MotionCam Pro Tutorial: The Complete Beginner's Guide (2026)
MotionCam Pro Tutorial: The Complete Beginner's Guide to RAW Video on Android & iOS
MotionCam Pro is, without exaggeration, the most powerful professional video app available on Android (and soon — iPhone!). If you've spent any time in the smartphone cinematography space, you'll know why: it's the only app on the platform giving you genuine, uncompressed access to your sensor's RAW data.
This beginner guide will get you from a clean install to confidently shooting and grading footage in both of the app's core modes — RAW Video and Direct Log. It's not a complete tutorial (nothing beginner-friendly could be), so once you're through this, go grab the official user manual and join the MotionCam Discord — both linked below — to keep going deeper.
Let's start with the question I get asked constantly: what actually makes this app different?
What Makes MotionCam Pro Different From Every Other Camera App?
Every other camera app on your Android — including the stock camera and third-party options like Blackmagic Camera — is working with a heavily processed image. By the time that footage hits your storage, HDR frame stacking, aggressive noise reduction, digital sharpening, and a baked-in "look" have already been applied, and none of it can be undone. That processing reflects your phone manufacturer's idea of a good image. Not yours.
MotionCam Pro throws all of that out. It keeps the RAW sensor stream open and writes every frame of uncompressed sensor data straight to its own .MCRAW format. No forced sharpening. No noise reduction. No AI "enhancement" deciding what your shot should look like. You get your sensor's actual output — full stop.
The trade-off is real: bigger files, and footage that needs grading before it looks finished. In exchange, you get total control over the image. Put MotionCam Pro footage next to native camera app footage on the same device and it isn't a close comparison.
MotionCam Pro gives you two ways to capture that RAW data, and this guide covers both.
RAW Video Mode vs Direct Log Mode
RAW Video records to .MCRAW — a compressed-but-lossless RAW format that saves up to 50% of the space a standard uncompressed RAW file would take. You can export straight from the app to H.264/HEVC, or process it through the free desktop companion app MotionCam Tools for a proper DaVinci Resolve workflow on Mac or Windows. MCRAW is the maximum-flexibility option — you can even pull back clipped highlights that would otherwise be lost, for genuinely impressive dynamic range recovery.
Direct Log captures the same RAW sensor data but transcodes it on the fly into an edit-ready file (H.264, HEVC, APV, or ProRes) in the log profile of your choice. Files are smaller and ready to drop into your NLE immediately. The catch: because it's doing RAW capture and real-time encoding at the same time, Direct Log is actually more demanding on your processor than RAW Video mode — older or mid-range devices can struggle with it.
The good news is the core controls — focus, exposure, white balance — work identically in both modes. Learn them once in RAW Video and you already know Direct Log.
Getting Started: Your First RAW Clip
After a clean install, MotionCam Pro opens in Photo mode. Tap the Mode Selector in the lower left and switch to RAW Video.
By default, focus and exposure are fully automatic — so just tap Record, capture a few seconds, and tap again to stop. To review it, go to Manage Videos → Grant Access → Use this Folder → Allow. Tap the clip to play it, then swipe right-to-left to get back to the library, and again to return to the camera.
That's your first RAW clip done. Now let's set the app up properly so you're not shooting on defaults.
Core Settings You Need to Know
In the lower left of the camera interface you'll find Lens, Resolution, and Frame Rate.
Lens shows every lens the Camera2 API is reporting as available on your device. On my S26 Ultra I can flick between ultra-wide (14mm), main (24mm), and super-telephoto (117mm) with a tap. If a lens on your phone isn't showing up here, it's usually just not being reported correctly to MotionCam Pro by Camera2 — more on fixing that in the hidden lens section below.
Resolution defaults to 4K UHD (3840×2160). Switching to Full Sensor (commonly called Open Gate) captures the sensor's complete width and height — typically around 4080×3060 on a standard 12MP RAW stream — giving you far more room to reframe in post.
