Getting Started: Filmmaking in the Moment Pro Camera App

Filmmaking in the Moment Pro Camera App

Gorgeous mobile filmmaking is more than just swiping up into the native app and hitting record. Really understanding your manual settings will affect the final output of your video. By conceptualizing manual settings like frames per second, resolution, shutter speed, and more. — you’ll be shooting movies on your phone like a true pro in no time. Download the Moment Pro Camera App to unlock full manual controls on your mobile device.

Below is everything you need to know for getting the best possible video on your mobile device.

Lens Profiles

In the very top right-hand corner, you’ll find a circle icon. Click that and a table of different lens options will pop up. If you have a Moment Lens, click which lens you’re willing to attach to your Moment Case to select. This way, the app is cognitively aware of which lens you’re using and will intuitively work the lens with your fresh layer of glass. Click the circle icon again to go back to the Camera screen.

In order to switch between Rear and Front Selfie cameras, simply click the infinity-looking sign in the camera square. If you’d like to switch between your smartphone’s native Wide and Tele lens, click the icon directly below that says “1x”.

Lens profiling refers to the correction made with pictures or video used with an Anamorphic lens. In order to effectively utilize footage or photographs from either of these lenses, it’s best you know how to correct any distortion or unwanted effects.

Lucky for you, we couldn’t have made this process easier. To do this, simply press the Settings button on the lower left-hand side of your bottom screen. Scroll down to where you’ll see “Apply Desqueeze to Saved File” and click the toggle. When the toggle is blue, this means you’ll be able to desqueeze any visual clips once you save them to your Camera Roll.

Color Profiles

Color is an incredibly complex subject for both photography and videography. Luckily, color profiles help define what colors we are able to capture with our device and see on our computational displays. For instance — a particular shade of red captured on your camera might look much different than what can be displayed on your computer screen. Color profiles can not only help adjust the subset of colors that cameras can capture and display, but help them keep consistent between the two.

Very important.

Additionally, color profiles are deemed particularly useful for post-processing procedures, as they help increase dynamic range, improve retention, and striking contrast. There are three different color profile logs that you can choose from:

Default refers to the camera's automatic settings to what it thinks is the most natural-looking real-time color profile.

Flat refers to the low contrast, high dynamic range that provides a solid base for color grading in post.

Log refers to an even lower contrasted version of a flat color profile. See above.

Resolution

A big topic of conversation is the major differences are when shooting in 1080p vs 4K. To put these in simple, technical terms — 4K resolution is exactly 3840 x 2160 pixels, whilst 1080P consists of 1920 x 1080 pixels. So, yeah. 4K is the ultimate resolution setting for ultra-high-definition outputs.

The truth is if you have enough storage space on your phone then always shoot your video in 4K. Although each video file is massive in size, you’ll be able to tell the difference in quality between the two variants. At an aspect ratio of 16:9, 4K contains almost four times the number of pixels on a screen compared with 1080P technology — more than eight million pixels for 4K and just two million pixels for 1080P, according to Filmora Wondershare.

Your smartphone’s native app won’t have the ability to independently control these settings, that’s why our Moment camera app comes in handy when wanting to control how each scene is portrayed.

Frame Rate

A frame rate is a frequency at which motion video sequences are displayed. The higher frame rate (120 FPS) is supposed to make fast-action scenes look smoother when put in slow motion, while a slower frame rate (24FPS) allows the footage to appear more cinematic. Depending upon how slow or fast the frame rate is crucial to figuring how life-like the motion appears. A too slow of frame rate will look jagged and awkward, while a fast live-action movie filmed at an unnecessary 48 FPS will mimic a soap-opera quality that audiences tend to dislike.

If you’re shooting a normalized scene at a life-like speed, but are still aiming for a cinematic spice, then shoot at either 24ps or 30fps.

For slow-motion with buttery movements, switch to either 60fps 120fps to add production quality to your film.

