get shot, the car stoned or something like that.

[Rhossydd]

Another solution that may work is, of course, Black Magic’s DaVinci Resolve (freebie) . Problem here may be whether your computer has the horsepower to run it. Again, you don’t need the latest turbocharged ‘mean’ machine.

Resolve is amazing software, but absolutely does need a fast well specified PC to run it effectively.

Probably massively more than Rob needs anyway.



Rob;
Try looking at Lumavision to run on your iPad. Generally reckoned to be an excellent video editor on ios.
Don't ignore sound, if you want to watch it on anything more than a phone, decent, well edited sound is just as important as the pictures.

[Jonathan Cross]

Rob, if you have an iPad, then try Apple iMovie.  I take videos on my iPhone and am surprised by them.  They are only short and mostly used for insertion in Youtubes. It does all I want, as I only shoot HD at 25/sec.  Just remember that at the end you have to use the share  to save to a disc or elsewhere on the iPad, and it can take 30 secs or more to render, so be patient.

Jonathan

[Rob C]

Resolve is amazing software, but absolutely does need a fast well specified PC to run it effectively.

Probably massively more than Rob needs anyway.



Rob;
Try looking at Lumavision to run on your iPad. Generally reckoned to be an excellent video editor on ios.
Don't ignore sound, if you want to watch it on anything more than a phone, decent, well edited sound is just as important as the pictures.

Thanks, Rhossydd; oh yeah, I’m aware of the power of sound, it's simply that sound would mean an increased set of tools beyond just the iPhone 13 Mini that I have, or the 17 that’s giving me food - mild GAS? - for thought. I also have a overpowering conviction (fear?) that motion could become another obsession just like photography was in my youth, and I know what that turned out to mean!

Today, as an old ex-pro, photography saved my sanity after my wife passed - gave me an escape route from my own mind, distracted me from the emptiness that had converted a home into just an apartment, and rekindled my interest in doing something creative again, even if it would never be able to offer the buzz part that an assignment could. I suppose I feel motion could make a really big change - be the breath of fresh air that, indeed, iPhone photography itself had turned out to be. I had pretty much lost the will to cart a Nikon around with me anymore, and I had already been frustrated by cellphone imagery after a yacht skipper I knew had seen my website, and wanted to order a large print of some distressed hull paintwork I’d shot on my old Samsung. I couldn’t let him buy into that, knowing how tiny the file and how large the print he wanted. I swore never to use a cellphone camera again. However, once my own A3+ printer died, I decided not to replace it, so that freed me from caring about file sizes etc. and as I had already bought the iPhone and print was now out of the equation, why not? Then, the Moriyama storm struck me, and as far as I was concerned, it was off to the races. Unfortunately, being kinda limited as to the variety of scenes I have available in the neighbourhood, the inevitability of simply repeating old shots became reality. That soon becomes boring to do, hence the interest in thinking of motion.

I’ll investigate Lumavision; thanks.

P.S.

It’s hard work trying to keep ahead of oneself!

[degrub]

Ever consider "stop motion animation" video ?

[Rhossydd]

it's simply that sound would mean an increased set of tools beyond just the iPhone 13 Mini that I have

Not really, it's more about an awareness of sound and how to shoot and record for the edit, plus using the tools available fully.
For example;
Letting recordings run long to allow you put their sound under the preceding or following shots.
Recoding atmospherics or background noise clean as separate sound only recordings. Maybe leaving a phone to record for a long time to grab those elusive effects without unwanted intrusions. Easily done with the built in mics on phones which can be surprisingly good.

It takes thought, not kit.

The one thing that might be useful is a simple external mic that can have a proper good windshield. Wind noise can be horrible when filming outdoors and is almost impossible to filter out.

[KLaban]

Rob, as you're already a Weebly guy have you considered experimenting with Weebly Slideshow software?

[Manoli]

Resolve is amazing software, but absolutely does need a fast well specified PC to run it effectively.
Probably massively more than Rob needs anyway.

