Our final day of shooting Filly Brown was filled with a variety of last-minute shots, notably an insert which required a prop iPhone playing a video. The clip was exported to H.264 and tested on my personal iPhone 4. I rushed to set knowing I would transfer the clip via Internet.
If only it had been that easy. I understand the argument for having an SD slot on the iPhone.
Problem #1 – Not a prop
Our "prop" iPhone 3G actually belonged to a crew member. This means I couldn't just wipe it as needed.
Problem #2 – iTunes
The computer used to sync the iPhone wasn't available. For this reason I couldn't use my copy of iTunes because this forces you to wipe the device.
Problem #3 – AT&T coverage
Emailing the video clip was terribly slow because of AT&T's poor wireless coverage in the area.
Problem #4 – Virgin Mobile coverage
Our Virgin Mobile Mifi adapter also had poor reception – no improvement here.
Problem #5 – Adobe Flash
Suffering through a slow transfer using Virgin's Mifi I tried WeTransfer.com for a web-to-browser transfer. I discovered that WeTransfer requires Flash on the client to download the file. There is no Flash on the iPhone.
Problem #6 – Wifi transfer
I attempted a MacBook-to-iPhone transfer using wifi. That didn't work either because the Virgin Mifi adapter doesn't support infrastructure/ad-hoc networks – only direct to Internet.
Problem #7 – iOS 3
I used Dropbox and the iPhone app Download Manager Pro Lite to retrieve the clip. After a lengthy upload and download with AT&T Wireless, I opened the clip to discover that iOS 3.13 doesn't play it. Apparently there are limitations with H.264 in iOS 3 compared with my test on iOS 4.1.
The clip was re-exported out of Compressor using an iPhone specific setting and re-transferred via Dropbox.
Finally…success.
What We Learned
The entire process took hours to complete and most of the time was spent waiting for slow transfers. Some/all of the problems could have been avoided with more preparation but that's not always an option during a shoot.
An SD card slot would have been ideal. No wireless transfers over slow broadband, no iTunes limitations, no requirements for Adobe Flash.
Apple's reliance on wireless or iTunes sync works well…in a perfect world. However, the world is not perfect and we sailed into a perfect storm of events that revealed limitations of our technology – particularly the iPhone.
I'll do things differently next time but it won't stop me from searching for a direct method of iPhone transfers, SD slot or not.
During the update from iPhone iOS version 4.1 to 4.3 the phone was stuck in Recovery Mode. The update consistently failed with error 1013.
I’ve never had reason to perform a Restore operation on my iPhone 3G until the 3.1 software update. For whatever reason the iPhone became sluggish and unresponsive, then operate as normal, and back to slow.