Today, Apple held its Far Out event, revealing many different versions of the iPhone 14. While the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus offered some interesting attributes, the main focus of the event was entirely on the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max. Despite offering incredible advancements from last year’s model, apparently Apple will still limit ProRes recording on the 128GB variant of the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max.
This was the same limitation that was imposed on the last year’s iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro max. If you’re unaware of Apple ProRes, it is a mode that allows users to get the best image quality possible from the phone. The footage also carries multi-stream and real-time editing performance enhancements. While it does offer a higher-quality image, the file sizes while shooting Apple ProRes are quite large.
Apple states that one minute of 10-bit HDR ProRes footage equates to around 1.7GB of space for a 1080p clip. If you are filming in 4K, this bumps up to 6GB per minute of footage. So you can see where you might run into issues if you own a lower storage iPhone. Despite this, it would be nice if Apple at least gave users the option to record in a higher resolution when using ProRes. If you were able to record 4K ProRes on a 128GB iPhone, you would get somewhere around 17 minutes, maybe less, which isn’t all that bad.
Currently, Apple only offers ProRes video recording support in the native Camera app at 4K up to 30 frames per second if you are using an iPhone with internal storage of 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB. If you are using an iPhone with 128GB of storage, you will be forced to record in 1080p up to 30 frames per second. It is a shame that these limitations are in place, but at least now you know if you’re going to purchase one of these phones.