True.
The other side of the equation is that, though I run it on a high-powered Mac, I can also run it on a 2018 Intel core i5 MBP (latest trade-in value £185).  There is also an iPad version (again a freebie).

The problem when starting out in motion is that one can get blinded by the numerous YouTube videos and the bells and whistles that initially seem essential. Not true. Anyone with an understanding of curves can adequately edit and export 30 to 60 second shorts. Capture in 720 HD H.264 and you’re away.

Resolve at first sight is daunting, but watch a quick ‘get started’ video on YouTube , locate the curves button and ‘go’. The plus side is that, like Photoshop, you’re in one of the top three NLE’s (*) and an environment where, as the skillset grows, you won’t be limited in the future.

LumaFusion is a good program but is now subscription only.

(*) Resolve is much more than a NLE, but that’s not germane to this thread.

[Rhossydd]

I can also run it on a 2018 Intel core i5 MBP

Rob's running CS2 that was discontinued in 2007. Just how old is that PC ? probably not even running a 64bit OS and Resolve needs that.
Blackmagic say:
To run DaVinci Resolve 20 on Windows, you'll need Windows 10 or a later version. A quad-core CPU (Intel Core i7 or AMD Ryzen 7), at least 16 GB of RAM (32 GB for Fusion), and a GPU with 4GB of VRAM (supporting OpenCL 1.2 or CUDA 11) are recommended. A fast SSD is also crucial.
That's just the basics, if you want to edit modern 4k phone content you'll need ever better spec or it falls over.

The problem when starting out in motion is that one can get blinded by the numerous YouTube videos and the bells and whistles that initially seem essential. Not true. Anyone with an understanding of curves can adequately edit and export 30 to 60 second shorts. Capture in 720 HD H.264 and you’re away.

(FWIW no one in Europe bothers with 720 we start HD at 1080)

Video editing has very little to do with messing the pictures around with curves, it about cutting shots together and making the story.
Changing picture quality (curves etc) isn't a great idea with video as the low bit compressed data isn't amenable to being pulled around like stills images. There's far less room for adjustment and ham fisted attempts at it just make things look terrible.
It's always best to get it right in camera and then leave it alone. iPhones are capable of remarkable picture quality by default, but can be refined and controlled better with some of the third party specialist camera apps, Resolve's own free Blackmagic camera app is really all you could need.

as the skillset grows, you won’t be limited in the future.

Let's keep this in perspective; Rob is unlikely to have the aspirations of making a new career of video production at his age. Resolve is a pro standard package with all the bells and whistles that come with that and a mountainous learning curve if coming to video editing as a novice.
Something far more simple that can be run on an iPad is likely to easier to learn and deliver more satisfying results sooner.

[KLaban]

Weebly Slideshow

Depending on the transition style and speed it may be possible to replicate a very basic motion effect using your stills? Many years ago I remember doing something similar with Flash language.

[Rhossydd]

Weebly Slideshow

Slide shows just aren't video

[KLaban]

Slide shows just aren't video

Really?

Given Rob's hardware and software choices and level of understanding I'm just suggesting a simple alternative approach.

[Rhossydd]

Really?

Yes, really. Show me a slide show of people walking, people talking to camera, waves lapping etc...

Given Rob's hardware and software choices and level of understanding I'm just suggesting a simple alternative approach.

Not needed. Just an iPhone is all you need to put together decent video now. The basics are pretty simple and if he takes a modicum of effort to learn how to get the best from it he'll get fine results.

BBC showed a series called 'Canal boat diaries' that was very successful. Nearly all shot on an iPhone and GoPro and edited with Lumavision to start with. The original versions on YouTube in 4k are really good. The guy who made it all himself added cheap drone to his camera line up when the money started to roll in.
It was only when they needed a broadcast standard final product it went into pro edit suites to be tidied up for transmission.

[KLaban]

Yes, really. Show me a slide show of people walking, people talking to camera, waves lapping etc...

Really?

C'mon, you really think I'm suggesting that slide shows are motion?