Side channel vid + phone camera hijinks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x01_PPdPiqY

Trying to record more of my projects, and also wanted to experiment with a new way of recording using my phone instead of a Real Camera, so here's a video of me doing some upgrades on a funky little luggable computer I picked up recently. Both projects were largely successful, though I'm still figuring out the camera bit. Apologies for the absurd focus racking in the first couple minutes, still not sure why it was doing that. Audio could also be better, so it's a WIP for sure, but the content is still valid if you like this sort of thing.

If you're at all curious about the recording aspects of it, I actually have a lot to say about that because I used a very novel (to me) approach. I was using my phone as a camera, which, yes, I know many people do, but I have certain hard requirements that were not met (or at least I didn't know they were) until recently. The rig looked like this:

That's my Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra running the Blackmagic Camera app. And I realized after writing this post, which was not supposed to be this long, that I sound like I'm shilling for either samsung or blackmagic; I'm not, obviously, but my specific setup does depend more or less on a combination of their products, so, no avoiding sounding like a fawning fanboy I guess.

So, the phone is getting power from an Anker dock, which is also providing an HDMI output so I can monitor the camera feed. This is hugely important, you just can't do video work without a program monitor, and until a couple days ago I didn't know any phones could provide one.

What's more, it's not just mirroring the main screen, it's actually an independent display being used exclusively for a video preview, which solves a huge problem: if the program monitor sneaks into shot and I get a notification, it doesn't wind up in the video and have to be edited out.

There are other elements to this but I'm shocked at how well the HDMI thing works. I thought it would be halfass but the BMD app really does output the whole picture, and delivers a smooth 1080p60 with noticeable-but-tolerable latency. I've heard the phone will deliver 4k60 if asked, and I haven't messed with that yet to confirm, but it suggests you could plug it into a capture card and use it as a plain camera head, a very exciting idea. Apparently Samsung Galaxy S series are some of the only phones that really do this well though.

While there's info about other brands supporting secondary displays, it sounds pretty sketchy, and for instance I've been told that my Oneplus 10 Pro should do it, but it just doesn't, and even the people who say they got it working report that it looks like crap.

This however is... perfect, honestly? It Just Works (okay, the feed has frozen a couple times, but it's clearly the app's fault and a reseat of the cable fixes it) and it's apparently been around for a while on Samsung's flagships; I tested on my S21 and it can do it too. The camera on that one is a bit sketchier, you have to use the ultrawide to get 60fps, but it'll do 4k30 on either sensor no prob.

Now besides the HDMI output, I also have a lav mic receiver going through the dock (though I intend to replace that with an XLR DAC and use a better mic if I do more videos like this,) an SD card in the dock which the phone is recording directly onto, and ofc a power supply so it's not running on battery, so this is really a complete rig - and one that can record 4k60 / 160mbps h265 for an indefinite period. Like, really, I could leave this rolling for 8 or 12 hours and as far as I can tell it would just do it, until the storage filled up. That's pretty wild, and I have to admit I was blown away that this is possible.

I preach a lot about how there are no more "wow" products and never will be; we've seen the last walkman, as it were, the last revolutionary piece of electronics that changed how we lived our lives, and I always challenge people to name the last time you discovered you could suddenly do something that was not possible before thanks to a new gadget. That last time is generally "when the first iPhone came out or not long after" for most people, with the only exception usually being "3d printers" and those are far more niche. So imagine my surprise when I found out my phone could do something I was completely unaware was even possible. There is still wonder in the world, I suppose.

Now for context, we're probably not talking about some kind of Budget Hack here. You don't need top-of-the-line for this, but the cheapest phone I'm aware of that can (reportedly) do it reliably is the S23 FE which is $650 new. I'm sure you can get them cheaper used (and S21s are $120 on ebay) but I've never actually tested one. The phone I'm using is a $1200 flagship, which tbh I can't even afford (I bought it on a payment plan) and you probably don't need something that intense, but the point is that the phone you already have likely won't do it, so before you get excited, consider that you'd probably be looking at either a major upgrade or spending money on an outdated phone just to use as a camera, then hoping it works well enough to justify the purchase.

Also, once you have the phone, you still have to buy a dock, and you don't want to skimp on that. I spent a whole day screaming and throwing things (not really but I felt like it) with the FIRST dock I tried - some noname aliexpress thing - because it kept disconnecting my SSD and I thought it was the phone at fault. I ended up buying a $150 Anker which solved the problem, and that's probably where you're going to end up if you want a reliable solution, so, this is not Dirt Cheap by any means. However, it's cheap for what I'm doing with it, and also, man, Real Cameras really suck for this sort of work.

I am the only person on this earth who wants 4k60 it seems, but even 4k30 seems hard to get in a dedicated camera. The cheapest 4k vlogger camera I see is $500, and redditors say "it's just a phone sensor in a camera shell" which I believe. If you have $500 to spend, you're in "buy a used phone on ebay that's only a couple years old and still actually pretty usable" territory, so maybe that's the better play - though I will say, with a Real Camera you do get a built in SD slot. That's kind of a big deal, and this is where one of the issues with this setup comes up.

Phone cameras cannot record in anything but mp4. I don't know why, but no matter how Pro your app claims to be, and regardless of android/iphone distinction, everything does mp4, which is the worst container format on this earth. If you're in the middle of recording and your device crashes, reboots, loses power or the storage comes unplugged, your video is just gone. Yes, there's "untrunc", but trust me that thing only works when you're very lucky and even then it tends to leave some corruption in the final video. You cannot reliably recover an incomplete MP4, it's just an inherent problem with the format.

