Werner Ruotsalainen

Author Details

Author Details

Werner Ruotsalainen

<p>Werner Ruotsalainen is an iOS and Java programming lecturer who is well-versed in programming, hacking, operating systems, and programming languages. Werner tries to generate unique articles on subjects not widely discussed. Some of his articles are highly technical and are intended for other programmers and coders.</p>
<p>Werner also is interested in photography and videography. He is a frequent contributor to not only mobile and computing publications, but also photo and video forums. He loves swimming, skiing, going to the gym, and using his iPads. English is one of several languages he speaks.</p>

In many of my older articles (like this one), I've praised BUZZ Player. ($3.99) and BUZZ Player HD. ($3.99). Up until 4.0.2, which royally messed up the player's MKV playback capabilities, making it one of the worst choices for MKV playback.

(A quick note: note the full stop after the name of both the iPhone and the iPad-specific apps. I've explained the cause for this seemingly amusing name HERE.)

In the meantime, newcomers to the iOS multimedia player scene, nPlayer ($4.99; read my latest review) have become the most important “go to” player for everyone looking for MKV playback and not wanting to play back DTS audio.

This article is intended for advanced photographers and, of course, programmers.

As an imaging and iOS programming pro (see my latest Nokia Lumia 1020-specific article), people often ask me about the photo and video capabilities of iOS. While I'm currently working on no less than four major tutorials & roundups (panorama, HDR, low-light, and action shooting) I'll publish in the near future, I've decided to dedicate a “quick” separate article to a forum question HERE. Note that my HDR (High Dynamic Range) shooting article will build on the information in this article so that advanced users know how exposure compensation can be done in the best way on iOS.

Note that I'm discussing both bracketing and, generically, exposure compensation. The former is based on the latter—you generally shoot more than one exposure-compensated shot to get a bracketed series of shots, typically, for future (HDR etc.) processing. This also means that, as long as you understand what exposure compensation is, you'll also easily understand what bracketing is.

VLC for iOS Returns to the App Store

By Werner Ruotsalainen

VLC is probably the best all-in-one multimedia player for both Mac OS X and Windows. It also has ports on mobile platforms (or will have when Windows RT and Windows Phone 8 are concerned).

The iOS port, which was released back in 2010, had a stormy history. Shortly after its release, it had to be removed from the App Store, only to return almost three years later, this week VLC for iOS (free). Before, the only VLC version available on iOS was from Cydia, the jailbroken App Store. The Cydia version of VLC has always been the same as the 2010 (initial) version of VLC.

The removal of the initial version of VLC has understandably caused quite much uproar because people tend to think of VLC as the best of all players no matter what platform it's running on. This, unfortunately, hasn't been the case of the initial (2010) version – actually, it has been one of the absolute worst players in terms of compatibility, features, and efficiency. As I've always recommended in all iOS forums, you simply didn't want to use the then-current (2010) version of iOS VLC, because it was plain inferior to the top App Store players (GoodPlayer, It's Playing, AVPlayerHD, nPlayer, HD Player Pro (currently unavailable), RushPlayer, BUZZ Player HD. etc.), and Cydia ones (XBMC, RushPlayer+).

This article is intended for iPhone 4S and 5 users who want to shoot video at 60fps (double the framerate) using iOS 7 as well as programmers wanting to support the new 60fps mode in their apps. No iPad or iPhone 4 users should read further since, to my knowledge, their hardware doesn't support 60fps.


Executive Summary

iOS 7 will support 60fps video recording at 720p (as opposed to iOS 6). While it does have image quality problems on current, compatible iPhones (4S and 5), at least it works.

This article is highly recommended for programmers and people interested in shooting video.

As of iOS 7 beta 2, the built-in Camera application can't make use of the extra pixels of the sensor when zooming. Only custom-written, third-party apps currently can do that. Hopefully Apple fixes Camera in the final version of iOS 7; before that, should you want to use zooming while shooting video, avoid using the Camera app and make sure you write or install an iOS 7-specific video recorder application for best results.

Many of my readers have asked for a complete elaboration on the brand new zooming features of iOS 7, both in the stock Camera application and the programmatic API support (AVCaptureDevice.videoZoomFactor and the related, highly useful properties AVCaptureDevice.activeFormat.videoZoomFactorUpscaleThreshold and AVCaptureDevice.activeFormat.videoMaxZoomFactor).

This article is intended for readers suffering from the narrow field-of-view of iPhones starting with the iPhone 4 and for programmers offering any kind of video recording in their apps.

As you may know already, recent iDevices use image stabilization during video recording. Unfortunately, not even the latest-and-greatest iPhone 5 has optical stabilization, only electronic, unlike the Nokia Lumia 92x. This, unfortunately, means part of the sensor is used for the stabilization itself, further narrowing the already limited field-of-view (FOV). I recommend you watch engadget's iPhone 5 vs. Nokia Lumia 920 videos so you can see how immensely better optical stabilization is.

This article will be useful for anyone planning to display the output of Keynote on an external screen. I've clearly marked sections meant for advanced users or ones with jailbroken devices; they can be safely skipped by other users. This article contains a lot of information on video/TV output in general and the multitasking/backgrounding JB tweaks, which may also be of interest to readers who aren't Keynote users.

Apple's Keynote app ($9.99) is by far the most widely used iOS application to play back presentations. In this writeup, I present you with a complete discussion of everything related to displaying its contents on an external screen or projector (from now on, for brevity, I'll call TV).

The following article is for people using any kind of external display with their iDevices, and for programmers who would like to provide as good of external display output in their apps as possible.

People have a lot of misconceptions regarding Tv output from iDevices; most importantly regarding the black borders on the left and right sides of the external image and also on the top and bottom. As an engineer well versed in video technology, engineering, and iOS programming, I found it necessary to get the facts right in a manner digestable for advanced iOS users (and all programmers).

This article explains how you can output still images to your external display (TV, projector etc.) from your iDevice and what you should do to maximize quality. While some of the material requires advanced knowledge (including having read my previous multimedia-specific articles), the “All in All” section at the bottom is digestable for beginners (at least I hope it is).

Apple's stock image slideshow implementation output is, unfortunately, half-hearted. (iDevices utilize the native TV output while playing slideshows. Apart from Retina iPads, it is the only way of making full use of the more advanced output types, namely, HDMI and VGA.)

This post is intended for readers with advanced technical knowledge.

This article explains how you can mirror and show Web-based Flash videos on external displays connected to your iDevice. In order to answer the questions of several people at MacRumors (original thread), I've decided to thoroughly test the external monitor/Apple TV mirroring/playback capabilities of the currently available Flash browsers.

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