Simple Problem, No Obvious Answer

[Caleb R.]

Here’s the long and short of it. Newbie with a MPP. I know I’m shooting in 1080p and I’d love to be able to shoot video and take pictures in 4K. The problem is that I’m using an iPhone 6s and, as far as I know, I can’t view 4K on my phone. The other issue is that while we have two MacBook Pro’s my wife and I no longer know the passwords since we rarely use them. Another thing, are 4K videos only viewable if they’re pulled off of the SD card?

TL;DR
What do I need to do to shoot and edit in 4K (pics and videos) using an iPhone 6s WITHOUT a computer. My guess is I’m out of luck but any advice would be appreciated.

 

[brett8883]

Here’s the long and short of it. Newbie with a MPP. I know I’m shooting in 1080p and I’d love to be able to shoot video and take pictures in 4K. The problem is that I’m using an iPhone 6s and, as far as I know, I can’t view 4K on my phone. The other issue is that while we have two MacBook Pro’s my wife and I no longer know the passwords since we rarely use them. Another thing, are 4K videos only viewable if they’re pulled off of the SD card?

TL;DR
What do I need to do to shoot and edit in 4K (pics and videos) using an iPhone 6s WITHOUT a computer. My guess is I’m out of luck but any advice would be appreciated.

4K video must be downloaded from the SD card. There are sd card dongles you can buy for iPhone but they don’t always work that great for 4K video and I bet editing 4K on an iPhone 6s will be a challenge anyway.

Not to mention 4K video take up massive amounts of disk space. A 5 minute video might take something like 4 GB of space. If you have an iPhone with only 32 or 64 GB of total storage space you can see that it will fill up fast especially since you already have disk space taken up by anything else on your iPhone like music apps or other photos and video.

4K requires a whole different level of processing and will be painfully slow on your set up if even possible.

On the upside the iPhone 6s doesn’t have a 4K screen so if that is how you will be viewing the videos anyway it’s mostly pointless to go through the trouble of processing 4K video. There are still benefits to 4K but these likely greatly outweigh the trouble.

The way you could drastically improve your video quality without going to 4K is by downloading the high quality video from the SD to either your computer or your iPhone. The SD dongle looks like this but can find other cheaper 3rd party o
Lightning to SD Card Camera Reader

Lightning to SD Card Camera Reader — Apple

The Lightning to SD Card Camera Reader lets you import photos & videos from your camera's SD card to your iPad or iPhone. Get fast, free shipping.

store.apple.com

BTW it’s not a big deal to reset your Mac Book Pro’s. You can take it to an Apple store and they will do it for you for free or you can simply google it and do it yourself.

 

[Caleb R.]

Thanks for the advice, I actually picked up the SD card reader the other day but as far as I can tell I still can’t view 4K. Would using iMovie solve any of my issues?

 

[Olav van Gerven]

The problem primarely would not be the editing software, but the screen you use to display. If there is no 4K screen, you will never see 4K if you play.

I know that Final Cut Pro is able to process 4K and gives (if told so in the setup) a 4K result (even with dolby surround etc...). I just checked with iMovie and indeed, at the end, there is an option of exporting the video in 4K. BUT, as said to begin with, as long as your monitor is not 4K, you will not be able to see it there.

 

[Dave Maine]

In addition to the need of a 4K screen to get any benefit, the computer will need to be able to display 4K. Many earlier computers don’t have 4K screens, not the hardware to support it.

If you had a 4K TV you could use it as a display for your video. Both iMovie and Final Cut Pro X easily support 4K and more. The issues are all hardware and not software.

 

[Caleb R.]

Thanks guys, I appreciate the input.

 

[douglas_in_philly]

So are you saying that you actually can't use either Macbook, at all, since you don't know the passwords?

 

[Olav van Gerven]

If you start the Macbook keeping the letter T pressed, it will start as a simple harddisk. This you can connect to another computer and clean the drive incl. a new operating system. Shut the drive down and restart and you will have acces again. Since you have not used the macs for such a long time, I simply assume there is no data on it you need to keep. If there is data on it (pics, video, music) you can copy that before you clean the drive.

 

[Caleb R.]

So are you saying that you actually can't use either Macbook, at all, since you don't know the passwords?

Correct, it’s not a problem that needs an immediate solution. I need to continue practicing flying before I even need to begin to learn video editing.

 

[Olav van Gerven]

Correct, it’s not a problem that needs an immediate solution. I need to continue practicing flying before I even need to begin to learn video editing.

Have you tried to acces the macs as an external drive as I mentioned above?

 

[Caleb R.]

Have you tried to acces the macs as an external drive as I mentioned above?

Not yet. That’s the last thing on my mind right now. I don’t get the time I would like to fly as I have a busy job and a busy wife and an almost 3 year old daughter so I’m a busy man haha