Archived Post

Is Apple’s iFrame still being developed or is it simply on life support?

When iMovie ’09 was introduced in, well, 2009, it also introduced iFrame, a new video format developed by Apple. So whatever happened to what the company was proposing as a new standard? The tech giant hasn’t made detailed information about this recording format publicly available in six years.

iFrame captures (I’ll use the present tense since I’m unsure as to its fate) video at a resolution of 960 x 540 at 30 frames per second and uses a 16:9 aspect ratio (a la all the HD and DVD standards). It’s slightly lower in quality than 720p and took up at least a little less space. iFrame works with Mac and PC video-editing applications such as iMovie ’09 and higher and Final Cut Pro 7 and later; it uses industry-standard codecs such as MP4, H.264, AAC and QuickTime. 

According to Apple in 2009: “iFrame is designed to make importing and editing video fast and easy without taking up a lot of space on your hard drive.”

As far as I can tell, iFrame never caught on. Of course, Apple didn’t exactly bang the drum to  promote it. However, if you go to apple.com and search for iFrame you can still find info about iFrame.

Dennis Sellers
the authorDennis Sellers
Dennis Sellers is the editor/publisher of Apple World Today. He’s been an “Apple journalist” since 1995 (starting with the first big Apple news site, MacCentral). He loves to read, run, play sports, and watch movies.