The iPhone 11 lets you shoot yourself and a friend with this multi-cam app

By Hillary K. Grigonis Published February 27, 2020

The developers behind the app that gives the smartphone pro-level video controls are recycling the iPhone’s array of cameras for a new purpose: Multi-cam shooting. Launched on Tuesday, January 28, Filmic Pro DoubleTake allows the latest two generations of iPhones to capture video from two cameras simultaneously, resulting in a picture-in-picture video, two videos side by side, or simply saving two separate videos.

Originally teased during the iPhone 11 launch event, DoubleTake allows any of the iPhone’s cameras to capture video simultaneously. Vloggers can conduct interviews and record using both the selfie cam and the rear-facing cam. Or, users can capture a close-up and a wide-angle shot of the same subject, putting the shots side by side in a format that feels destined for TikTok and other social media platforms. On the iPhone 11 series smartphones, the app can use the wide, telephoto or ultra-wide lens as well as the front-facing camera.

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Along with choosing the lens to shoot from, users choose the composition of how those videos work together. Picture-in-picture composite follows the traditional format with a smaller video in the corner of the main video, with options to customize where that smaller video sits in the frame. Splitscreen composite creates a 50-50 split video. The discrete mode will record with multiple rear cameras or a rear camera and the selfie camera and save two separate video instead of a single merged file.

The DoubleTake app borrows a few features from Filmic Pro, including the option to choose between 24 fps, 25 fps, and 30 fps. Focus and exposure adjustments are included.

The app currently only allows for a 1080p resolution — a limitation posed by the operating system, the developer says. (Android began supporting picture-in-picture recording on some Nokia smartphones a few years ago with the “bothie” that uses both the front and rear cameras.)

The DoubleTake features will eventually be integrated into the advanced tools of Filmic Pro when version seven launches this spring, the developer says. But, while Filmic Pro is a paid app, DoubleTake is a free download. The multi-cam recording requires an iPhone XR, XS, XS Max, 11, 11 Pro, or 11 Pro Max, but any device with iOS 13 or later can download the app.

While DoubleTake offers some controls, the free app doesn’t have the same suite of tools as the company’s namesake app, Filmic Pro. Version six of Filmic Pro offers temperature adjustments, LOG and flat color profiles for color grading, live focus peaking and other overlays, and a long list of other custom settings for video.

Filmic Pro DoubleTake is available from the App Store beginning today.

Hillary K. Grigonis

Former Contributor

Hillary never planned on becoming a photographer—and then she was handed a camera at her first writing job and she's been…

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