- FiLMiC Pro is one of our top recommended camera apps
for iPhone and Android.
And they've been some pretty big updates
since we released our last FiLMiC Tutorial.
So in this video, we're doing a complete updated
FiLMiC Pro tutorial, using all the latest features
to help you shoot videos like a pro on your smartphone.
Hey, it's Justin Brown here from Primal Video
where we help you grow an audience
and scale your revenue with online video.
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and all the links to everything we mention in this video,
you can find linked in the description box below.
So let's jump into it.
Now if you haven't used it yet,
FiLMiC Pro has consistently been one of our favorite
iPhone and Android camera apps.
It's packed with a ton of features and an instantly
unlocks DSLR like settings on your iOS or Android camera.
Now at first glance, the huge range of features in there
can be overwhelming, but don't worry,
it really only takes a few quick simple settings
to totally level up your videos with your Android or iPhone.
And we're gonna cover everything you need
to start getting awesome results
with the latest FiLMiC Pro version step by step right now.
And as an added bonus, once we're done with the walkthrough,
I'm also gonna cover a bonus tip
to show you how you can easily monitor your shoot
while you're shooting with the rear phone camera,
the one on the back, so when your screen is facing
away from you, this is going to make your life
a whole lot easier.
Okay, so here we are in FiLMiC Pro.
Now, I'm just showing you this on an Android device,
but the process and the interface and everything
is going to be exactly the same on your iOS devices as well.
Now I'm gonna start out first by going through the settings
by pressing this little button down here,
to get everything set up ready for shooting
before we jump into the interface
and before I show you how all of this stuff works.
So the first thing you wanna set is your Resolution.
So we come up here to Resolution.
Now in here you got lots of different options
and some phones or some devices
will have more options in here than others.
Across the top here you can add different overlays
on your videos.
So if you wanna add some cinematic black bars
to your videos, you can do that here
or if you actually you wanna crop your video down
to a specific size, say a 1:1 video
for something like Instagram,
then you can select the size that you'd like
and just make sure that this Crop Source to Overlay
is selected here.
And that will actually produce you a one by one sized video.
Lemme go ahead and just keep this back at 16:9.
And this is pretty much where I leave this setting.
Now below that we get to choose our video resolution.
So you can see your set at 1080p,
we can go all the way back to SD 540p.
And on this device, we have the ability to go up to
4k 2160p.
So you can set that here and down below that
is where we actually get to choose
the quality of that video.
And once again, we've got settings
all the way back from Economy, Standard, FiLMiC Quality
and FiLMiC Extreme.
Now, FiLMiC Quality and FiLMiC Extreme
are higher quality video recordings,
then you would get in most cases
out of the built in camera app on your device.
So that's one of the biggest standout features
with FiLMiC Pro is that you get to record
at higher quality recordings
than what the built in camera apps lets you do.
So for me personally, I'll either shoot in 4k 2160p,
or back in 1080p, I would usually leave the quality
at FiLMiC Quality unless I need the absolute best recording
that I can get, FiLMiC Quality is still really, really good.
And then below that, we get to choose the Video Codec.
So the default here is AVC.
But we can also choose HEVC
or high efficiency video codec as well.
So I'm gonna leave this as AVC
and if your device supports it,
you can also enable HDR video recording here as well.
Now to go back to the previous menu screen,
we just tap on the screen somewhere outside of the menu
and we're taken back.
So once you've got your resolution locked in,
we'll come across to FrameRate
and here obviously is where we can pick our frame rate,
everything from 24 you can see right up to 240
on this specific device at that 1080p resolution.
You've also got Timelapse functionality in here as well.
If you wanna create some time lapses,
we'll just go back to standard now.
So you wanna go ahead and pick your frame rate.
So I'm just gonna go ahead and leave this
at 24 frames per second.
Now what I would recommend is that for most people here,
your Capture frames per second
and your Playback frames per second
should be set to be the same.
So you can see I've got 24 across all three of those there.
Now this auto shutoff feature down the bottom here
is handy if you're getting flickering from any lights
in your scene.
A lot of fluorescent or even some LED lights
will create a strobing or flickering effect in your video.
So if you come down here to Auto Shutter,
then you get to set this to either 50 hertz Shutter.
So if you're in Australia or the UK,
then you'll be setting this to 50 hertz
to remove that flicker or if you're in the US or Canada,
you can set this to 60 hertz Shutter,
so I'm in Australia, I'm gonna leave this at 50.
Again, we'll just tap off the menu to go back.
Now we're gonna look at Audio.
Now I currently don't have an external microphone plugged in
or any Bluetooth microphones
or anything connected to my phone at this point.
So my only option here at the moment
is just to use the camera microphone.
When you do plug in a microphone
you will be able to switch here from Camera Microphone
to external.
And it will usually default to an External Microphone
for you when there is one plugged in.
If you don't wanna record audio,
then you can just select here, Video Only.
And that's what you're gonna get.
I will disable that now and let's go back menu,
jump into Device.
Now there's a heap of settings in here,
we're not gonna run through them all
but the ones that I like to set out the Orientation Lock,
so that if you rotate your phone while filming,
it's not going to rotate the entire camera app.
