The planned moment was never the risk
The recital gets filmed. Somebody always points a phone at the stage, so that footage was never really in danger. What's in danger is everything around it: the wait beforehand, the walk back to the car, the ordinary stretch nobody thinks to point a phone at because nothing, technically, is happening. Point the camera at those minutes too, and film them into the same tape as the planned moment: nothing gets ranked or picked out as a highlight, so the ordinary stretch ends up in the finished film right alongside the moment everyone came for.
What's actually worth filming
- Dinner. Let the sound run past the point where anyone's still performing for it.
- The walk to school, or wherever. The actual pace, the actual detour, whatever's being narrated to nobody in particular.
- The car. Nobody plans to film it, and it's where a surprising amount of family life actually happens.
- Someone mid-task. Cooking, folding laundry, half-watching the television, not looking at the lens.
- The grandparent mid-story. The one the whole table can already recite. Point the phone at it this time instead of waiting for it to end.
- The ten minutes on either side of the event. The lobby, the drive there, the walk back. Nobody reaches for a phone for those, which is exactly the problem.
- The room itself. The kitchen counter, the hallway, the house, plainly, while you still live in it.
A face is easier to hold onto than you would think. A voice is not, so let it run even when nothing much is happening on screen. Keep footage like that even when it looks messy or the light's wrong: how it sounds tends to matter more later than how it looks, and that trade is worth its own read, on the imperfect home movie.
Everything above is for a single day or a single stretch. If you're trying to keep this up for months, not one afternoon, that's a different kind of plan: see filming a year of your kid for what actually survives past the first few weeks. And a group trip is its own case, with its own list of the parts nobody films: that one is on the trips page.
How it actually gets onto a tape
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Start a tape and name it
Tap New Tape, give it a name, and it's ready to fill. Start several, one for each stretch of ordinary life.
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Hold the phone sideways
Tapes are widescreen, and vertical video isn't added to one. It's the first thing worth knowing before you film anything.
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Tap REC, then forget the app is there
While REC is on, VideoBro watches your camera roll, and every horizontal video you shoot with the regular iPhone Camera app lands on the tape automatically. You never have to open VideoBro to film.
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Pull in what you already have
Tap + for anything already on your phone, shot before you thought of making a tape, any date. It drops in at the moment it was actually recorded, not tacked onto the end.
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Don't worry about assembling it
Clips play in the order they were recorded, so an ordinary week needs no editing at all. Short clips are fine. Two hours of footage per tape goes a long way when the clips are short.
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Develop when the stretch is over
Anyone on the tape with an account taps Develop, and it comes back as one film in the Tape Cabinet. The clips stay on the tape so you can keep adding or trimming, and if the tape then goes 30 days with no changes, we clear the clips from VideoBro (we email you first, and the footage on your own phone is never touched). The finished film is never cleared.
Point it at a tape, not a pile
None of this works if the footage just sits scattered across whoever happened to be holding a phone that day. Tap Collab, then Invite, and send the link to whoever's there. Up to 8 people, including you, can film into the same tape, so a season, a trip, or an ordinary month can be one place instead of a clip on each person's phone. More on how shared tapes work, and a soccer season works the same way: whoever's on the sideline that week adds to the same tape.
The editing stays out of the way on purpose. Trim and delete are the whole toolkit.
Questions people ask first
Does everyone who films need an account?
No. Anyone you invite can film, add clips and watch the finished film without creating an account. Turning it into a finished film needs an account, and any member can do it, not just whoever started the tape.
Do clips from different phones end up in the right order?
Yes. A tape orders clips by when they were actually recorded, not by who shot them or when they were uploaded, so a clip added late from someone else's phone still lands in its right place.
Does it matter how I hold my phone?
Yes. Hold it sideways. A tape is widescreen, and vertical video isn't added to it, whether it comes in through REC or through Add Clips: REC skips it, and Add Clips won't show it in the picker. If a clip you shot doesn't turn up, that's almost always why.
What happens to the raw clips 30 days after developing?
If a tape goes 30 days with no clips added, removed or trimmed and no re-develop after you develop it, the raw clips behind the film are cleared from VideoBro. We email you first. The finished film itself is never cleared.