Homebrewed Music

Video is going through some wonderful transitions these days, and the addition of 720p HD to the iPhone got me to sign on the dotted line with AT&T. Honestly, I rarely use the feature, but it seemed like a natural comparison to the Q3HD – after all, if the iPhone does the same job, or close to it, the Q becomes a lot less attractive.

Hold the Phone

I learned a few things in the process of getting some comparison clips. First, I figured out how to use some of the mic stand parts I’ve collected as an iPhone “tripod.”

iPhone Tripod Improvised from Mic Stand Parts

The soft rubber mic clips don’t really fit any of my mics, but they’re handy for holding onto odd objects.

Then I learned that the iPhone viewfinder is not very video friendly. The right edge of the actual frame is hidden under the toolbar, so I was stuck guessing and experimenting to find the right position for my shot. And the size of the framing is off, the actual image is cropped noticeably larger than the view on the LCD, that is, if the viewfinder shows the image within some boundaries, the actual image will spill over those boundaries, and the object of interest will be smaller than expected. Once again, it was a matter of experimenting, guessing, griping, and doing it again to find the right distance to get the framing I wanted. (I’m hoping some iPhone guru will read this and call me names while explaining what I’m doing wrong!)

Here are the two clips on YouTube.

You can also download clips as delivered by the cameras: iPhone 4 Video Zoom Q3HD Video

Built-in Editing

Both cams have built-in video editing. The Q provides only bare bones functions, trim or divide. Trim lops off the beginning up to the selected point. Divide splits one clip into two at the selected point. But this is enough to pull one good performance out of a bunch of retakes, and clean up the beginning and end. It’s really all you need. The interface is a little tweaky, but I figured it out without reading the manual. The iPhone has a lot more power in the form of iMovie, an inexpensive app. It offers titling, more complex editing, inserting additional media, audio substitution. And the interface feels slicker. But I had to go online to read the FAQ to figure out how to use the thing, I didn’t need themes or titles or additional media or audio substitution, and the program appeared to transcode the video in the process of creating the output. The processing time on the Q was much shorter, making me think it left the original video compressed when trimming and splitting.

I tried out the possibility of editing iPhone video on the Q, and vice versa, but no go. I also was unable to copy a file back to the iPhone, or sync it to a location where I could pull it into iMovie. (iPhone guru, here’s another opportunity to berate and educate me. Thank you!) I was able to move files back and forth on the Q3HD by simply copying them to and from the SDHC card.

Perform for the Edit

One last thing I learned about editing on the camera – a simple “look at me play guitar” video doesn’t have much going on to mark edit points. So even though we don’t need a clap for audio syncing, it’s helpful to make a big obvious motion, like a large clapping motion, to mark the start of retakes. It’s also helpful to leave some generous and profound pauses before and after the playing so the edit point has enough leeway. These tricks will make it a lot easier to deal with the small screen and small controls when editing inside the camera or phone.