Yay!! Our Qik Video Camera Pro app in the Apple App Store got approved today and can be downloaded from iTunes for an introductory launch price of $1.99. This works on all the iPhones – 2G, 3G and 3GS.

The past couple of months Nikolay our CTO, Alexander Taborisky our clients team lead, Alexey Pikin, our superstar dev architect, Hrag, our iPhone UE guy, have been burning the midnight oil to get Qik Video Camera Pro not just ready for the App Store, but take it to the next level and put the “Pro” stamp on it.

We looked at and debated every possible detail to make sure that the experience of this application really shines. Some of the things that we really feel great about in this app are:

Your video and audio is always in sync.

This is not as easy as it sounds. With the other video camera apps in the App Store today, you can see this audio/video drift within a simple count. So we made it part of our mission to ensure that your video is always in sync with the audio.

Pause recording of the video.

We heard you. One of the frequently asked requests that we got for Qik Video Camera was to have the ability to pause the video. Now, you can!

The performance of the recorded video is not impacted with real-time effects.

We were the first to introduce on-screen real-time effects with the Qik Video Camera application back in January. However, the challenge with that approach was that the video performance would get degraded whenever you used the effects. Now, we have come up with a cool new way that enables you to apply and view real-time effects in a thumbnail view without impacting the video performance.

Mix it up with PhotoMix.

This amazing feature is the brainchild of Nikolay, our CTO. Available as a part of the Effects toolbar in the bottom, you start with selecting a picture that shows up on the main screen and then wipe parts of the picture to superimpose the video on the picture. Want to add a backdrop to your videos? Make seem like you are rubbing shoulders with the celebs? Now you can – you can select a video from your photo gallery and add it to your video. Here are just a few ideas of what you can do: freak people out and have your talking head on say the president’s picture? You can even have a pre-roll for your videos. Just start with the preroll image and then wipe it out and record the video.

Share longer videos to your favorite social networks.

While most camera apps support sharing to popular social networks, the challenge has always been the restrictions associated with the different networks on the length of the video you can post from your mobile phone. So, we took a very different approach – we upload your videos to our secure server farm that has no such restriction and then post that video to the social network of your choice. Not just that – you can now login and manage all these videos from the web with your Qik account and from your desktop with Qik-in-Touch.

Even more options to share and watch your videos.

Burning to share and post your videos to any blog, website, social network? Want to view the videos that you record on your iPad, iPod, mobile phone, computer, web? Well now you can. Login to your Qik account and share and watch your videos everywhere!

And this can be done not just for the videos you record with Qik Video Camera Pro, but also with the videos you record using your iPhone 3GS native video camera. Just upload them to Qik and viola! Those videos become social so that you can share them and watch them wherever you want.

Effects that your make your videos even more special!

Apart from PhotoMix we have a number of effects that can make your videos really special. These effects can be viewed real-time in the thumbnail view in the bottom.

• Red Only: Brings out the red, make everything else black and white.
• Avatar: It makes everything look blue including your skin.
• Mirror:  Yup, it is exactly what you think it is
• Lens: Touch portions of the screen to zoom to that spot
• Twirl: This is is like the fun house mirror effect
• X-Ray: Well, you guessed it – it shows the video as if it was an X-ray
• Black & White: Yup, it is exactly what you think it is.
• Sepia: Make your videos look like the old, classic movies with this effect.

Some additional details that we put some extra care and love into:

• When you start/pause/stop the video there’s an audible beep to provide some feedback. We went to lengths to make sure that this beep does not get recorded in the video you are recording
• Customizing video performance for iPhone 2G, 3G and 3GS separately so that you can get the best possible performance based on the type of device you have.
• Smooooooth zoom control

All this is now packed into this power packed Qik Video Camera Pro for an introductory price of only $1.99. You can download this directly from iTunes.

Coming soon: Ability to show what you are recording as you are recording it – live to your friends and family!

UPDATE:

PREVIOUS VERSION OWNERS:
This app is different than your existing app: it no longer has the full screen effects preview of the previous app. It also does not show the effects controls or video timer on top of the video screen. This change was required due to app store restrictions. Performance also is not quite the same as before.

Unfortunately, if this app were released as an update, your previous version would be automatically deleted and replaced with this one, and it would be gone for good — we can not re-release it.

It’s not all bad news, though! This new version has a few improvements:
1) even large emails can be sent through email
2) great audio sync is maintained with any length of video
3) there is a cool new effect, “PhotoMix”

We thought it would be best to let our previous owners keep their existing app, and leave the choice to try out the new features up to you — without the sacrifice that an update would require. Thank you for your understanding — without your support, we wouldn’t be here.

Qik Video Camera Pro