Apple’s trademark applications (77946787 and 77946791) for “iFrame” have appeared at the US Patent & Trademark Office. When Apple introduced iMovie ’09, it also introduced iFrame, a new video format it developed.
iFrame captures 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 takes up at least a little less space. iFrame works with Mac and PC video-editing applications such as iMovie ’09 and uses industry-standard codecs such as MP4, H.264, AAC and QuickTime. According to Apple “iFrame is designed to make importing and editing video fast and easy without taking up a lot of space on your hard drive.”
Currently, the only two camcorders using iFrame are the Sanyo VPC-HD2000A (see today’s review) and VPC-FH1A. The question is if other camera manufacturers will adopt it and whether it will become a “real”standard. The jury’s still out on this.