Sharing Phone and Camera Video Files

The new rage is sharing the video clips from your still camera or camera phone. With clips, who needs a video camera? Clips and perhaps a video blog is all you need!

Here I explain the simple steps. I've done the hard testing and investigation for you already.

Our Objective

Take the AVI video clip from a camera, edit it, compress it to .MP4 (MPEG-4) or .WMV (Windows Media) format and then share it with others over the Internet.

The two formats are almost the same but there are some small pros and cons to consider as you decide which suits you best. The third option is Flash, discussed in the video blogging section below.

Windows Media (.WMV) File Format

• Windows Movie Maker edits and compresses included in XP.
• Won't play on Firefox or Macs.
• Microsoft has its claws in that format (as simple as it is to use on PCs)

MPEG-4 (.MP4) File Format

• A true recognized standard with cross-platform support.
• It will play on the iPod Video (and a larger range?) of devices.
• Must download 38 mb(?) free Quicktime/iTumes player to play.
• Must register it with serial to change free player to pro, for exporting video.
• Use the free Video editor called Virtual Dub first to edit.

Whether you require your audience to have (newish) Quicktime downloaded is up to you. Dial-up users might have trouble. But it has its advantages if you can handle the added fiddle compared to that of just using Windows Media format

DiVX is in the same category but isn't a standard so really made obsolete (in theory) now that we have the .MP4 standard. That's why I'm leaving it out.

Video Quality Settings and File Sizes

Consider reducing 640 x 480 video to 320 x 240. It's 1/4 of the size and not bad!

Original 640 x 480 .AVI - 34 Mb
Compressed 320 x 240, 500 Kbps - 1.6 Mb (artefacts quite noticeable)
Compressed 320 x 240, 380 Kbps - 1.4 Mb (artefacts real bad now)

Faster moving action will require higher data rates than slow action so experiment. You can get it as high-quality or highly-compressed as you need with trade-offs. The small file sizes above are ideal for sending to blogs, which may be better than using email! (see my prior blog post)


Video Blogs are the Way to Go !

I suggest using the free Textamerica.com service. Here's my video blog on there. You can upload the following file types either via web or via email. It's just so simple and cool!

.jpg, .mov, .3gp, .mpg, .mp4, .avi, .wmv (max file size 25 Mb)

No upload conversion takes place. Whatever file you email to your Textamerica.com video blog, people will require the matching player on their machine. As I suggested, send either MP4 or WMV.

A good alternative here is LifeLogger (with an "L") See my video blog there. They accept the following file types (email or web uploaded)

• Photos: JPEG, TIFF, GIF, BMP, PNG
• Videos: 3GPP, AVI, MPEG
• Audio: AMR, MP3, WAV

The Advantages of LifeLogger are:

Video uploads all converted to flash, which is better compression again!
Macromedia Flash plug-in only 2 Mb compared to 38 Mb Quicktime/iTunes.
Fully cross-platform.
They also accept sound blogs and regular text entries unlike Textamerica.com.

The Disadvantages of LifeLogger are:

People still need to install Macromedia Flash (compared to WMV)
People can't really download and use the video clips very easily outside a browser.
You can only upload AVI etc which are BIG uploads compared to MP4/WMV uploadable on Textamerica .

Please Sir, I Want More

More?! Ok, for $4.95 a month, check out Audioblog.com (host video and better interface?). Or if you want a more flexibile blog layout, for $4.95/mo again, see TypePad. They don't actually host A/V though.

Sharing Phone and Camera Video Files

MP4 (compressed with Quicktime Pro) Hosted on Textamerica.com



More on this shortly.

Blogs and RSS Feeds in Simple Terms

This is a primer on Blogs and RSS as best as I can distill it in clear terms.

What is a Blog?

Think of it as an online newsletter. The full name was Weblog as in "my log on the web" but people shortened the term to blog. You're reading a chunk of text from my blog right now.

(Here's Wiki's description: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weblog )

Blogs might be thought of as cross between email and web pages. It's a form of communication between people that is managed on the web instead of inside your email program at home.

You may have got a link to this specific article. To see all my blog articles, click: http://djmer1.blogspot.com/

What's the Point?

Consider email:

• Push-technology.
• Get's lost or deleted after a short time.
• The included content allowed these days is almost none.
• Collaboration using mailing lists generates duplicate emails galore!
• Email is restrictive and each recipient has to manage the info you send themselves.
• Once the info is sent out, you loose control of it.
  

