video

N97 Review Day 6 - DemoCamp Vancouver 7 Video Test

I can't tell which is better N97 video or N82 video! Caveats: I don't have a keen eye and I only did limited testing last night at Demo Camp Vancouver 07 before the N97 battery ran out.

Both of the following videos are from the Anahita Social Engine demo last night at DemoCamp Vanocouver

Check out the flash videos below but for the best test download and compare and contrast:

N82 Video in flash format:

N97 Video in flash format:

Mobile Video Streaming 2009 - Northern Voice 2009

Here's my Northern Voice 2009 presentation (PDF) about Mobile Video Streaming circa 2009:

VIDEO CONTEST - What is one way that the Internet has changed my life? Possible Northern Voice 2009 Moosecamp Session

It's hard to believe how time flies, but the 5th Northern Voice (for the 5th time I am one of the organizers) starts tomorrow with the Federico's dining and dancing opening party,(Scott Nelson with a bit of assistance from myself are providing the WiFi, thanks Scott!), Friday begins the conference proper with a fab social media 101 track organized by Rahel Anne Bailie and Anita Webster, a fantastic mobile track, the MooseCamp unconference and a Stewart Butterfield keynote and Saturday is the more traditional conference day.

So, I don't really have the time but since I love Mozilla, here's one of my Mossecamp ideas for Friday (if you like it, see you on Friday assuming it's accepted!):

In a nutshell:

  1. 10 people will signup up to have Roland tape 1-12 second videos of them live (i.e. no editing) on "One way the internet has changed their life."
  2. Roland will post them to flickr with a Creative Commons Attribution License to the Mozilla Net Effects Flickr Group
  3. The people in the session will watch them and vote on the "best" one (majority rules, my "best" definition: bonus points for fun, other languages, cool things but of course your definition is up to you!)
  4. Winner gets a prize. Prize will be a free 1:30 second video taped by Roland on his Nokia N82 on Friday at Moosecamp and edited on iMovie by Roland and submitted to flickr and possibly some Mozilla swag from Zak

More background from Zak:

  1. flickr group - http://www.flickr.com/groups/mozillanetfx/
  2. Mozilla Net Effects page - https://wiki.mozilla.org/Foundation/Program/Net_Effects
  3. Zak's blog post: explaining why videos and the idea behind this! - http://zak.greant.com/what-does-the-net-mean-to-you

Disclaimers and other Blah Blah

  1. Zak is an employee of the Mozilla Foundation
  2. Roland is Zak's friend, doesn't work for Mozilla but loves Firefox

Convinced? Sign up today only 10 spots available

Flickr adds video - interesting that most of my videos are family videos

Flickr finally added video today.Yay! Only 90 seconds and 150MB per video (and requires a pro account to upload videos) but you can tag, geo-tag, add videos to sets and use the flickr privacy system (and there will be a video upload API, yes!). Other than taking videos at conferences and events like DemoCamp and Mobile Monday, I really use video for family stuff which is on my private family flickr account (for those of you who care about my public flickr account, don't worry, i will soon have many videos of me bicycling through Vancouver :-)  to join my 36000 and counting photos!). So having flickr support video will be a great way to share videos via flickr's guess pass to my non-flickr-using family. Now if only you had access to the original video, flickr video would be complete! Feature request to the ShoZu folks: support upload to flickr once the API comes out and support the full 150MB over 3G and WiFi!

Qik alpha bug - hangs forever if WiFi access point not available

The current alpha (so fix it please ASAP :-) ) version of Qik hangs forever if the WiFi Access point you have configured is not available. Here's the steps to reproduce this:

  1. Configure Qik to access a WiFi access point e.g. "Raincity Studios"
  2. Walk out of range of the WiFi Access point
  3. Start Qik
  4. Voila! It hangs forever

Other than this bug, I am pretty happy with Qik. It's a great service.