Frame Rate defaults to 30fps. Available frame rates are device-specific, so what shows up on my S26 Ultra might not match yours. If you need something that isn't listed — 25fps for PAL, for example — don't assume it's unsupported. Again, that's covered in the hidden frame rates section.
Tap the Spanner icon (top left) for three more essentials:
- Toggle OIS (optical image stabilisation) for the active lens
- Force maximum display brightness
- Show/hide the Histogram — leave this on, it's essential for accurate exposure
Right next to the Spanner is the Preview Selector, and this one matters more than people expect. Android Preview shows a tone-mapped image with boosted contrast and saturation — essentially a simulation of what your phone's ISP would normally produce, not what MotionCam is actually capturing. Direct Preview is the accurate, real-time representation of the actual RAW sensor output the app is recording, running at a slightly reduced frame rate to preserve processing headroom. Flip between the two once and the difference is obvious. Use Direct Preview to judge your image.
Focus, Exposure and White Balance
White values for shutter, ISO, and focus mean you're in auto mode. Tap anywhere in the frame to set independent focus (circle reticle) and exposure (square reticle) points — the circle drives autofocus, the square drives auto-exposure metering, and you can drag each one independently.
To lock any value, long-press it until it turns orange. Long-press again to release it. To reset focus, exposure, and white balance to full auto in one move, tap the Reset icon. If your device consistently under- or over-exposes, the EV slider lets you stay in auto exposure while applying a manual offset — every full ±1.00 increment equals one full stop.
Manual Focus
Tap Focus to bring up the manual slider. The preview desaturates and focus peaking kicks in, outlining in-focus areas in green. Choose Low, Medium, or High peaking sensitivity from the left panel — in low light, High sensitivity can throw false positives on noisy areas of frame, so dial it back if peaking looks unreliable. Tap Focus again to close, or tap Auto to hand focus back to the app.
Manual Exposure
Tap Shutter Speed to open manual shutter control. This automatically activates Sensor Clipping, which turns the image greyscale and highlights any channel — red, green, or blue — that's clipping and losing detail, with the Waveform reflecting it in real time.
Set shutter speed first (1/48s is a solid starting point for 24fps). If your shutter speed drops below your target frame rate, the value turns red — that's your warning of a potential frame rate override. Then adjust ISO until clipping is minimised or under control. Minor single-channel clipping can often be recovered in RAW using Highlight Reconstruction on export, so don't chase a perfect histogram at the expense of a usable ISO.
White Balance
Tap the White Balance value for manual Temperature (amber-to-blue) and Tint (green-to-magenta) controls. For a fast, accurate result: set to Auto, fill the frame with a white or grey card, then long-press to lock. Because MCRAW stores white balance as metadata rather than baking it into the pixel data, you can change it freely later in your desktop renderer with zero quality loss.
Recording and Reviewing Footage
During capture, an on-screen overlay tracks memory usage, file size, and dropped frames — keep an eye on it. The dropped frame counter shows white for 1–10 drops (fine), yellow for 11–20 (worth monitoring), and red at 21+ (your session's in trouble). Memory usage turns red as it approaches 50% — that's your cue to stop or dial back your settings before you hit 100% and start dropping frames. Every control — focus, exposure, white balance, preview, OIS — stays live while you're recording.
In Manage Videos, clips are listed newest first with the date/time in the filename, plus total frames captured and dropped frames in parentheses. Tap Pause during playback to bring up the Sensor Clipping overlay for exposure review, and watch for red marks on the progress bar — they show exactly where drops occurred, so you can tell at a glance whether they land somewhere you actually need.
Exporting On-Device
Tap Edit Video below any clip. Because this is post-capture rather than real time, there's no performance ceiling — the app renders at its full quality. The default export space is Rec.709, which gives you a ready-to-share image with solid contrast and saturation straight away.
