PBF ShowTime Brings Working Video Capture to the iPhone

Polar Bear Farm Software has recently released a somewhat groundbreaking piece of third-party software for the Apple iPhone called PBF ShowTime. ShowTime's claim to fame is that it brings video capture/recording to the iPhone - a feature not natively found on the iPhone (at least not as of firmware 1.1.2). Though other experimental applications that record video on the iPhone have been released, none have been as well-formed or fully featured as ShowTime.

That's not to say that ShowTime doesn't have it's issues. It certainly does. First, a look at what ShowTime can do:

Though seemingly simple, that's nothing to squawk at. This simple feature list is, as mentioned, more than we've seen from other attempts. Take a look at the following video to see ShowTime in action

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Unfortunately, there are two main problems with ShowTime at this point: 1) no compression of recorded video (fills up your iPhone's storage quickly) and 2) video is saved to a RAW format not playable outside of ShowTime. Thankfully, that's promised to change. According to PBF,

Please be aware that video is not captured in any standard compressed video format at this stage. We are currently working to add a post-process option, to convert the uncompressed captured video into a form playable by most media players.

If you want to give PBF ShowTime a try for free, you can. The free version of the software limits video capture to 5 seconds. If you want to record longer video, you'll have to "donate" $10 and get a licensed copy. Installation information and more is available on the Polar Bear Farm website.