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During its iPhone 11 event last week, Apple showcased an as-yet-unreleased version of the Filmic Pro app running on the new iPhone 11 Pro. The app was capable of recording footage from multiple cameras simultaneously, for example, front and rear camera or wide-angle and primary shooter. According to Filmic Pro, the updated version of its app will be available in the App Store sometime later this year.
The multi-cam recording function uses a new API that comes with iOS 13 and, according to Apple, required a redesign of the camera pipeline on their devices. The good news is that the changes have already been made on the iPhones XS and XR, as well as the latest iPad Pro models, as explained in this WWDC session keynote.
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| A screenshot from the WWDC session that shows the supported MultiCam Formats on the iPhone XS. |
However, having multiple cameras active and recording at the same time puts a lot of stress on the hardware, which is why multi-camera recording on the 2018 devices has some limitations. Only certain combinations of cameras can be activated simultaneously (see table below) and, depending on the hardware requirements of their app, developers might have to revert to lower-quality video streams to make the feature work.
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| A screenshot from the WWDC session showing what combination of camera modules can be used with the MultiCam API in iOS 13 on an iPhone XS. |
It has not been clarified yet which camera combinations will be usable on the iPhone 11 generation but during the Filmic demo, the footage appeared to be recorded from all four of the iPhone 11 Pro’s cameras simultaneously.
Nevertheless, this is good news for owners of 2018 Apple flagship devices who will be able to use the new feature at least partly. The multi-cam API should launch with iOS 13 on September 19. We’d expect a bunch of third-party apps implementing the functionality soon after.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)