HD Video recording is a feature that so far has been reserved to the iPhone 4 but it appears that the iPhone 3GS is capable of HD Video recording but Apple decided not to enable it. Mike Pan was able to enable this feature and an application called ‘HD Video Enabler for 3GS’ is now available on Cydia.
Take a look below at a screenshot showing the difference between the regular video quality on the iPhone 3GS and the HD video quality, it’s day and night:
To install the Cydia app called ‘HD Video Enabler for 3GS’ you will first need a jailbroken iPhone 3GS and iOS 4.1:
The app is available in the BigBoss repository, download it and activate it.
In the video below Mike is doing a demo of the HD video recording on the iPhone 3GS:
See also the summary below from Mike which explains what to expect:
Summary:
- I added ‘Super’ high quality mode in rev4, which uses the image sensor in still image mode to capture video, so it will only record at 15fps, but the quality is amazing. Thanks to a tip from Fyta.
- The photo camera is fixed. It will no longer go crazy in lowlight.
- The video is not stretched, you are recording at 1080×800, which is 4:3, just like the original video.
- The video is a lot higher in resolution and bitrate than the original, but the files are bigger, and it will take more power to encode. Keep an eye on the disk space and battery life!
- if you email the video or send it to youtube using iOS, it will reencode it to a lower quality. Use Pixelpipe from the appstore to upload in original quality, or download it to your computer and go from there.
- I am assuming your iOS device is running firmware 4.1, I have not tested this with older versions of iOS
- There is a cydia app coming for all you non-tinkerers.
You can get more information @ http://blog.mikepan.com/enable-720p-video-recording-on-iphone-3gs/
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