iPhone Life magazine

Qik, get this app!

John Painter 2.6.10

Jumping into the middle of the iPhone video camera fray is Qik Video Camera ($1.99) by Qik Inc.which is amazing, and has edged my other favorites iVideoCamera and ShowTime out of the lead.

Don’t get me wrong, they are all a good value for your money and really help make that old iPhone 2G or your 3G more valuable because the video and audio quality is getting decent.  But Qik is really trying to push the limits in your iPhone.

So why did Qik just jump to becoming my new favorite?  Well they added some features I was previously only dreaming about.  Let me explain.  You can now, on the fly, adjust zoom, exposure, mic and image quality on a bar along the top of the screen.  On the bottom you can now choose from shooting in straight color the following effects b/w, color correction, split image, distortion, x-ray, sepia, a picture in picture zoom, and the list goes on.  Qik gives you the option of shooting in 200 x 152 or 400 x 304 which just makes things more flexible.  You can save your video within the app, or to your camera roll, and of course you can upload to Facebook, SMS or attach as an e-mail.

Now if you want even more options, you download their Qik Live (free) and register with their web site so you can have all your video saved directly to their server and distributed even further across the web?  Take a look at my wife Kati making some focaccia.

Let me be clear, your iPhone isn’t going to shoot stunning HD video, with Qik.  While it’s digital it’s "low quality" a limitation of the iPhone's camera as compared to any digital camcorder these days.  But it's not that low for what most people will be doing with it, and what’s important here is that you’re squeezing ever more productivity out of your iPhone.

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John Painter
http://www.johnlpainter.com

I'm a behavioral health professional living and working in Maine specializing in psychiatric rehabilitation. For years I've utilized mobile technology to improve the delivery of community based mental health services, and embraced the iPhone when it came out in 2007.

I am also a doctoral candidate at Franklin Pierce University where I have been researching the role of the Liberal Arts in American higher education.

I write as a guest for iPhone Life periodically with a special interest in helping other professionals (healthcare, education and government in particular) incorporate iOS devices into their work, and several years ago introduced the first iPhone and eventually iPad classes at Lewiston Adult Education in Lewiston Maine http://laeipad.blogspot.com/ concentrating on helping other professionals interested in using and incorporating iPads into their work.

Old Comments

Hi John, I just got

Submitted by BKatz on 2/8/10 11:45am

Hi John, I just got iVideocamera last week and have been enjoying using it. The frame rate makes the videos a bit rough though. Is this one a big improvement? Would you reccomend getting this app or do you think iVideocamer will improve with updates?

The frame rate will be choppy

Submitted by John Painter on 2/8/10 1:12pm
The frame rate will be choppy as compared to say a 3Gs or even some of the other smartphones. You can minimize choppy video by shooting at a smaller size, not panning your iPhone fast and using a stabilizer like a tripod, etc. This a great question though since for 2G and 3G video was not built in though the hardware can, to an extent handle it. Long story short, your 2G and 3G will never shoot "great" video. But it can shoot good enough video for many purposes and that it can do so with an ever expaning list of apps available for the iPhone is where the potenial is. I like Qik because of how fast I can shoot and distribute video and it's good enough for my purposes. iVideocamera will likely make improvements up to the limits of the iPhones hardware and then look at the editing and effects capabilities - sort of like Qik did. I like iVideocamera and have that on my iPhone - its simplicity is it's beauty.