So for me, I like to lock it to widescreen or horizontal
and know that that's not gonna change
throughout the recording.
So you can see there's lots of different settings in here.
The other one I usually leave on as well
is the Mute Notifications
so that when you're actually recording your videos,
you're not getting notifications and stuff
pop up on your screen.
And you've also got things in here like Noise Reduction,
so if you're gonna be filming in low light conditions
where the footage is looking pretty noisy or grainy,
then you can enable this Noise Reduction
and it does do a pretty good job
at cleaning up your footage.
Now from here I would come down here to Stabilization
and I would turn that on or off depending on
if you want that image stabilization on,
it actually does a really good job
on the devices I've checked it on.
So if I'm gonna be moving around, I will enable that,
then you wanna select your camera.
So if we come across the Camera here,
and this is where we can choose again,
depending on your device,
whether you want the front facing camera,
or one of the rear cameras, so whether it's the Ultra Wide,
the Wide, the Mid, the Telephoto,
whatever options you've got on your phone,
you should be able to select those in here.
So we're gonna leave this one here on Mid
which is the standard camera on this device.
Okay, so now that we have most of the things set up
for our video, we've got the Resolution, FrameRate, Audio,
and everything is all set the way that we'd like it.
I'll come over here to Presets.
And in here, this is where we can actually save a preset
based on all of those settings that we have just set up.
So lets just go, Save current values to preset.
Let's give it a name, lets call it jb, done.
So now next time I open up this app,
I don't have to run through those settings again,
I can just open up this profile here jb,
and all of those settings are going to be set there.
So this means you can actually have different presets
set up for different resolutions,
or even for different cameras.
So if you're using the front selfie camera,
you might want your resolution to be different
or your frame rate to be different depending
on the types of videos you're creating with those presets.
So, having this ability and having these presets in here
is an amazing feature.
Now while we're still in the settings menu here,
if we come across to hardware,
there's a really cool integrations with FiLMiC Pro
and some devices like Gimbal Stabilizers,
like the DJI OSMO Mobile (1 & 2) or the Zhiyun Smooth 4,
and it even gives you the ability to enable
Anamorphic Adapters and those sorts of things
with your videos as well.
So all that stuff is in here under Hardware.
Okay, so let's back out of this now
and skip back to our shot.
Now in terms of the actual interface,
obviously, we can see the audio bars there
on the right hand side, which is the visual indicator
of the audio that you're going to be recording
so you can quickly see first off
that you are recording audio,
but also you can see if it's too loud or too quiet.
Now to adjust the volume,
you wanna come down to this big box here
and you can see if I'm just tapping on this box
and sliding to the left and to the right,
that we're able to adjust that volume level.
That little white indicator
that's moving along below my pointer.
So if I go all the way to the left,
volume is going to be right down,
you can see we've gone to nothing.
If I bring that back up, we're able to increase
or boost the volume to where we would like it.
Now over on this side of the shot here,
this slider here is to zoom in and out.
So if we grab this and move it up,
we're able to zoom in on our shot,
and likewise pull it down and zoom back out.
This big round button here is our record button,
to start the recording.
This one here will let us playback and view all of our clips
that we've recorded.
I've already spoken about the Settings button.
Next to that here is our storage indicator,
we can see how much free space we have left on our device.
We've also got our battery level indicator here as well.
And then next to that you can see we've got our time code,
so when we start recording,
we can see how long we've been recording for.
And there's also a really quick visual indicator
or display here of your frames per second
and your resolution to make sure that you are recording
at the right settings for you.
Now if we tap on this area,
you can see that we're actually able to bring up
some histograms and scopes and those sorts of things
to give us more insight into the video we are creating.
So you can just tap on that to cycle through those.
Now next to that over this side here,
this little A button here,
this will bring up all of our overlays.
So we've got things in here like Focus Peaking,
so we can easily see what's in focus.
And we've got some other overlays
and things across the top here that we can enable
to really help us dial in the exposure
and also the focus of our shots.
So we've got our zebra lines there as well.
Now next to that this one down here
is where we can jump into our more advanced control
for exposure, focus and zoom.
Now before I show you the advanced ones,
I'll show you the very basic settings here first,
so let's turn this off.
You can see in the middle of our screen here
we've got a big box around the outside
and we've also got a little box here on the inside.
The little one here is our focus box
and the outside one here is our exposure box.
So if we wanna adjust the focus,
so I bring my hand in here now,
let's grab this focus box that's pointed on my hand.
And you can see the focus is adjusted to my hand.
Now If we tap on that,
that's going to lock the focus at that point.
So no matter where we move our camera or anything now,
the focus is now locked at that point.
To unlock it, we can just tap on it,
and we go back to auto focus.
So in this case here, we might wanna lock it onto
the microphone here, move it over that area,
tap it, it's now locked at that point.
It's a very similar with the outside box,
with the exposure box, we could reposition our shot,
move it around to get the exposure that we want,
say we like the brightness there.
Let's lock it there by tapping the outside,
reposition our shot, and we've now locked the focus
and the exposure, so neither of those are going to change
throughout our shot.
