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Comment by OJFord | Hacker News Reader

> Standard iPhone video is designed to look good. A very specific kind of good that comes from lots of contrast, punchy, saturated colors, and ample detail in both highlights and shadows.

I remarked to my wife showing me a video recently that you could tell it was taken on an iPhone, I don't think it's just the 'punchiness', for me the main thing is the way it seems to attempt to smooth out motion - the 'in' thing seems to be to sort of spin around showing what's around you while selfie-vlogging and tik-tokking and what-notting, and iPhones make it look like you did it with a steadicam rig that's not quite keeping up.

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Another thing they've done more recently is HDR video (to my cave man brain, this means brighter brights).

They've paired this with much higher brightness on the screens, which makes the videos look much more realistic. I first noticed this on my M1 Pro screen, which absolutely blew me away (1600 nits peak brightness).

That's the biggest telltale "filmed on iPhone" trait I'm noticing right now. Yes, you can create HDR videos in other ways, and I'm sure it will be more popular on other platforms soon.

And 1600 seemed crazy. And now Google's Pixel 8 Pro has 2400 nits?!

Someone used an iphone to record their desktop screen playing call of duty and the top comment on Reddit was how it made the game look Disneyesque, a spot-on assessment.

Do you have the link by any chance?

> I remarked to my wife showing me a video recently that you could tell it was taken on an iPhone

It's also relatively understood that certain camera companies (Nikon, Canon, Sony, Fuji) have a certain 'look' to them in how they process the raw image sensor data to generate a JPEG (there's a differences in the final colours).

I know exactly what you mean by this! I can always tell if it was taken on an iPhone -- not that it looks bad, or anything, but there's always a few little cues that make it obvious. As you mentioned, I think the motion is a large part of it.

To add, a few generations ago hand held video shot on iPhones was not (or hardly effectively) stabilized. But now iPhone have good stabilization. I think the tradeoff (the too-smooth motion thing) is worth it.

That’s a specific camera mode (action mode I think). Does the standard video mode also do heavy stabilisation?

Does it perhaps auto-enable when it deems it appropriate?

I don't have an iPhone, I've just noticed this (perhaps it's more obvious to me because I don't have one) in others' videos.

The stabilization is partially physical driven on phones this is called OIS. https://www.androidauthority.com/image-stabilization-1087083...

EIS is not usually needed for video but maybe in some cases it’s used?

I suspect iPhones do both. I have a 12 Pro, and when taking video the file is much more stable than the viewfinder while recording.

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