Compare with Blogs:

• Suck-technology.
• It remains available to access as and when required.
• There's almost no limit to what can be embedded in a blog post.
• People can collaborate/comment on the info online very easilly.
• People can dig up your gems on their own terms.
• The blog owner maintains control over the info at all times.
  

The other key is how easy blogs are to set up and manage. I use Blogger myself.

It's Really Simple to Syndicate (RSS) your Blog to Others!

You don't need to know this if you have a blog, but it sure helps.

If you provide an RSS Feed of your blog, that means people can download select parts of the raw XML data that your blog is built on. Any of a myriad of RSS readers can suck up and monitor the key info on your blog (and 100 other sources at the same time) in a simple, fast, user-friendly interface.

The links are usually similar. My web and RSS links are below:

HTML: http://djmer1.blogspot.com/

RSS: http://djmer1.blogspot.com/atom.xml

A web browser will suck down both types of info if you click above, but you need an RSS reader to format the RSS data properly. It can be a browser plug-in, stand-alone program or online service that manages and displays your RSS feeds/links for you.

Here's a list of RSS feeds I've setup to view online (simple but crude): http://www.bloglines.com/public/djmer or the RSS Compendium.

The way you typically "subscribe" to an RSS feed is to simply drag the link (usually indicated as an orange RSS button) into any RSS reader. There’s a bunch on my blog page to get you started.

Here's some RSS Reader options:

• Firefox web browser adding the Wizz RSS extention
• Thunderbird email program that has an RSS reader built in
• Search Google for others
• More info when I try or get recommended others

The Wider Picture?

The use of XML and RSS is causing a revolution in computer communications. The reason is that it's an open, infinitely adaptable standard that everyone now agrees on for how computers exchange info. The floodgates have been opened for all sorts of new approaches.

All Microsoft Office 2007 documents will even be stored in this format! Blogs and RSS are already a vast improvement on the email model for many types of communications whether it be how we get our news and weather to how we communicate to staff, peers, friends, family, customers or the public.

If you use a blog search tool such as Technorati search or Google Blog Search, you could be forgiven for thinking blogs are the domain of teenagers. That's mainly because there's more teenagers than big businesses blogging to date. It can be hard to see the wheat for the chafe.

That's why so many page ranking and recommendation services are springing up. But that's another story. I should have links to some in my links section. Check RSS Compendium.

Protopage Evaluation

I still think having access to a custom Protopage wherever you go could be useful, unless you have a mobile pc. For local use, it's a bit slow and clunky. For news, I don't think anything can beat Wizz RSS. But to have some of that stuff on a page I can access from anywhere is useful. Perhaps I really need a portable computer. One day soon I'm sure :-). A PocketPC would be fun to play with. We're all getting one sooner or later.

Adding Photos to Google Earth

I wanted to attach photos to Goole Earth locations for the public to see. One way to do it is to use the Firefox 1.5 extention called Photo Map.

Once you have the PhotoMap extention installed, click the URL below which will open PhotoMap at the locatioon of my photos, basically as a substitute front end to Google Earth.

photomap://map?lat=-37.81975990831797&long=144.96517896652222&zoom=1&type=hybrid

If you then think "This is cool!" and want to drag your photos into PhotoMap (it's that simple) then you will be prompted to open a free Flickr account which will then compress and host your photos online automatically.

Update: Ok, there's a non-open source implementation of this taken further at Frappr (no E). You can see my corner of the world simply by clicking my Frappr link: http://www.frappr.com/djmer1

A popular Frapper group is: The TWiT team at http://www.frappr.com/twit

There are many other groups. Be sure to login and turn off your Adult-content filter!

Emergency at Work

A gentleman in his late 80’s collapsed at work on the concrete driveway last night. I initially saw him stagger backwards and immediately ran out. He was laying back on the concrete mumbling incoherently semi-conscious but breathing so I ran back inside and called an ambulance. I figured he may have had a stroke or heart attack. Either way, we needed help fast. They arrived in about 3 mins which is good. It all sure happens within seconds. Glad it went smoothly. If it had been busy, it would have been chaos.

His son just phoned which saves me waking up again in a couple hours. His father had fractured his skull and there must have been some something wrong for him to fall initially but he seems stable thismorning. His son was understandably still very concerned though.

AND, if that wasn't enough, our other site in Sandringham was robbed a couple hours later!

Protopage

I'm keeping a public and private desktop at:

http://www.protopage.com/djmer11

From there, all my links and news feeds are available.