Swipe right-to-left to reveal the advanced controls: Exposure, Tone, Detail, LUT support, White Balance, Tonemapping (Off / ACES / AgX), and Highlight Reconstruction. From the Export tab you can choose your output colour space and transfer function — Sony S-Log, ARRI Log C, Apple Log, Samsung Log, and DaVinci Intermediate are all available, so your footage is ready for any compatible LUT — or stick with Rec.709 for a standard delivery. Tap Add to Queue, monitor progress in the Task Queue, and tap Open once it's done. Rendered files land in Documents/MotionCam by default, or set your own location under Set Render Folder.
UNMCRAWSOME — On-Device Processing
If you want to work with MCRAW or Direct Log footage entirely on your phone, UNMCRAWSOME — built by "John the Farmer" and available through the MotionCam Discord — is the best Android tool for the job. It handles native MCRAW and Direct Log formats with trimming, colour space and transfer function selection, grading tools, and LUT support built in.
Getting Footage to Your Desktop
Windows — your Android device mounts automatically. Navigate to Documents > MotionCam Pro on the phone and copy the files across.
Mac — use the free, open-source OpenMTP app and drag files from the same folder.
Desktop Workflow Options
MLV App converts .MCRAW files directly into a standard video format in your choice of colour space and transfer function, ready for any NLE — simple, but you give up RAW flexibility.
MotionCam Tools (the one I'd recommend) is the free desktop app from the MotionCam team. It mounts .MCRAW files as Cinema DNG on a virtual volume that goes straight into DaVinci Resolve, where you can interpret the footage as Blackmagic Film or Panasonic V-Log, grade non-destructively through Resolve's Camera RAW panel (exposure, white balance, highlight recovery), and apply a Colour Space Transform to output into any log profile before grading with manufacturer LUTs or film emulation tools like Film Convert, Filmbox Pro, or Spectra.
One thing worth flagging: if your MCRAW file has a variable frame rate — which can happen if your device struggled to keep up with the data rate — some editors will let audio drift out of sync over time. Fix this by transcoding to a constant frame rate with HandBrake or Shutter Encoder before it hits your timeline.
Direct Log: Settings, Playback and Grading
Direct Log gives you the image quality of bypassing your phone's processing pipeline while producing a smaller, edit-ready file in your chosen format and log profile — immediately compatible with your NLE and any LUT.
Remember the trade-off: it's more demanding than RAW Video, and frame rates above 30fps will drop frames on most devices, so pull back bitrate or resolution if that happens. It's also a one-way door — Direct Log encoding is permanent. The RAW data is discarded at capture, so unlike MCRAW, you can't change your mind on colour space or transfer function afterward. Switch modes via the Mode Selector as before; the camera controls themselves are identical to RAW Video.
Direct Log Settings
A Settings Bar across the top shows your current codec, bitrate, transfer function, and active LUT — tap any of them to open the full settings menu.
Format gets you to the Video Codec picker: H.264, HEVC (8-bit and 10-bit), ProRes, and APV (on compatible devices, including the Samsung S26 Ultra, Vivo X300 Ultra, and Xiaomi 17 Ultra). Hardware-accelerated codecs will always perform best; ProRes is software-encoded, so it's more demanding but works on any device — if you go that route, ProRes LT is the sensible starting point, with ProRes HQ and above best reserved for flagships with strong thermal management.
Set your bitrate below that — I typically run 100Mbps, keeping in mind it's a ceiling, and actual bitrate will flex with scene complexity.
For Colour Space and Transfer Function, the default is BT.709 for a ready-to-share image. To shoot log, tap the colour space label or swipe open the Quick Adjust Panel (which switches to Direct Preview automatically for accurate monitoring). Set your Output Colour Space (e.g. ARRI Wide Gamut 3) and Transfer Function (e.g. ARRI Log C3) to match your primary camera or the LUTs you plan to use — both get appended to your filename automatically, so you'll always know exactly what you captured.
Direct Log Playback
Direct Log files save to DCIM > MotionCam Pro, separate from MCRAW files in Documents > MotionCam Pro. Tap the thumbnail in the corner to review your last clip, or browse the full set through your phone's Files app. The free VLC app handles on-device ProRes playback.
