Welcome to Quick Start 4! We are getting into the nitty gritty here.

We've previously talked a bit about getting all your settings ready before your shot, and in this guide we are going to look at the settings available to you and even dialing custom format settings.

Presets

Here’s Kino’s capture format presets:

4K / HDR: Best for what you are used to. By default, when you first open Kino we match what you might expect from Apple’s Camera app. We capture HD video in 4K, with HDR. HDR extends the dynamic range of footage, and can be seen in playback when bright areas look much brighter than they do on SDR footage. It is supported by more and more apps every year: Instagram, for instance, now has support for HDR video in Reels and posts. The framerate is 30 frames per second.

4K / LOG: Best for Instant Grade and highest quality recording. iPhone 15 Pro users will find this as their second preset. It is what we would consider the highest quality setting for capture, full-stop, and lets you capture the most cinematic looking video thanks to the Log color space allowing our best Grades, and 24 FPS frame rate giving your video a more filmic look. This produces large files and is very demanding on your phone — keep an eye on your phone battery and storage, and try to keep it cool!

Note: Instant Grade, when enabled, will drop the quality of a recording down from ProRes to HEVC (H265). What that means, in practice, is that you get smaller video file sizes. If you prefer ultimate editing flexibility, you can shoot with just a grade on, in ProRes, without ‘Instant Grade’ being on: that way, you can still see how it looks as you shoot and you can even apply the preset to your video later in Kino or add one in your editor of choice.

FHD / P3: Best for saving space and if you prefer SDR. If you are looking to save some space and not shoot with HDR, this preset is a great balanced way to shoot. With lower resolution, it saves space, and you can opt out of HDR video for a more classic look.

It’s worth noting that you will see different grades in the Grade picker depending on your capture presets! That’s because Grades are made specifically for whatever color space (HDR, Log, P3, etc.) is used. If you are looking for a specific preset and you can't find it, that might be why.

These presets can really convenient, but there might be times where you want to do something a bit different.

Go Custom

If you look closely at the presets, you can see there’s tradeoffs that you might not want to make. Perhaps you only care about getting great Instant Grade video, and not so much resolution since you are just recording videos for posting on Instagram stories. Maybe you want full resolution SDR footage. Or you want to shoot in a frame rate that you prefer, rather than the preset’s.

If you tap ‘Custom’ below the three presets, Kino will let you dial it in any way you prefer:

One of our team member’s favorite presets is 1080P (FHD), Apple Log, 60 FPS video in HEVC. It saves space and power, but adds some nice extra frames if you want to slow your video down later, and still gives you great color range for edits. But you can set anything you’d like — experiment to find your favorite. Kino will save it as your ‘custom’ preset under the top three.

A note on combinations:  some combinations might simply not be possible, or be extremely demanding.

In fact, Apple recommends against recording 4K Log 60 FPS video in Apple Log without a fast external drive attached, as the iPhone might not be able to keep up. Similarly, presets that are the most intense for your iPhone — using 4K, high frame rates and ProRes — can start causing issues when you are doing long recordings and / or your iPhone gets warm. We recommend recording shorter clips in those modes to ensure iPhone gets some time to cool down and the data can be written out reliably.

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