Previously reserved only for Apple’s own iMovie video app, Cinematic Mode in iOS 17 and macOS Sonoma will let third-party apps change focus after a video has been shot.
Cinematic Mode is the tool that lets a filmmaker perform changes that would previously have meant reshooting a scene. With a tap, they can decide to focus on a background actor instead of the foreground for instance.
The 25-minute session was fronted by an engineer on Apple’s Camera Algorithms team, and showed the kind of coding detail that developers need. One thing it also revealed for users is that these third-party apps will not be able to use Cinematic Mode in their own recordings.
Instead, they will have to use Apple’s Camera app to record the video. That means the footage has to be imported into the third-party app later, which may mean this will be reserved for video editors such as DaVinci Resolve, or Apple’s own Final Cut Pro.