Easy peasy mobile video posting

Did I mention how easy it is to post a video from your phone (with Lifeblog, of course)?

To put you in a comparative frame of mind: normal video posting requires you to record the video with a DV recorder, transfer the video to your PC, cut out the clip, convert it into a web-friendly format, make a frame grab to show what the video is about, and then upload it to a video-friendly server.

Well, all I do is, shoot the video with my phone and then ‘Post to Web’ from Lifeblog. Like any post from Lifeblog, you can post multiple items, add captions to each item, and then send the link of the post to whomever you like (or open it yourself and tell yourself how clever you were).

A few comments on this procedure:

• TypePad does the work for me of getting the frame grab, formatting it, and serving it. Actually, I think Lifeblog is the only way to easily get video onto TypePad.
• TypePad leaves it in .3gpp format, so I can view it on my phone if I want to.
• You can use QuickTime (and RealPlayer, I think) to view .3gpp files from your browser.
• The video is not streamed. The user needs to click on it and it opens another window with the video (at least that’s what QuickTime does for me). Unfortunately, there is no clear indication that the item is an image or video, so I just make the caption saying something like ‘(click to play)’.
• Don’t forget to set your video recorder to 174×144 so you can get the biggest (or is it less small?) video.
• Note that the video is sent completely, so the longer the video, the longer the upload time over GPRS. Alternately, you could use Lifeblog to automatically transfer it to Lifeblog PC and just post from there over broadband. It’s roughly the same easy peasy procedure.

Here are two examples:

• One of mine on the joint Lifeblog-Wasabi blog.
• And one on Alvaro’s Sulfkultura blog.