iPhone Hardware Accessories

I have a question about the hubs that we’re likely to see in the coming days, such as the Kondor Blue one announced today that will power the phone which will in turn power video storage, audio storage and a monitor.

Is there a limit to how much can be powered at once through a single USB-C port? Is there a point at which the phone, like Bartleby, says “I would prefer not to”?

Steve Martin (Ripple Training) has posted a YouTube Short on the Blackmagic app’s new focus racking feature:

https://youtube.com/shorts/AiMqYzhsYjQ? ... 6-omDMpUAt

B&H has posted a 16 minute demonstration of Tilta’s Khronos “ecosystem”:

B&H also has Tilta’s Khronos system for preorder, with the full system costing US$570:

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/buy/tilta/ci/58355

Looks good. The upcoming flood of reviews will certainly reveal its shortcomings if any.

Since it screws together, for me the basic cage will have work as a daily driver for the phone.
My Neewer cage just barely achieves this.

Easy decision. I won't be trading in my Beastgrip cage for Tilta’s “ecosystem”.

My main observation is that the proprietary filters are so cheap (US$19 each) that they’re likely to help sell the Tilta cage and may hurt a number of competitors. The range: 2 stop, 4 stop, 6 stop, 8 stop, 1/4 and 1/2 white mist and 1/4 and 1/2 black mist. Total: $152 if one buys all of them.

I’ll be sticking with my B+W, Heliopan and Hoya filters and polariser, which won't work with the Tilta cage.

Adobe and Frame.io have announced a major re-write of Frame.io. iPhone and iPad users are among those invited to join the beta. Frame.io currently has 4 million users, and integrates with Avid, DaVinci Resolve and Final Cut as well as Premiere Pro. There’s a Frame.io app for the iPhone.

Details:

Frame.io Version 4 Beta is Here
https://blog.frame.io/2024/04/09/frame- ... ouncement/

See the heading “iPhone and iPad” in particular.

Video: Reimagining Frame.io from the ground up.
https://frame.io/v4-keynote

Scroll down to the video, which is 14m long.

Presenter of the video: Emery Wells, CEO/Co-founder of Frame.io

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Beastgrip sent out an e-mail this morning saying that its SSD clamp mount is now available. There’s a collaboration with Western Digital/Sandisk. The mount is being sold from Western Digital’s site, not so far from Beastgrip’s. The mount is US$39.99 plus shipping (free if your order is over $50) and tax. There’s a Mount/Sandisk package for those who are interested. WD is also selling the iPhone 15 Beastcage.

This is the URL: https://www.westerndigital.com/products ... ccessories

I ordered and the estimated shipping date is 7 days from now, April 18.

Beastgrip says that it’s for SSDs “and devices” that are 43mm to 60mm wide. I’m interested in using it with a power bank.

Beastgrip will be at the Western Digital booth at NAB.

From Beastgrip’s e-mail:

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Specifications:

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Due to the Beastgrip/Western Digital collaboration (see above), I had a look at current SanDisk Extreme Portable V2 pricing. B&H, and perhaps other vendors, is offering significant discounts on 1, 2 and 4TB through April 14. If I recall correctly, when these drives came out there was an issue about whether silicon Mac computers would achieve the claimed speeds. I don’t know the current status of that issue.

1GB max on Mac’s.

Blake Calhoun (iPhoneographers) on the Blackmagic Camera update:

1GB max on Mac’s.

You mean 1 gbps?

I meant about 1GBps or 10Gbps.
I know that’s the max I can get on my M1 Max and all I’ve read about even the M3 says:

“Thunderbolt 3 data-transfer speeds up to 40Gbps, and USB 3.1 Gen 2 data-transfer speeds up to 10Gbps.”

Atomos calls this the Ninja Phone.
$/€400

"Ninja Phone is a whisper quiet, 10-bit video coprocessor for iPhone 15 Pro/Max that records from professional HDMI cameras to Apple ProRes and H.265. The iPhone’s stunning OLED display is a superb viewfinder, complete with Atomos’ professional video monitoring tools. Use iPhone’s 5G and Wi-FI for camera to cloud workflows and live streaming."

Details: https://www.atomos.com/explore/ninja-phone/

Introducing Ninja Phone

I thought I’d pass this on in case anyone wants to make a sound library for use with their videos.

I’ve started using Soundminer Basic to create a database of sound effect and ambience recordings that I make or purchase, and I’ve adopted the new Universal Category System to organise the sounds in the database. I’ve decided to also use Soundminer for music, and I’m considering using it for project dialogue.

