Digital Photography Hacks

Capture Life’s Little Moments with Camera-Phone Video

No, you’re not going to record camera-phone video of your son’s entire graduation ceremony. But you might catch him receiving his diploma.

Some camera phones can record video as well as still images. However, various hardware factors often limit the video segments to just a few seconds. Here are some of the limitations of recording video with camera phones:

• Not all video camera phones can record sound with the video.

• The visible frame size is small.

• The video clips are considerably more grainy and pixelated than video clips taken with still digital cameras that have video-recording capability.

• The 3GPP (Third-Generation Partnership Project) file-storage format can be viewed but not readily edited by common video-editing applications. You can find more information about 3GPP at http://www.3gpp.org.

• The maximum recording time for a video segment is usually measured in seconds. For example, the Nokia 3650 can record a maximum of 95 KB (about 15 seconds) of video with sound. My experience is that 10 seconds is the maximum clip duration.

A lot can happen in 10 seconds. The world’s fastest human can run 100 meters, with a fraction of second to spare. Your child can scamper through a good portion of your home or yard. And don’t forget that you can edit multiple clips together [Hack #56] to create several minutes of memorable video.

You can view 3GPP video natively using a number of desktop applications. Apple QuickTime (http://www.apple.com/quicktime/ ...