Neither MOV nor MKV have this problem, yet nothing produces those. My only explanation is that the phone apps are all generating files using some OS API that does the h264/265 compression and generates the container file in one go, and there's no way to intercept it. If that's not it, I don't understand what the explanation could be, and this situation is miserable.

Since I'm recording to external storage, it all has to go through the single USB port on the phone, and during my tests a couple days ago on the bad dock I lost a ton of footage, over and over, because every SSD I tried would disconnect after a random length of time. Even the expensive Anker dock doesn't solve that - while the SD card reader is built into the dock, which I find more trustworthy than yet another crappy USB C cable going to an SSD, the cable could still pop out of the phone, and that could wreck literally hours of footage. That's really unideal, and it would be damning... if it weren't also true of "real cameras."

The camera I was using for my Little Guys videos, the Panasonic GH5, ALSO records exclusively in MP4 (at least for the codec/bitrate i was using... not sure why THAT matters) and has ALSO lost my footage multiple times. Why? Because A) the SD card slot is not rated for enough insertions to be reliable longterm, and B) there's NO DC POWER JACK, so you can EITHER have a battery OR a continuous power feed. The battery is tiny and only lasts like 20 minutes, so you're not doing that, and the battery simulacrum can easily get jarred into disconnecting. I've had cards and power disconnect randomly a dozen times when shooting little guys videos, and I've even had SSD cables pop out of my Blackmagic studio camera during real shoots because there's no goddamn retention screw! So, yeah, this all sucks immensely.

Given all that, the $650 phone option looks a lot more appealing. It has a built in battery so it can't lose power suddenly even if the USB cable comes loose, and if you aren't shooting hours and hours of video (or if you're just better about keeping your phone storage empty) then you can just record onto the phone, in which case there's zero chance of accidental corruption, then offload over wifi/usb/whatever later. Hell, you don't even need to keep the phone that empty if you're willing to stop periodically during the shoot, offload your footage, delete it off the internal storage, then proceed.

Now the phone might overheat, especially if it's an iphone - i tried a 15 Pro Max that I had access to and it lasted ten minutes before tapping out, which people report is common. But did I mention that Real Cameras also overheat? My GH5 has done it, and I've heard of it happening on lots of others. My Blackmagic BMPCCs at the studio have done it on summer days, and even in the dead of winter when I'm shivering cold they have to run their internal fans to survive, which gets into my mic audio and causes me no end of frustration.

All this should illustrate that 4k60 is a tough nut to crack with current technology. I'm asking a lot, which brings us back to why it's so amazing to me that this is doable on my phone without any obvious heat or reliability issues; the phone barely gets warm to the touch, and that's with a rubber case on it, interfering with heat dissipation.

Oh, and - even if you don't care about the 4k60 angle (I'm sure 1080 or 4k30 put way less stress on devices) there's still the convenience factor to consider. Do you know how IRRITATING it is to try to operate a Real Camera when you're by yourself? Excluding the Blackmagic pocket cinemas, they all assume you're holding the camera in your hands so there's a ton of tiny controls you can't find or operate reliably without being behind the thing. Sitting in front of or underneath a mirrorless or camcorder, you pretty much have to stand up, or take the camera off it's mount and turn it around, to do anything.

Both the blackmagic cameras and phone cameras however (even using the native phone app) have touch interfaces that are vastly easier to operate from odd angles, so if you have them mounted looking over your shoulder, you can often adjust settings without getting up or moving the camera, in a pinch. Now this doesn't help if the camera's six feet away or above you, but this brings us to another thing the BMD app can do that is kind of gamechanging.

Both of these phones are running the blackmagic camera app, but the one on the right is doing it for real, while the left one is connected in remote mode, where it shows a perfect duplicate of the UI and a live feed from the camera. This is over wifi so it's actually even more convenient than the HDMI out - if you have a phone it works on.

That's a problem by the way: the BMD app is very new and very exclusive to flagship phones, even in remote mode, so you shouldn't expect to be able to use a cheap phone as a remote, but if you happen to already have a pair of compatible phones then it's a great feature. You don't need the dock or HDMI monitor or anything, just mount one phone overhead and one on a holder in front of you, and bam, you have total access to the whole UI at any time and a preview image.

In summary, even given the rough edges, this beats anything I can get for a comparable price, especially because, if I DID shell out $1200 or more on a Sony Alpha or whatever, that's all I'd have, instead of a flagship phone that I use all day every day. Plus nobody would sell me an Alpha on a payment plan that's just a few extra bucks on my cell bill every month.

There is of course the dangling question of image quality, and sure - I don't like the color or optics coming out of the phone. Hands down, I think it looks like shit, but let's be real here: it's good enough, especially for stuff like solo shooting at a workbench. Sure, a real camera gets you a much better lens, but only if you shell out for one, plus I hate screwing with zoom and focus on a Real Lens while I'm trying to just do a project. You kind of have to use AF for this sort of work, and nothing does that better than a phone ime unless you really spend.

And let's be realer: this is honestly good enough. The optics and resolution are sufficient to get a "virtual second angle" by zooming in, like I do in my studio shoots. It's not a blurry mess, it's definitely better than 1080, and besides, most people are watching this kind of stuff on a tiny postage stamp phone screen, if they're watching at all. It's good enough for Second Screen Content, as I'm told the GenZ'ers are saying now, especially considering that in the best case you can assemble this setup for $150-300.

As you can tell, I'm kind of bewildered by all this. might make a formal video about it once I know more. peace out