iPhone 15 Pro Supports Recording ProRes Video Directly to External Storage

[Wowmail]

Take pics with my bad ass Canon camera... they auto send to iPhone, download to storage saving the port on my $6K camera.. USBC is a game changer.

But honestly they had me at Satellite emergency calls.

 

[magicschoolbus]

This will really help with my TikTok skits. We’ve been struggle with time to edit- we’ve been in deep writing sessions for months. So glad I quit my full time job to become a high profile influencer. So much fun, and get the latest tech!

 

[JD2015]

Really great for content creators that can just take that external SSD and get right to editing

It depends on what device and app you are editing from. Currently, you cannot edit directly from an external SSD on an iPad using Final Cut Pro. Hopefully, this means there is an update in the works to fix this.

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

Well I know many big Youtubers use iPhone Pros to film their videos. DankPods previously used an iPhone 12 Pro Max to film his videos

I mean yeah but dankpods? The man is filming with controlled lighting and could use virtually any 1080p Cameron lol

 

[fdrizzo88]

Does anyone know what flavor of ProRes the 15 Pro will use or what the 14 is using? Proxy/LT/422/422HQ? Probably safe to assume 4:4:4:4 will not be a thing🤣. I’m still running an older iPhone that can‘t shoot it. Might be time to give Filmic Pro another look after the upgrade.

Looks like 422 from what I can see. A quality 10-bit codec is pretty cool!

 

[fs454]

What are y'all filming with prores 4k 60fps to external drives anyway? grand ma napping in the couch on xmas eve?

I work in production and we get asked all the time to shoot on iPhone. Organic-looking content / ads / etc performs better than pro high end looking content in many cases. We shoot large arena concerts for top 40 artists and lately we've been asked to have someone roaming with an iPhone capturing moments in that format also. All the local equipment rental houses in LA have iPhone 14 Pro Max units you can rent, and that's usually what we do so we don't have to think about dealing with managing our own iPhone's storage. Now we can just plug in an SSD and go for it.

 

[macsquared]

Does this mean all ProRes recording is limited to external storage? Even at 24p? That would be a downgrade as the 14Pro at least allows that.

 

[falkon-engine]

Already we see the power of USB at work, enabling better outcomes for certain use cases, in this case, recording ProRes to external storage. Apple had no business being stuck on USB2 speeds on ”Pro” iPhones for so long. The Samsung T7 is one of many devices that will be good for external media… it reads/writes at 1000 MB/sec, and it has declined dramatically in price. Also many thunderbolt NVME enclosures have a USB3 10 Gbps fallback, so they could be used for external USB storage as well.

What I’m curious about is the display port aspect of the USB-c solution. Will the new phones support the native resolution and aspect ratio of external monitors? Because if so, I could foresee gaming on iphone. Connect a mouse/controller via Bluetooth and game on the external monitor/display. Or connect everything via a thunderbolt / usb-c dock.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out, now that iPhone has a faster GPU with ray tracing and other features. I like that Apple is dedicating time, money, engineering resources, and silicon to AAA gaming… that is exciting.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

I mean yeah but dankpods? The man is filming with controlled lighting and could use virtually any 1080p Cameron lol

I don't think you understand Dankmus/DankPods. The man embraces the nugget life, and what's a bigger nugget than an iPhone's video camera?

For god's sake he did a video where he filmed it entirely from an iPod Nano

 

[Unregistered 4U]

People could. Kids will. It's ridiculous. I can't stop grinning.

I would imagine some doing this are doing so to avoid location fees. With judicious use of lighting and a small crew (group of friends), a some talented folks could do a LOT of location recording while looking like they’re just influencers.

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

I don't think you understand Dankmus/DankPods. The man embraces the nugget life, and what's a bigger nugget than an iPhone's video camera?

For god's sake he did a video where he filmed it entirely from an iPod Nano

I LOVE that dude

My point is that the fact he uses an iphone to film these kinda videos proves nothing in terms of camera capabilities

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

I LOVE that dude

My point is that the fact he uses an iphone to film these kinda videos proves nothing in terms of camera capabilities

Well you gotta understand: Dank and a lot of other Youtubers, they're not cinematographers. He's just a drummer who became a Youtuber during COVID lockdowns. For them, an iPhone is plenty, especially since he uses a Mac he can just easily pull the footage off from the phone. Not to mention he uses Garage Band to record the audio of his vids so that helps too.

You don't always need dedicated gear. An iPhone is plenty good enough. Hell I want to make vlogs using an Apple Vision Pro even though many people tell me "nooo just get a GoPro!"

 

[cthompson94]

It depends on what device and app you are editing from. Currently, you cannot edit directly from an external SSD on an iPad using Final Cut Pro. Hopefully, this means there is an update in the works to fix this.

