Free Video Recorder for iPhone – Cycorder

[Note:] This is only available for jailbroken iPhone.

When I checked Cydia for new programs yesterday and I was pleasantly surprised that there is a video recorder and it’s even free. The program is written by Jay Freeman who is the author of Cydia.

The program features real-time compression, the algorithm used is MJPEG. Compared to the paid iPhoneVideoRecorder, Cycorder captured video is of higher quality but the file size is much bigger. The only drawback for now is there is no sound recording. The author said the new version with sound is coming out in a week. Let’s hope it would stay free once the new version is out.

When you are done recording, the files are saved under /var/mobile/Media/Videos . You can use any sftp program to download the videos to your desktop. For scp users, you can simply use the following command to copy the files. (Remember to replace the IP address of your iPhone.) I have written a post about using DiskAid to transfer the files.

scp [email protected]:/var/mobile/Media/Videos/* .


I made a sample recording and posted it on YouTube.

If you are interested in the original, here is the link to the file.

I made another recording outdoors. Here is the YouTube video. This one is actually better in quality if you look at the original file, however the YouTube upload degraded the quality of the video.


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15 Comments

  1. cris: Go into Cydia and find the Cycorder package page under Manage/Packages. Under there you will find a frequently asked questions page that contains details on, for example, how to get videos off your phone. I’m going to recommend the Netatalk route (and if you click through to there I have a howto that includes pictures of the process).

  2. I cannot believe Jay Freeman actually commented here! Anyway, thank you for your great job. I cannot wait for the new version with audio recording.

    @cris
    As Jay pointed out, there are a lot of information in Cydia. I have not used Netatalk, I used Open SSH. You can google “iPhone Open SSH tutorial” for more informatons.

  3. It is very easy importing into iPhoto or copy from iPhone using netatalk. iPhone appears automatically in shared folders (Finder) then log in with user mobile and go to folder /mobile/media/videos

  4. While recording 30min or more (300MB) files, I cant open the movie to be viewed. not on the Iphone and not in PC. the error message I am reciving is that the file cant be open, not recognized format …
    As I open the Cycorder, I can see the first image of the movie but after trying to run it even the picture fades away.
    Please advice.
    I am sure that data is there, I need somehow to cut / edit this movie file

    Please advice.
    Me.

  5. i have an jailbroken iphone 3g, recently i updated it to 4.2.1 but the problem is that my cycroder is not working anybody can tell what to do

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