1st Qik bicyclecast live from my bicycle over EDGE

GorillaPod+DT-22+N95+Bike=fun - IMG_5947

The above photo shows my "bicyclecast" setup (Gorillapod + N95 + DT-22 Tripod Adapter + my bicycle). It worked for only 6 minutes of my 30 minute commute to work (bug? limited buffering capacity? EDGE too slow?). And was fun. The GorillaPod doesn't keep the camera too snug on the bike but it's low budget, cheap and cheerful. Someday I'll have the money to buy a proper bike tripod camera mount like the pros use for Tour de France videos!

Check it out: qik.com/video/13888 recorded live from my bicycle (the hardest part was fastening the tripod and the phone onto the bike, music courtesy of my N81 Musicphone)

Can't record video from S60 Python on an N93, how do I record video at 640x480?

Aaargh, it turnes out (thanks to Forum Nokia people for responding to my query!) that I can't record video from S60 Python on an N93 (see my earlier S60 video python post) without installing a MultimediaDD certificate which for some reason (bug?) is not present on an N93. Please Nokia update the N93 firmware to include he Multimedia DD certificate !

Questions:

  1. Since it's extremely unlikely there will be further N93 firmware updates, how do I install a Multimedia DD certificate on my N93?
  2. How do I get camera.start_record() to record 640x480 video on an N95? Is there some size parameter I need to specify in order to record at 640x480 resolution? There is nothing in the docs about a parameter that specifies the video resolution

 

How Do I record a Video using S60 Python 1.4.1?

I tried to record a video using the new video APIs in S60 Python 1.4.1 but I can't get it to work. My code (inspired by instaflickr code from the S60 Python Book Sample code) runs but the red light doesn't come on on my N93 and nothing is recorded. I am guessing (Forum Nokia post, SourceForge Bug Report) I have an error in camera.start_record() in the following code (which is also attached):

import appuifw
import e32, key_codes, os, os.path, camera, graphics
def cb(im):
  try:
    canvas.blit(im)
  except:
    appuifw.note(u'cb')
def cb2(im, blah):
  try:
    x = 1
  except:
    appuifw.note(u'cb2')
def start_viewfinder():
  camera.start_finder(cb)
  camera.start_record('E:\\Python\\whatever.mp4', cb2 )
  canvas = appuifw.Canvas()
  appuifw.app.body = canvas
  start_viewfinder()
  e32.ao_sleep(30) # record video for 30 seconds
  camera.stop_record()
  camera.stop_finder()

If anybody can help, please email roland AT rolandtanglao.com, call +1 604 729 7924, skype: rtanglao or Jabber: roland@bryght.com

S60 Python Success - Got Sample code to work, Nokia camera.py doesn't work

Yay! Go my hello world program to work and finally got the OS X Bluetooth console to work. The trick is to:

ls -l /dev

and use the last tty for the screen command

e.g. if the last modified tty is tty.bt_console6

then you have to do screen /dev/tty.bt_console6

Now on to to create a program to create video in ego blogging mode (i.e. with screen facing you) using the high res camera.

I can't get the following code to work:

import appuifw

import camera
import e32
from camera import *
   
def cb(im):
  try:
    canvas.blit(im)
    #appuifw.app.body.blit(im)
  except:
    appuifw.note(u'cb')

def cb2(im):
  try:
    appuifw.app.body.blit(im)
  except:
    appuifw.note(u'cb2')

import graphics

canvas = appuifw.Canvas()
appuifw.app.body = canvas

start_finder(cb)

start_record('E:\\Python\whatever.mp4', cb2 )
#stop_record()

and I can't get the Nokia camera.py from Nokia's python sample code wiki page to work, help!

Video.ca's transcoding of my Drupal 5 logo screencast seems pretty legible too

video.ca's flash video transcoding of my Drupal 5 logo screencast (see below!) seems pretty legible too. Again as per my previous brightcove versus blip.tv versus google video versus YouTube informal shootout, I can't use video.ca as my default video service because there's no Creative Commons licensing option. Yes, I am pretty dogmatic about that. I believe in creating a digital commons which is not of concern (alas :-) ! ) to most people.


Uploading a Logo to the Drupal 5 Garland Theme on Video.ca
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