How To Make a Custom Preset

Presets within the app are not fun colorized filters, but rather — a set of already programmed manual settings, set by you, to use again and again during particular shooting scenarios. For instance, you’re able to create a preset by toggling the ISO, shutter speed, and aperture settings to your liking.

In order to do this:

Click the “Preset” button right next to the shutter button on the bottom of your screen.
By clicking, “Cinematic Video”, set up the desired resolution, frames per second (FPS), flash, white balance, etc., and hit “Save”.
By clicking, “Slow-Mo”, you can set up the desired settings and click “Save”.
If you’d like, you’re also able to save an entirely new preset for say, indoor photography or outdoor videography, by adjusting the toggle settings to your own discretion and hitting “Save”. This can be done by clicking the large blue button at the bottom of the Presets page.

Presets are a fantastic way to set up an existing mode of operation when you open up your app. Work smarter, not harder.

Manual Settings For Video

Shutter Speed For Filmmaking

Defined at its most basic level, the “shutter speed” refers to the amount of time the camera’s shutter is open. Think of it as the length of time that your image sensor ‘sees’ the scene you’re attempting to capture in motion.

Most filmmakers follow what’s coined as the “180 rule”. With your camera’s physical shutter, 180 means it's open for half of the exposure and closed for the other half. So at 24fps, you'd have an effective exposure of 1/48. At 50fps, it would be 1/100. At 100fps, it would be 1/200. So on and so forth. Of course, you’re more than welcome to utilize a higher shutter speed, although that is never generally recommended as it will look more haggard.

In many cinema cameras, there’s something called the 180º shutter angle rule; which, if you set it to 180º, it will automatically adjust the shutter speed for you. Granted, some cinematographers like to switch up the shutter speed or shutter angle based on stylistic preference.

ISO

ISO is the level of your camera’s sensitivity to available light in the scene. The lower the ISO number, the less sensitive it is to the light, while a higher ISO number increases the sensitivity of your camera. Always begin with an ISO at the lowest possible number. This will introduce the least amount of noise into the frame, which is crucial for producing an overall high-quality video. High noise levels produced with a high ISO is extremely noticeable in video and can be uncomfortable to stare at for long periods of time.

If you are wanting to shoot in low light – how far can you bump up your ISO without making it look terrible? You’re safe for anything under an ISO of 600, but anything over may either require a tripod or external lighting systems.

White Balance

Not all light is created equal – so it’s imperative to understand the basic essentials of what white balance is how we can adjust it accordingly.

Light sources emit a range of colorful sources known as “Kelvin”. No, not the terrible Instagram filter from 2012 (though I see why they got the name), but a colorful spectrum that runs from white/blue to yellow/orange. The cooler the image, the bluer in tone, and the warmer the image, the more yellow in tone. Simple, no?

One of the best ways to ensure you’re in the correct white balance setting is by holding up a white piece of paper in front of the sensor. Adjust the kelvin setting to a higher number (cool) or a lower number (warm) until the piece of paper looks white to your naked eye.

Focus

Attaining a relatively sharp image first comes with proper focal range. Most DSLR shooters capture with autofocus because it’s simple, effective, and reliable. However, having the option to manually focus on a particular subject, or part of a subject, is crucial to finalizing the perfect picture. Manual focus especially comes in handy when the camera can’t quite fix what part of the frame you need.

A focus slider, like in the Moment - Pro Camera App, allows you to manually focus by sliding focal points from near to far. This comes particularly useful when shooting portraits or other subjects in the foreground.

Audio

We know the drill.

Your screenplay is written brilliantly. Your cast is bounded by gifted strengths booming with characters full of life, and your cinematography is something out of a Wes Anderson coffee table book. But there’s just one thing not quite right — the dialogue is garbled, the wind and overall background noise audibly obstruct the vocals, and the levels are all over the place.

Many independent filmmakers think that audio is the last component of filmmaking to be bothered with, but here’s the honest trust: bad audio will make or break your film. In fact, some might argue that good sound is more important than how your film looks. Horrible picture can easily be passed off as a “stylistic choice” when accompanied by perfect audio, but the crappily recorded wind noise will make a great picture look amateurish and poorly executed.