Soundminer Pro is the industry standard and is very expensive - US$900. However, Basic is $200 and has everything that I need. I think that $200 is reasonable when spread out over the probable remaining life of Soundminer V6, which was released last year. When V7 is launched, it looks like the upgrade cost will be reasonable, and it doesn’t have to be purchased right away. The Soundminer license is perpetual, not a subscription. When V7 is released, the V6 on one’s computer isn’t suddenly going to go “poof”. The Soundminer website may leave the impression that one has to purchase an iLok physical key ($55). Soundminer signed me up for iLok’s cloud authorisation, which is free to the user. iLok cloud is what I use for other applications that require iLok.

As I said, Basic meets my needs. I’ve mostly discarded sounds when a project is over. I don’t need features, such as batch processing, that I’d want if I had a lot of existing data to input. I also don’t need sound processing features. I have, and am content to use, Logic Pro and iZotope RX for that. Soundminer Pro has what appears to be a pretty sophisticated sampler, Radium, but I’ve already got two in Logic and Kontakt. For the moment, I just want to create a capable searchable database. I think that Soundminer Basic is a brilliant tool for doing that.

I’m using Soundminer together with the Universal Category System. To quote from the UCS website:

Our aim is to provide and encourage the use of a set category list for the classification of sound effects. We hope that in doing so, we can offer a framework for consistent categorization of sound effects, offer uniformity in a filename structure, and ease the pain of maintaining a sound effects library.

The UCS is saving me a ton of time by providing me with a ready-made sound library and metadata structure, created by a group of people who have a lot of experience. Soundminer, which was involved in developing UCS, makes it easy to apply it.

Having used Soundminer Basic and UCS for the last couple of weeks, I’m impressed and recommend them without reservation for people who are starting at square one or close to it. If you already have a lot of data that you want to bring into a library application, you may well want/need Soundminer Plus, which is $400.

Soundminer is based in Toronto and continues to be owned and run by the original three developers. The public face of the application is a gentleman named Justin Drury.

Soundminer: https://store.soundminer.com
Universal Category System: https://universalcategorysystem.com

The Soundminer Basic interface, which is simple but effective, and very responsive:

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Further to the above post...

I settled on Soundminer Basic after also considering Basehead, Soundly, SoundQ and Reaper Media Explorer.

One of the things that I like about Soundminer is that it’s completely independent of the vendors of sounds. Pro Sound Effects Library is an excellent vendor, but SoundQ is fundamentally a platform for selling its own products. Basehead and Soundly also mix library and vendor functions. Both offer “free” tiers that limit one’s use of their applications for personal sounds. Basehead runs a “CloudPack Marketplace”. It boasts that its free version comes with the BBC Sound Library, which the BBC already makes freely available: https://sound-effects.bbcrewind.co.uk.

Soundly sells its library application and its sounds as a single package. Once one is no longer eligible for Soundly’s free tier, one is on a subscription (not a perpetual license) that winds up costing more than Soundminer Basic. That said, given the apparent popularity of Soundly many people obviously find it more attractive than I do.

My second choice was Reaper. Reaper is a professional quality digital audio workstation. A license for personal, non-commercial use costs a one-time payment of US$60 after a 60 day trial. It has a feature called Media Explorer that can be used to create a sound library. Reaper pays producer and sound engineer Kenny Gioia to make tutorials, which are on the YouTube channel Reaper Mania. Gioia brings a strong New York accent and a lot of knowledge to his tutorials, and he’s done a series of three on Media Explorer. If you want to use Reaper to make a sound library, start here. You’ll know how before the end of the first video:

The Media Explorer in REAPER (1/3)

If desired, I think that one could implement the Universal Category System in a Reaper Sound Library.

Now that Khronos has been released, Tilta has posted a new version of the behind the scenes for The X Gift that Gene Nagata (Potato Jet) posted on February 5th. This is the new version:

Behind The Scenes of 'The X Gift' — Shot on iPhone 15 Pro with Tilta Khronos Ecosystem

The new version omits what I think was Claudio Miranda’s most important comment in the February 5th version. Asked about ISO, he said “I was very happy with 200, and I’m very happy with 400, and mildly happy with 500”. See 14:33:

Why "Shot On iPhone" Commercials Look So Good! Ft. Claudio Miranda

The Blackmagic Design booth at NAB has the Blackmagic Camera app running on Google Pixel and Samsung Galaxy phones.

If you’re impatient, go to the 55 second mark of the video

Grant Petty’s presentation on Friday ran over 2 hours and he didn’t say a word about this

I’ve spent too much time looking at how other people are setting up their iPhone when they’re not just hand-holding it. I should have been paying attention to what I already use I sometimes use the setup in the photo for stereo recording. I'll post a further photo in the next few days, but basically my Beastcage can easily be mounted on the stereo bar alongside the mikes.

