Following yesterday's blog post highlighting bugs in all the big mobile video editing apps (update: VLLO and Kinemaster are investigating), I'm turning my attention to the video camera app: Filmic Pro.
Filmic Pro is touted as the solution for filming on a mobile device but I've always been disappointed with the results. A big change in the scene seems to result in a change to the brightness in the overall shot. So I always go back to using ProCamera.
After making sure iOS and FIlmicPro are up to date with the latest versions, I devised a little live test to see what is going on (note that this is filmed on another iPhone with the native Camera app):
This bug is also really apparent when using the manual exposure feature. If you slide the exposure up, the white balance seems to compensate and drag the overall brightness down again. It's really annoying when you're trying to get the right brightness for the shot.
In fact you can see the white balance lock failing to work in one of Filmic Pro's youtube videos that's supposed to be demonstrating the white balance lock working. Watch the clouds when the scene pans up and down around the 1 minute mark. At certain points the sky is a complete white out, but then adjusts and you can see the clouds. This happens when the lock is both enabled and disabled!
So unless I'm missing something obvious about the interface here (someone please please help me out if I am!), it looks like there's a massive bug in Filmic Pro that's been present for the last few years.
While I'm here, there's a couple of simple interface issues I mentioned to FilmicPro on Twitter several years back which they said they'd like to implement but so far these changes haven't appeared. I wonder if they'd get them on the dev list? It would be awesome!
1) The Presets feature is really useful but it doesn't cover some of the obvious settings, such as camera choice. Expanding the presets to cover a few more of the main settings would be a massive boost to usability.
2) Having the white balance lock (assuming it works!) tucked away in a separate menu is a real pain, and it's easy to forget to turn it on, and the default setting is off. Maybe this is why the bug described above has gone undetected? If the white balance lock were combined with the exposure reticule on the main screen, this would be another big boost to usability. In fact, I think it would take FilmicPro to near perfection.
That is all
Paul
@LeedsBirder