Direct Log Grading
Because you locked in a log profile at capture, grading is simple: apply the matching manufacturer LUT and you're done.
- ARRI Log C → the official ARRI Rec.709 LUT (pre-installed in DaVinci Resolve, also on ARRI's site)
- Sony S-Log → any Sony-compatible LUT you already own
- Apple Log → any Apple Log LUT — handy if you want a unified look across MotionCam Pro and iPhone footage
The same workflow applies in UNMCRAWSOME on-device: import, apply your LUT, export.
Finding Hidden Lenses and Frame Rates
This is the part most tutorials skip, and it's genuinely useful. Some lenses and frame rates that work perfectly well on your device simply aren't being reported correctly by the OEM — MotionCam Pro lets you go find them yourself.
Hidden Lenses
My Vivo X300 Ultra is the perfect example — its telephoto lens is completely missing by default, despite working fine. Open Settings → Advanced, enable Search for Hidden Lenses, and tap Re-Scan. Back in Camera, you'll now see extra lenses show up — often several duplicate entries for the same physical lens.
Here's what's going on: a single-number ID (like "5") is a physical lens ID. A fractional ID (like "10/9") is a logical lens ID — the same hardware exposed a different way. On my Vivo, the 89mm telephoto lens showed up as four separate entries: physical 5, physical 9, logical 10/9, and logical 2/5.
Open the lens picker, tap Profiles next to the 89mm entry, and test each one. On mine, physical ID 9 produced an upside-down image, logical 10/9 had the same problem, and logical 2/5 failed outright. Physical ID 5 was the one that actually worked. To clean up, go to Settings → Camera, tap the three dots on each broken profile, and delete it — leaving only the one that works.
Hidden Frame Rates
Same idea applies to frame rates. In Settings → Advanced, enable Show Other Frame Rates, then return to the camera UI and tap the frame rate picker. Officially supported rates appear in white up top; scroll down and unsupported rates — like 25fps for PAL — appear in yellow below. Tap to apply, hit record, and in most cases it works exactly as expected. The same method applies for testing high frame rates like 50 or 60fps.
Where to Go From Here
That's everything you need to start shooting confidently in both RAW Video and Direct Log on MotionCam Pro v5. There's a lot more depth in the app than a beginner's guide can cover — the official user manual and the MotionCam Discord (both linked in the video description) are where to go next for advanced features, beta access, and community support.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the MCRAW format? MCRAW is MotionCam Pro's proprietary RAW video format. It's a compressed-but-lossless container for uncompressed sensor data, achieving up to 50% space savings over standard uncompressed RAW while preserving full grading flexibility, including white balance stored as metadata rather than baked into the image.
Is MotionCam Pro better than Blackmagic Camera on Android? Unlike Blackmagic Camera, which works with a processed YUV image stream, MotionCam Pro keeps the RAW sensor stream open and writes every frame directly to MCRAW — with no forced sharpening, noise reduction, or AI processing applied by the OEM's image pipeline.
Should I shoot RAW Video or Direct Log? RAW Video (MCRAW) gives you maximum flexibility in post, including the ability to recover clipped highlights, at the cost of larger files and a mandatory grading step. Direct Log gives you a smaller, edit-ready file in your chosen log profile immediately, but it's processor-intensive and the settings are locked in permanently at capture.
How do I get MotionCam Pro footage into DaVinci Resolve? Use the free MotionCam Tools desktop app, which mounts MCRAW files as Cinema DNG on a virtual volume that Resolve reads directly, giving you full access to Resolve's Camera RAW panel for non-destructive grading.
Why is a lens or frame rate missing on my device? It's usually a reporting issue, not a hardware limitation. Enable Search for Hidden Lenses and Show Other Frame Rates under Settings → Advanced to reveal options your device supports but doesn't expose by default.
Thanks to MotionCam for sponsoring this tutorial. If you found it useful, the video version above walks through every step live.
