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MillimeterThe iPhone on Set
May 14, 2009 1:31 PM, By Barry Braverman
It’s your new best production assistant.
Digital Film Tools’ (DFT) Cropulator takes the notion of image manipulation on the iPhone even further, allowing you to crop and rotate images and straighten the horizon line in portrait and landscape modes. Another DFT application, Light, introduces the effect of a gobo pattern or a cookie. Both applications are priced at $0.99. What a world.
On set there’s a growing impetus among shooters for the iPhone (and iPod touch) to play a more active role, especially for playback of video dailies from Panasonic P2- and Sony XDCAM-captured files. Certain P2 cameras, including the new AG-HPX300, can be fitted with a proxy encoder that simultaneously encodes MPEG-4 video/audio onto P2 and SD flash memory. The 320x240 proxy video is captured at bit rates up to 1.5Mbps. All XDCAM cameras produce MPEG-4 proxies by default and therefore do not require a supplemental encoder card.
P2 cameras have the advantage, however, of recording proxy video to an SDHC card, thus allowing the offloading of files to a laptop or desktop computer without tying up the camera, P2 drive, or P2 cards. A 4GB SDHC card can hold 5 hours and 12 minutes of MPEG-4 proxy video at 1.5 Mbps. Bear in mind the MPEG-4 compression in Sony and Panasonic cameras is applied intraframe, not via long-GOP.
The process of creating video dailies is simple inside iTunes: Create a new playlist, drag in the proxy videos, sync to the iPhone, et viola—instant video dailies.
The preparation procedure for iPhone dailies is similar regardless of the camera system or whether you’re working on a Mac or PC. In the case of P2, the proxy SDHC card is removed from the camera and mounted on a computer using an inexpensive reader. In Apple iTunes, a new playlist is created and named something appropriate such as “01_production_date.” The proxy files from the SD card are then dragged into the playlist, logically named, and transferred to the iPhone (or video-enabled iPod for that matter) using the normal method of syncing.
The same process applies to XDCAM. The proxies can be brought directly into iTunes from the disc, SxS card, or SDHC card. I sometimes snag the MPEG-4 files after capture into Final Cut Pro. The contents of the XDCAM Proxy folder (containing many scenes) are then available for transfer to a single iTunes playlist.
Continue the discussion on Crosstalk the Millimeter Forum.