iPhone 4 - Honey the Kids Shot Themselves and are in Hollywood

One of the exciting things about the iPhone 4.0 hardware/software announcement on Thursday was just how easy Apple have made it to write, collaborate, capture, edit and publish your movie, documentary or skit....in Hi-Defintion quality.

The sheer innocuousness and on-body nature of this device means that, more than ever before, using little technical shenanigans, people can make their own film OR broadcast and have it watchable in many formats. Did I mention it is possible in Hi-Definition?

• No running for the 'proper camera'.
• No transfer of audio/video between hardware devices.
• No multiple logins and data structures between different service providers.

Of course using a combination of devices and software providers we could come close to functional replication of the iPhone4's top-to-bottom film making but the effort isn't for the faint hearted and could never have be described as effortless and intuitive.

What makes iPhone4 powerful is that one company is providing the answer from top to bottom and ultimately allowing the fun and creativity flow rather than tech detail or data-exports from service 1 to service 2.

It's very easy to

Capture and direct (video and audio)

- video cam style shooting

- camera front/back switch

- video call data

- video auto generation (incl still image sequence generation)

- inline options available live via context menu of recorder

- titling and metadata, no rekeying of metadata

- take aggregation and management

Edit

- in situ

- in dedicated local app

- remotely online (YouTube editing,

3rd party)

- rich audio control

Publish and Promote

- via telephony to one or many

- to webservice (Email, Blogger, Google, youTube.....any IP terminus)

If Apple were a movie company then it would be like one of those tightly controlled Hollywood studios from the 30's where they invested in stars and felt obliged to guide and mentor all for the greater good of the 'movie' and of course business. Apple have really invested in tightly bound hardware and software experiences being utterly intuitive and inspiring to work with.

Their software suite keeps looking more and more like a ballet

that continues to run and develop rather than a series of disparate concertos. The upgrade path to their Pro products (Final Cut Studio, Logic Studio) also allow the customer 'symbiosis' to continue for the longest time.

Apple are enabling a bunch of video makers that will go on to change moving pictures in the same way that the music industry was democratised by a Roland 606.

All that and without mentioning the iPad.

Off the Cuff IT Stuff

iPhone 4.0Video Format Specs.

Video formats supported: H.264 video up to 720p, 30 frames per second, Main Profile level 3.1 with AAC-LC audio up to 160Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4 and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5Mbps, 640x480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4 and .mov file formats; Motion JPEG (M-JPEG) up to 35Mbps, 1280x720 pixels, 30 frames per second, audio in ulaw, PCM stereo audio in .avi file format