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IOS External Drive Recording issue
Apple’s camera in the iphone 16 is a big step up. I’m trying to shoot 4k videos on iphone in Pro Res on an external drive connected by USB and meeting up with numerous problems:
1) It seems we have to use Apple’s Camera App… I can’t find any other camera apps that will record to an external drive
2) Conflicting documentation on drive format: Numerous help videos and articles indicate that the external drive can be formatted in APFS, and that APFS is the best format for capturing high res. videos. But when I get to the camera and connect the external USB drive, Camera complains and says that the external drive MUST be formatted Ex FAT. The external drive is a highly respected Samsung T9, which is a very fast drive. I have also tried this with my older Samsung T7, with the same bug.
3) After reformatting the drive in Ex FAT (I’ve tried formatting with the files app on iphone and also with Disk Utility on Mac, with the same results), the camera App will record Pro Res in HDR…. but after stopping recording, the record button spins and spins and finally the video is saved, and then camera reports that the drive is too slow! When playing back the videos from the external drive, they are jerky, so definitely IOS does not like the external drive, or its formatting.
4) Reducing the format to non-pro res (whatever is Apple’s standard format) and Camera will NOT record to the external drive! It will only go to the internal IOS drive. Seems Apple only permits recording Pro res on external, but welcome to the fifth circle of hell — we can’t get a recording somehow.
5) After recording Pro Res to the internal drive, it is possible to export media from the Photos App to an external drive, but after hitting the export icon and choosing the external drive, the process spins and spins and gets no where (I waited 5 minutes watching the spinning cursor and gave up).
All right comrades. Anyone else tried this yet? I guess it’s time to go back to our Ninja V and Nikon Z8.
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2 Replies
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I have a partial answer. The speed of the external drive is CRITICAL. I purchased a Buffalo 500 Gigabyte SSD with integral usb. It’s physically bigger than a flash drive but ideally faster than one. It awkwardly hangs off the IPhone usb c connector with a USB A to C adapter. They claim “up to 600 MBps”. In my single recording (5 minutes) so far with the drive formatted as EXFAT it seems to have passed recording Pro Res without glitches or error reports from camera. I still can’t believe a Samsung T9 did not pass the test.
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BMD’s camera works with external drives on iPhones quite well.
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