Posting video from a smart phone to WordPress

October 6, 2010 10:18 AM

Posting video from a smart phone to WordPress. What are the best ways to do this?

I have a Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant (kernel: 2.1) non-rooted phone on T-Mobile. There's a built-in camera/camcorder app that I already use. The built-in Gallery app allows me to share video to a number of destinations including WordPress, but if I try to share directly to that destination, WordPress tells me it can't accept 3gp videos and suggests that I upgrade to VideoPress, which appears to cost money ($60/year).

At $5/month that is pretty cheap, I'll grant you, but I don't want to sign up until I know I'll use it enough to make it feel worth it.

My WordPress blog (v. 3.0.1) is self-hosted (on Dreamhost) and I can install any add-on I want to or need to.

An additional nice to have would be to be able to transcode the video with options (like just transcoding video and ditching the audio, or to different possible formats, etc.)

So far I've posted one video from my phone to my WordPress blog by:
1) Taking the video on the phone
2) "Sharing" the video to some cloud app (gmail, Dropbox, etc.)
3) At my computer, downloading the video from the cloud app to the local disk
4) Transcoding the video with VLC (open source) to MP4
5) Editing or creating a new post on the computer on my WordPress blog
6) Uploading the MP4 version to my blog
7) Publishing the post

Is there a quicker or more convenient way? Preferably free or nearly so?

As always, thanks in advance for any assistance you're able to provide.

posted by kalessin to computers & internet (4 answers total)

If I were in your shoes, I'd blast the video to YouTube and post the YouTube clip on the blog.
posted by General Malaise at 11:16 AM on October 6, 2010

The only problem I have with that, General Malaise, and I am a huge Google-head, mind you, is that if I host it on my Dreamhost-hosted WordPress, I retain rights by dint of actually still mostly controlling the video, but I don't know what I'd agree to if I did it via YouTube and whether I'd still own the rights in as iron-clad a way.

But a great suggestion anyway. I'll look into it.
posted by kalessin at 12:59 PM on October 6, 2010

The terms of service at Posterous say you'd retain copyright. Config your account to AutoPost to a blog, then just email a video whenver. Done.
posted by nakedcodemonkey at 1:41 PM on October 6, 2010

nakedcodemonkey, I just checked out Posterous and it is pretty cool as you say. Video editing is currently not available, so I can't have my nice to haves. I will have to fiddle with it a bit more and try the Autopost feature with my non-Wordpress-hosted Wordpress blogs and see how that works out, but it has great potential, thank you.
posted by kalessin at 5:25 AM on October 7, 2010