Beautiful cinematography means nothing if bad audio ruins the footage. Engineering excellent sound is an elaborate production that’s often overlooked and under-appreciated in the filmmaking process.

Correctly setting audio levels in the modern industry means reading important indicators that adjust real-time, precise, dual-channel (when available) audio levels, so you don’t peak or overextend the decibel (dB).

The decision to use compression should greatly depend on the tastes of the Sound/Foley Supervisor and for what medium it’s suited for. First, if you have a crew, check with who is receiving/cutting/mixing the foley. If it’s YOU — and you crave the desire to level out transient material (mainly when working on a project with a tight mix schedule and a medium with less available dynamic range) — then go for compression while tracking only 2:1/3:1 alongside a gentle threshold to catch peaks, etc.

You’ll never want your output levels above -6dBfs.

To watch for this, we suggest editing in the Adobe Timeline panel, for each audio track, click the Show Keyframes button. Then choose Show Track Keyframes, or Show Track Volume from the drop-down menu. Toward the bottom left of the Audio Track Mixer panel, click the Play button to play the sequence and monitor its audio ( https://helpx.adobe.com).

Turn your headphone/speaker volume down to almost nothing, and if you can still hear everything, you’ve got a good mix.

Bitrates

Bitrates refer to the number of bits per second that are transmitted along with a digital network. According to HelpEncoding.com’s database: 1 byte consists of 8 bits; video data rates are given in bits per second. The data rate for a video file is the bitrate. So a data rate specification for video content that runs at 1 megabyte per second would be given as a bitrate of 8 megabits per second (8 Mbps).

When choosing what bitrate is best for your mobile workflow, it’s important to consider what device your video will be played on. Various platforms — internet videos, smartphone videos, and tv videos — all greatly vary in bitrate. If you’re a mobile filmmaker, consider a standard 30 or medium 60 bitrates by encoding API to apply VBR bitrate to your media files.

With Moment’s new app update, you can now get precise control over video quality with standard, medium, and high bitrates to choose from.

RGB Histogram

For a mobile filmmaker’s workflow, a color histogram is a representation of the distribution of colors in an image. The histogram can be immensely helpful to know the number of pixels that have colors in each of its ranges for every video frame (note: the histogram changes in a fluid fashion with each frame captured).

RGB histograms and color profiles go hand-in-hand; dial in your video color, balance, and exposure with a live RGB histogram while selecting from default, flat, or log color profiles to get the most out of your files in post-processing.

We’re beyond pleased with Moment Camera Pro’s latest 3.5 updates, in which users are now able to select video color, balance, and exposure with our new live RGB histogram.

Waveforms

Waveforms are typically used to measure and display the voltage of a media signal in respect to time and space. The level of a video signal typically corresponds to the luminance of an image produced on a screen at the same point in time. The monitor can be used to display the general brightness of a T.V picture or zoom in to show the individual colored lines of the video signal itself.

Waveform histograms are similar to that of RGB, but the main difference is the overall brightness measured. Graphs, as illustrated below, can be used to visualize and observe the level of scientific luminesce within each frame.

Settings Menu

The general settings can be accessed by tapping the lower left hand corner next to your camera gallery, where you’ll see a list of Location, Grid, etc. Let's roll over what thes are and mean.

Location - Tapple the toggle on/off means the app either will or won’t permit access to your current location.
Grid - Tap either None, Square, Thirds, or Golden ratio to control the composition of your picture, whether that by Photo or Video.
Add Siri Shortcut - Integrates siri into the app.
Bluetooth Devices - Allows you to connect your bluetooth to devices like the Osmo 3.
App Icon - This is a cool one! Tap which icon you’d like to represent the Moment Pro Camera app on your iPhone.

Each of these settings are typically seen as an overview and can be adjusted at any time you’d like. They’re made for ultimate customization at your leisure!