We’ve been whining about a few things on the iPhone for some time now. You would have thought that all the high-pitched grovelling would have prompted Apple to include video recording, iChat, or at least MMS in one of the previously released firmwares (v1.1.3 included).
Alas, Apple doesn’t seem to give a lick what we think about iPhone features – and as such, has only manged to give us multiple contact support for our SMS text message interface. Video recording, iChat, and MMS are still aspirations that are firmly rooted in the world of natively installed, third-party applications (Installer.app, on jailbroken iPhones, for the uninitiated).
Wait, did we say that video recording was available as a third-party application on jailbroken iPhones? You’re damn skippy we did!
The good folks at PolarBearFarm has announced their new iPhone video recording application, dubbed “Showtime,” at MacWorld San Francisco 2008. The iPhone software development firm has released the still-under-development app through Installer.app to give the world a glimpse of what video recording on the iPhone is like.
(This is what “Showtime” video recording looks like)
At the moment, Showtime is only capable of recording 320 x 427 resolution video at 6 frames per second – which is incredibly slow by most standards (but keep in mind that the software is still under development). The software is available for free, but unlicensed users will hit a 5-second recording limit, while licensed (read: paying) users will enjoy unlimited recording time.
Showtime records raw video, but PolarBearFarms is working to include post-process transcoding in a future release. Once that’s done, the recorded video can be converted (transcoded) into a standard video format that we’re all familiar with and able to view on our computers. Oh, and they’re working to bump up that rather dismal FPS rate.
Find “Showtime” through Installer.app (on your jailbroken iPhone, of course). You’ll need to add the PolarBearFarm software repository to your “Sources” list – if you’re not familiar with the process of adding a new repository to your “Source” list, refer to our tutorial. Add “http://www.polarbearfarm.com/repo/” to your “Source” list, hit “Update,” navigate to the “Multimedia” category, and install “Showtime.”