Qik Releases Local Video Recording For Older iPhones (They Already Can Do It Live)

Two weeks ago, Apple opened the floodgates for video recording apps on the iPhone, ending a longstanding ban. Nobody was waiting longer for the change than mobile video startup Qik, which tonight is further building out its collection of iPhone apps with the launch of the Qik VideoCamera. The new app allows the original iPhone and the iPhone 3G to locally capture video — something that only the 3GS has been able to do until recently.

Qik has, of course, made its name building live streaming apps that allow users to broadcast their video directly from their phones to the web. Their live streaming app, which is called Qik Live, was released less than a week ago.

You’re not exactly going to be grabbing high quality video with the the Qik VideoCamera, but it could be worse. The first application to enable video recording on the older iPhones was iVideoCamera, which captures a mere three frames per second at a 160×213 resolution. Qik claims to record at 7FPS and 352×288, which is obviously a big step up. But it still pales in comparison to the iPhone 3GS’s 30FPS and VGA (640×480) resolution.

Just to recap, Qik now has three applications available on the App Store. First, is Qik for 3GS, which was the company’s ‘workaround’ for Apple’s ban on video — it was for 3GS users only, and would upload videos after recordings were completed. Second is the live streaming app released last week that lets users broadcast from any model iPhone directly to the web. Today’s release is Qik’s third on the app store.

Also see Ustream’s Live Broadcaster (covered here) which offers both live streaming and local recording in the same app.

Here’s a demo the Qik app’s video quality, recorded using an iPhone 3G: