Done it! I’ve managed to use the Nokia N93 to capture, record and publish video which is good enough for broadcast on TV as well as the web. OK, what I’ve made is only ten seconds long, to work around ShoZu’s 4MB upload limit, but it worked.
Here’s the clip on YouTube and here it is on Blink.tv. (These two links should launch in a new browser window.) (GM 2017: Blink TV changed its terms of service, so this has now been removed from that platform.)
The only kind of editing I’ve managed on the Nokia so far is to mark new In and Out points on video clips and assemble the revised clips into a new entity. This all seems to be done in native .mp4, which is great because the total new file size equals the sum of sizes of the trimmed source clips. ten seconds of .mp4=4MB
Contrast this with editing on a computer, where outputting Standard Definition 25fps PAL as QuickTime from iMovie on a Mac or as .avi from PremiereElements on a PC increases filesize more than tenfold. So ten seconds of video weighs in at 45 Mb. This is important if the mobile phone is to be used for capture and upload only, with editing being done on a computer.
A key thing I’d like to be able to do when editing on my mobile is to isolate the full-quality 48k audio from a video clip and use this audio as a bed upon which I can synchronise still images (photos) to tell a Digital Story.
Yes, there’s work to be done by mobile interface designers to improve the assembly mechanisms for clips, audio and photos on-board the phone.
Written and first published by Gareth Morlais on 20 February 2007.