iOS 15.1 beta 3 brings ProRes video recording to iPhone 13 Pro

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iPhone 13 Pro gets ProRes video
A Hollywood film studio in your pocket.
Photo: Apple

Apple on Wednesday rolled out its third iOS 15.1 beta, bringing ProRes video recording to iPhone 13 Pro for the first time since it made its debut. The feature can be enabled inside the Settings app.

But be warned: ProRes video takes up a lot of storage space. Apple says just one minute of footage shot in 1080p weighs in at approximately 1.7GB, and switching to super-sharp 4K will balloon that file size to a whopping 6GB.

iPhone 13 Pro gets ProRes video recording in iOS 15.1

ProRes is a high-end video codec that’s widely used throughout the professional cinema industry. Much like ProRAW for your photos, it gives video editors far greater control over their recordings in post-production.

ProRes is available only on iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max, and the quality of the video you can record depends on iPhone’s storage capacity. Those with 128GB are limited to 1080p video, but 4K is available on 256GB and above.

You can enable ProRes recording from within the Camera menu inside the Settings app. To start shooting, open the Camera app, select the Video mode, and then tap the ProRes button alongside the flash toggle.

Apple includes a handy “max time” indicator in the center of your camera’s viewfinder that tells you how much ProRes video you can record with the storage you currently have available.

On its way to all

With ProRes recording now available inside the iOS 15.1 beta, it shouldn’t be too long before Apple rolls it out to everyone. In the meantime, you can take advantage of ProRes recording inside the third-party Filmic Pro camera app.

Unlike the default Camera app on iPhone, Filmic Pro ($14.99) actually allows you to switch between different ProRes recording formats — including ProRes Proxy, ProRes LT, ProRes 422, and ProRes 422 HQ.

The latter is the highest-quality option, and seems to be the one Apple uses by default — with no option (at least for now) to switch to another. So, Filmic Pro might be a better option for those with storage constraints.

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