Now this method here, as I said, is really, really basic.
So I'm gonna go ahead and unlock these now.
And let's go over to the manual settings
which are down here.
So on this left hand side here,
we've got our exposure control
and on the right hand side here,
we have our zoom and focus control.
And these are essentially little wheels or sliders
that you can just grab and slide up and down
to brighten or to darken your shot.
So with these brightness settings here on the left,
we actually have the ability to lock down or to dial in
specific settings that we might want.
So if I wanna lock my shutter speed at 1/50,
I'll just tap on 1/50,
shutter speeds not gonna change then,
and now this slider bar here
just becomes the ISO adjustment.
So it's moving this around until we get the shot
that we're after.
So for me personally,
I'll normally be setting this around 1/50
and then adjusting here the ISO
to get the shot to the correct exposure
for what I'm looking for.
And likewise with the focus here,
if you really wanna dial in your shot,
then you have that ability here for both the focus
and the zoom and you can switch between them
just by tapping on the screen here.
Now to get back out of this
we'll just tap on the screen anywhere.
And you can see that we've locked down our focus
and our exposure because both of them are red on screen.
Now the last thing you wanna lock down before you shoot,
so there's not changing and adjusting while you're shooting
is your white balance.
So that's down the bottom here
and this three colored circle icons.
So we'll press on that.
Now in here, you got access to presets for white balance
along the bottom here.
So if there's one of these that matches
the lighting conditions
of the area you're gonna be filming in,
then one of these presets may work well for you.
Or you can come back over to auto
to get an automatic reading.
And if that works for what you're after,
then if you tap it again, you can see it goes red,
and your white balance is locked at that point.
So you can start from auto,
you don't have to manually dial something in,
but if you do want to put in a specific color temperature,
then you can use the sliders here
to get the specific Kelvin rating.
And you can adjust the tint of the shot here as well.
So that's the first area here, white balance.
There's two other menu areas in here as well
which are included or unlocked in the cinematographer kit
which is an additional purchase on top of FiLMiC Pro.
So if we press on this one here,
this is gonna give us access to different color profiles.
You can see the fault here is natural,
we can switch to a Dynamic, we can switch to a Flat profile,
or there's even the ability to shoot your videos
in Log here as well.
And you can customize this up
to really get the look that you're after,
especially if you're gonna be color grading it afterwards
in your editing software.
So I reset this now and go back to defaults.
And the bottom one down here is where we can adjust
the saturation or the vibrance of our shot.
So you can see if we wanna boost some of the colors here,
we can just increase the vibrance,
likewise if we wanna remove some colors in our shot,
then we can slide it back the other way
and go full black and white if you'd like to.
So let's reset this, get it back to 100.
So once you've got all your settings ready,
all you need to do is press the record button here
and record your video masterpiece.
Now I've quickly switched over to iPhone
to show you one more amazing feature
that I did mention at the start of this video
which will allow you to remotely monitor
and control your primary FiLMiC Pro camera app.
Camera device.
Now this is currently out on iPhone
and they do have it out in beta on Android.
So it is coming really really soon.
But for this you will need to purchase
the FiLMiC remote app, which again
is an additional purchase.
So once you purchase the FiLMiC remote app
on your primary camera,
you wanna come down to Settings,
go over to Device and enable Remote Control.
Then on your secondary device,
an iPad or another phone that you might have
that you've downloaded and installed
the FiLMiC remote app on, you wanna open that up,
make sure they're both on the same network.
And you can see here Justin Brown's iPhone,
so if we press on that,
will grant access back on the phone, lets go Always Allow
and then my main phone or camera
can now be controlled remotely from the iPad
and with access to all the same settings and everything
that we just ran through but you're doing it remotely
from a secondary device.
So this is an amazing tool for content creation,
especially for someone who's creating their videos solo
to be able to sit in front of camera,
frame everything out,
make sure everything is the way that you wanted
and everything is set up correctly
and looking good without the need to have someone else there
helping you out with this.
Now in regards to pricing, the FiLMiC Pro app
it's currently selling in the app store for $14 99,
which given the amount of advanced features and control
and everything in it, I do think
it is an absolute no brainer.
To unlock the cinematographer kit,
those advanced color profiles and log mode and everything.
It is an additional in app purchase of $13 99.
And the FiLMiC Pro remote app
is currently selling as well for $14 99.
So again, an amazing add on app,
if you're someone who wants to have that
additional functionality of being able to monitor
and control everything from a secondary device.
So even adding up the three purchases,
I still think this is an absolute no brainer
for someone looking for a really powerful tool
to create their videos,
to unlock all of this advanced functionality
with their smartphone and also make it much easier
for you to shoot your videos,
especially if you're doing it solo with that remote app.
So that is a complete walkthrough of FiLMiC Pro.
Now that you've got your filming sorted,
it's time to turn your iPhone or Android
into the ultimate video creation powerhouse.
Check out the videos we've got linked on screen
to see our reviews of the best video editing apps
on both platforms that will give you desktop like
video editing functions right on your device.
And I'll see you in the next one.