I looked at a house yesterday for my mom. We’re planning to move her close to us. She’s 85 and currently lives 120 miles away.
I walked around and filmed a tour of the house. Explaining each room and pointing out features.
I was very impressed with the quality of the video. Most of it was well lit and the audio quite good. It plays really well on a PC.
The only downside was the 1.4 GB size for 11 mins of video & audio.
I edited it into 4 short clips. Saving it using the Portable MP4 option. Each clip averaged 20 mb.
80 mb total. Thats better than 1.4GB.
GMail still wouldn’t let me attach them until it had uploaded the files to my Google drive. Then it automatically sent links in the email.
Using video is nice. It does take getting used to.
I’ve heard some smartphone brands offer a better camera than others. I have a Moto X pure phone.
I bought an expensive mini camcorder (in 2004) that records to DAT. It’s in the closet. My phone probably out performs that camcorder. The camcorder has special lens and other features.
But for quick video the phone is what I’ll use.
But yeah, it’s great having a camera, video camera, email client, calculator, web browser, game machine, clock, weather forecast, and more in your pocket. Amazing even.
Google Drive works but uploading a video to YouTube is also a good option. They will take whatever you throw at them.
Highly recommend Youtube, universal player for any internet device and it will auto scale the video quality for the bandwidth and screen size. and you can control how public the video becomes. I look forward to your upcoming Youtube show!
My insurance guy told me to do this: Turn on your video camera (phone or not) and walk around your house, pointing it at every appliance, piece of furniture, and big-ticket item. Narrate as you go: how long you’ve had it, what you paid for it, etc. He says this is worth its weight in gold if you ever have a major disaster claim. He recommended doing it every New Years.
In the article they seem to focus on videos of people, and I don’t dispute that they fit better into a vertical format.
But the OP was filming a house, and unless it’s a lighthouse, that fits better in landscape.
GaryM
GaryM
You did everything right. You’re lucky that you had all these options available to you; in my day we struggled with hard drive space, file sizes, compression quality, internet bandwidth, and distribution. Now it’s quick, easy, and seamless.
A few years ago a friend was rear ended at a stop sign on a secluded backroad. Getting out of his car, he used his phone to video the scene. The other driver approached and began blabbering about it being an accident and there wasn’t much damage and the should just forget about it.
He asked for her insurance papers and she lost it. She told him she would say he backed up into her, then threatened her. He had video running the whole time. He called the police and she took off. Turns out she had no insurance. No license either.
Yes it works very well, apparently over 400 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. And all you have to do is send the URL and anyone can view whether their are signed into YouTube/Google or not.
As animals we experience our world in the landscape mode. For the love of all that is holy, don’t hold your cell phone like this when shooting video:
Practice. Just take a few moments. Find a way to hold it so you can shoot for a minute or two without cramping up AND without having the video jump and shudder.For a lower-tech approach, learn to find vertical or horizontal surfaces to rest the camera against. This will allow you to shoot VERY still videos.
If you have to walk around, and I’m a moving camera addict, find a stabilizer. The new Tiffen Steadicam Volt is incredible- I have one of the first ones they shipped. Truly does the trick.
It’s a gift, being able to shoot High Definition video with reasonable audio. Make the most of your shots. Unless you’re whipping out the phone in a truly unplanned/ emergency situation, practice rolling video a few seconds BEFORE the moment starts, and don’t think of moving your finger to the Cut button until 2-4 seconds AFTER the moment ends. That way, when you go to edit shots together, you will have “fat” at the head and tail of the shot to use for dissolves or a fade-up or fade-down.
Think about headroom. How close are you to the subject? Are they looking off to one side? If they are, don’t put them right in the middle of the frame. Give them a big of “air space” to the side where they are looking. Unsure of what I mean? Watch any movie you have that’s in Widescreen mode ( opposed to cropped ).
Clean the lens before you shoot.
Remember that the lens is at one end of your phone. Common mistake, oddly, is that people frame and aim as though it were in the middle. It’s not. ( Or, almost always not )
There are many free compression applications that will allow you to crunch the size of a video movie- but remember, it’s an endless flow of 30 photographs/ second in High Def. That’s a LOT of media.
