Features

Record to an external SSD, or export your clips to one

Can my iPhone record video straight to an external SSD?

Log Cam: RAW 4K Video Camera records to the iPhone, or to an external drive. Pick an external SSD or hard drive as the destination, and your clips land on it as you shoot. The drive connects directly to the phone, and no computer is necessary. You can also export clips you already recorded, to a drive or into the Files app.

Video is the reason phone storage becomes full. A photo is a file you can ignore. Video accumulates by the minute, and 4K accumulates faster. The storage in your phone was fixed the day you bought it. It is also shared with everything else you own. The arithmetic goes one way, and it goes there fast when you shoot often.

When you shoot for the grade, the arithmetic becomes worse on purpose. ProRes 422 HQ exists because a larger file keeps more of the picture. The bitrate presets in this app reach 500 Mbps for the same reason. You select those settings when the video matters. That is exactly when you do not want to delete clips to make space.

The usual answer to that is a laptop. You shoot, you go home, and you connect the phone to a computer. You wait, you copy the files to a drive, and you clear the phone. Then you do it again tomorrow. It works, but it is also the step people skip. A phone then holds two hundred clips and no space for the next one.

A drive attached to the phone removes the computer from that sequence. The drive is the destination, not a stop on the way to one. A recording writes to it while you shoot, and an export moves a clip you already have. So the transfer can happen where you shot, in the gap between two setups. It does not have to become an evening job that you postpone.

The Files app covers everything else. iOS uses it as the single index of the storage locations the device knows. iCloud Drive and any storage provider on the phone appear there. So an export into the Files app puts your clips where your usual tools can reach them.

Either destination gives you a copy of your clips outside the app. Do that on the day, not at the end of the week. A clip that you export to a drive or into the Files app is outside the app. If you remove the app, the clip stays.