Accsoon SeeMo and Lightcraft Jetset Cine apps let you use your iPhone 15 Pro Max as a camera tracker and real-time pre-visualization device

Accsoon SeeMo and Lightcraft Jetset Cine apps let you use your iPhone 15 Pro Max as a camera tracker and real-time pre-visualization device. The whole idea behind this combination is to significantly reduce the cost of virtual production.

So how does it work?

Lightcraft’s Jetset Cine can turn any cinema camera into a fully tracked virtual production system using the camera-mounted iPhone and Accsoon SeeMo HDMI or HD-SDI inputs for iPhone. Accsoon SeeMo provides a real-time video feed from the main camera to your iPhone that Jetset uses for tracking. By comparing elements contained in both video feeds, Jetset Cine can create accurate camera offsets and lens calibrations in minutes.

The final composite image is achieved with very low latency using Lightcraft Jetset Cine. Most systems rely on external GPU-based rendering systems, which introduce delays in output, processing, and return to the camera. Lightcraft, on the other hand, renders the background directly on his iPhone, completing the rendering in a single frame. Minimal latency means cinematographers using Jetset Cine feel a tighter connection between generated backgrounds and live foregrounds.

The Jetset Cine Live Render Preview feature feeds tracking information into Unreal and allows Lightcraft’s backend pipeline, Autoshot, to create keying and compositing features with Unreal’s Composure tool. The result is full-quality rendering and compositing, allowing cinematographers to evaluate lighting, composition, and foreground-background matching in real-time.

This seems like a very clever solution, but it requires quite a bit of hardware to be attached to the camera to make it all work.

At the upcoming BSC Expo in London, two Accsoon CineView HE long-range transmitters will be used in demonstrations to send the iPhone and main camera signals to a switcher in the booth. The CineView HE transmitter and receiver are dual-band, delivering the same image simultaneously on each band and intelligently recombining both within the receiver to address interference on either band.

Price and availability

Accsoon SeeMo HDMI is priced at $179 USD and SeeMo Pro SDI is priced at $349 USD. Jetset Cine costs £80 per month or £800 per year and can be downloaded from the iPhone App Store.