When filming and recording sound in stereo, I'll use the 66cm (26") bar in the photo. If filming and recording with one mike for mono, I'll use the 30cm (12") version of the bar, which I also have.
I can use a tripod instead of the monopod plus ground tripod, or just use the monopod and dispense with the ground tripod. I can also use the 30cm bar for both filming and stereo recording if I use a technique where the mikes are close together, such as Mid-Side or ORTF.

I can sandwich the MixPre recorder between the monopod and stereo bar because it has 1/4"-20 connectors on its top and bottom. The MixPre could also go in a shoulder bag.

To record the sound, I can run a short cable from the MixPre to the phone's USB-C port or use my Tentacle Sync E timecode box, which the Blackmagic app supports.

The two XLR cables in the photo are each 90cm (3') long, but could be shorter.

How to add the Beastcage? Just screw it onto a mike holder like the two in the photo. This just requires a male 5/8" to male 1/4” adapter and a jam nut. Want the camera view to be tilted up or down? As can be seen in the photo, the stereo bar can tilt.

If I want to film from one position and record sound from another nearby, I can handhold my Beastcage or bring along a handheld mike, lavalieres (mine are wired) or my boom pole, which weighs 450g (1lb).

What I like about this setup is that I don't have to purchase anything new, apart from an extra mike holder, and I don't have to compromise on sound.

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Looks like I have enough mike holders to photograph the setup in the photo above with my Beastcage mounted between the mikes. I'll post a photo showing what that looks like in the next few days.

One thing I want to check is whether the 13mm ultra wide lens catches the mikes on either side of the Beastcage, and if so at what distance. If this is an issue, there's a rail for this stereo bar, shown in the centre in the photo below, that I could order to mount the Beastcage well in front of the mikes.

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For anyone who's interested in mounting a phone camera cage on this kind of setup, here it is from a different angle.

It can be a relatively inexpensive approach. There are several monopods on the market that incorporate a mini tripod. Stereo bars come at various price points. One could instead use one of the lateral arms that Manfrotto and others make for use with a tripod or monopod.

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Beastgrip starts shipping its SSD holder today. When I receive mine, I hope by about Wednesday, I’ll post comments and photos. I plan to try it out with a Samsung T5 or T7. If it’s promising, I intend to order a power bank battery in the 5,000mAh to 10,000mAh range. To fit, an SSD or battery has to be 43mm to 60mm wide.

In a video, Vadym Chalenko said that the holder is a smaller version of their standard phone clamp: https://beastgrip.com/collections/shop- ... beastclamp. I have that clamp, and it’s very well made.

The holder can be mounted on the top side of the phone or on a side handle cold shoe, but for a Beastcage the obvious place is on the face of the phone, as shown in the photo below.

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I wasn’t aware of this 2023 Samsung short, which may interest others. The behind the scenes appears to have been seen by few.

Galaxy S23 Ultra: 'Behold' by Sir Ridley Scott

Galaxy S23 Ultra: Behind The Scenes of 'Behold' by Sir Ridley Scott

That was interesting thanks. It just goes to show, as the cliché goes: in the right hands and all that... That and some great post, sound design and grading. Scott never gets any older too; amazing.

This is Beastgrip's SSD holder, which started shipping April 18th. It can also be mounted on a cold shoe. In the second photo, Beastgrip designer Vadym Chalenko has it mounted on a side handle. Note that the handle does not interfere with the cable.

The cable in the first photo is a 5" Kondor Blue. It's quite stiff. I have a 5” flexible ribbon cable on order, like the one in the second photo. I suspect that I'm going to prefer it. Peter McLennan, for his Neewer cage, is using the same cable that Chalenko is using, and recommends it. The brand is Afterplug.

The SSD, even this close to the lenses, is not caught by the 13mm ultra-wide.

The filter mount is 58mm. Sliding the SSD to the left, I had no difficulty fitting a step-up ring and 82mm filter.

The clamp requires an SSD width of 43mm to 60mm and could also be used with some power bank batteries. If I try that, I’ll be inclined, due to the additional weight and bulk, to mount the clamp on a cold shoe rather than over the rear face of the phone.

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I think that most of the increase in the use of phone cameras is going to come from vloggers, instructors. “reviewers" and podcasters, not from makers of fictional and documentary films. There's already very little of the latter on social media platforms, and I don't see that changing.

I do see smartphones replacing conventional cameras for the genres that are already dominant. For those genres, phones are far more cost-effective than conventional cameras, and they meet most makers' technical needs.

Over the last year or so, Google/YouTube have actively promoted the idea of visual podcasts. Earlier today, on their show Creator Insider, they elaborated. Among the presenters' examples, unsurprisingly, was Marques Brownlee's spinoff experiment WVFRM Podcast. Interesting that they refer to Brownlee, twice, but not someone like Josh Rogan

Podcasting on YouTube — What Creators Need to Know!