Video editor for iOS screencast

monsieurpaul said:

Hello all,

I have always been using iMovie and I am very happy with it.

However, I need to edit iPhone / iPod touch screencasts with exotic resolutions (640 x 960 or 640 x 1136). I managed to hack something with FCP X but it's a temporary solution (I use a trial version, and I don't plan to buy it now).

So I'm looking for a video editor that could output at iOS screens resolutions, do some very basic editing (trim, fade, slug), easy to use, and really cheaper than FCP.

Thanks.

Click to expand...

BTW, are these screencasts exactly of native resolution? I'm asking this because neither wireless AirPlay nor the wired HDMI / VGA adapters use the native iOS screen resolution when outputting but either XGA / 720p (A4-based iDevices: iPad1 / iPhone 4 / iPt4 with mirroring enabled) or 1080p (nevwer devices). (In addition, the non-VGA ones even use overscan.)

You can only have truly 640 x 960 / 640 x 1136 footage if you either record the footage

- in the iPhone simulator on the desktop with 1x zoom (won't be able to record any app you haven't developed yourself; low framerate)
- using the excellent JB app "Display Recorder" on the iDevice (low framerate; no Camera layer support)
- or, after (or, during) capturing, downsize the originally 1080p (or, with the A4-based devices, XGA / 720p) footage. (Excellent framerate, audio, third party app support etc.)

If, however, you use AirPlay or any kind of TV out, the resolution will be different. In these cases, you only need to disable downsizing and you have an upscaled 1080p (720p/VGA) stream you can already work in FCPX and the like.


(Feel free to ask any dedicated q's. I'm an iOS display output pro - see my dedicated articles here at the MR forum too; for example, https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1578989/ , https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1589992/ , https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1587698/ etc.)

monsieurpaul said:

I'm using the excellent Reflector app which allows me to record at original resolution, using airplay.

Click to expand...

Yup, it indeed seems to record at native resolution and you can only select lower recording resolutions, not higher ones (with automatic rescaling, of course). I could only test this on the iPad 2 and 3: I'll run some more serious e.g. rescaling tests and report back as soon as I get my iPhone 5 back - hopefully as early as tomorrow.

In the meantime: if you have access to HDMI recorders (e.g., the Elgato Game Recorder HD), they record at steady 1080p30 from all kinds of non-protected (iDevices are unprotected unless you play back videos purchased from iTunes Store; unlike the Nexus 4/10 with their HDMI ports) HDMI sources, without hiccups. (At screen-res effective resolution, of course, as the signal is upsized to 1080p.) While the 1080p footage isn't at all more detailed than the screen itself, at least it's being recorded at a standard resolution. As your console gamer friends whether they have such a HDMI recorder - it might be a solution to your problem. (And their framerate doesn't drop / footage doesn't get ruined by compression artifacts either, unlike that of wireless AirPlay.)