True, hopefully an update comes along for FCP for the iPads, but at least for now someone could use their desktops to edit

 

[lazyrighteye]

I would imagine some doing this are doing so to avoid location fees. With judicious use of lighting and a small crew (group of friends), a some talented folks could do a LOT of location recording while looking like they’re just influencers.

Possibly. But I'm thinking it's less about avoidance as it is simply about making and doing. Art. Expression. And I am here for all of it. Take the tools and make the things. A wild time to be a creative!

 

[ItsMeMicke]

When recording to an external drive, will this data be synced to iCloud?

 

[cthompson94]

When recording to an external drive, will this data be synced to iCloud?

I don't think we 100% know at the moment, but I think it is safe to assume not unless it is writing to the iPhone and the SSD

 

[swiftapplefan]

Didn't you see apple marketing videos feature filmographers? Many cinematographers use iphones to film their movies thanks to apple's incredibly powerful cameras

Matter of fact oppenheimer (or barbie, I'm not too sure) was shot exclusively on iphone

I was pretty sceptical until you mentioned Oppenheimer 😮‍💨

 

[Cmd-Z]

The stock Apple USB-C cable only supports USB 2.0 speed, correct? It would seem that one would need a USB 3.0-capable cable to allow this (awesome) feature to work properly, no?

 

[Zdigital2015]

It will be interesting to see if Atomos or AngelBird (among others) come up with official kit that supports this feature on the iPhone Pro.

 

[Michael Scrip]

The stock Apple USB-C cable only supports USB 2.0 speed, correct? It would seem that one would need a USB 3.0-capable cable to allow this (awesome) feature to work properly, no?

Correct.

And you probably have one of those cables since they typically come included with the SSD.

 

[chpthrll]

Just what are apple’s specs for the external storage

 

[techpr]

Apple's iOS 17 release candidate build that was released yesterday includes code that reveals the new requirements for recording ProRes video with an iPhone 15 Pro directly to external storage.

During yesterday's event, Apple said that the iPhone 15 Pro could record up to ProRes 4K at 60 fps to external storage thanks to the new USB-C port. The code reveals that ProRes 2.8K at 60 fps is also supported when recording to external storage devices. This is a significant improvement over the iPhone 14 Pro, which only supported ProRes 2.8K and 4K at 30 fps, and did not allow for recording directly to a storage device. Also, according to the code, external storage devices must be formatted to either exFAT or APFS for this feature to work, but there is no word on whether there are disk speed requirements.

ProRes is a high-quality video codec that is often used by professional filmmakers, and video recorded in the ProRes format takes up a lot of storage space. Recording 4K 60fps ProRes video is a feature that Apple was only able to add because of the new A17 Pro chip and the option to connect to an external storage drive.

The external storage requirement for recording 4K 60fps video prevents iPhone users from filling up their onboard storage, and the formatting requirements prevent users from experiencing poor performance when recording to external storage devices. Users who want to record ProRes video to an external storage device will need to make sure that the device meets Apple's requirements.


Article Link: iPhone 15 Pro Supports Recording ProRes Video Directly to External Storage

So we can record ProRes 4K60 to an external fast NVMe SSD drive like this one.

 

[Macalicious2011]

Well I know many big Youtubers use iPhone Pros to film their videos. DankPods previously used an iPhone 12 Pro Max to film his videos

Yupp. The iPhone is a popular device for content creation. However it’s Achilles heel have been the following:
1. Low base storage with cost prohibitive upgraded storage.
2. No micro SD support for expandable storage or to slot SD with video content into a computer to stat editing immediately.

Support for external drives solves both and is a HUGE deal. For some content creators, this will negate the need for a dedicated video camera. A 1T Samsung T7 plugged into the iPhone will also give you liberty to record or experiment with video that would otherwise not fit on your iPhone.

My 5.5K GoPro gets quite warm if I shoot for any length of time and its internal parts are housed in a far larger enclosure than an iPhone Pro, if streaming to an external enclosure is to allow for long form shooting I would think heat would be a serious problem particularly with 60fps@4K

If I record video to expandable storage, I will likely do so with a naked iPhone for better heat dissipation. However, that will unlikely eliminate the risk of temporary overheating if shooting outside or in a warm room. A solution could be to buy an iPhone case with a heat sink design.

 

[techpr]

Does this mean all ProRes recording is limited to external storage? Even at 24p? That would be a downgrade as the 14Pro at least allows that.

I don’t think so. Maybe a switch to select where to store the footage, internal or external.

 

[Macalicious2011]

Correct.

And you probably have one of those cables since they typically come included with the SSD.

View attachment 2261177

Lol.
Clever. It will be cheaper to buy an ssd with a usb3 cable then apples official cable. However, the cables that are provided with USB drives tend to be very short.