# Streaming to the cloud

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/streaming-to-the-cloud/913569>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [June 28, 2020, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/streaming-to-the-cloud/913569 "2020-06-28T19:15:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\
**Post date:** [June 28, 2020, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/streaming-to-the-cloud/913569/1 "2020-06-28T19:15:55Z")

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We just watched _My Spy_, an action-comedy wherein a little girl blackmails a CIA agent my recording him on her phone. She informs him that the video was streamed to the cloud, and all she has to do is push a button to send it everywhere.

So… How do you stream to the cloud? I have an iPhone 6S and iCloud. The phone doesn’t have enough memory for long videos, and iCloud (probably) does. So how to I stream from the former to the latter, so that I don’t fill up the memory on the phone? Please explain as if you are explaining it to a geezer.

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**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\
**Post date:** [June 28, 2020, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/streaming-to-the-cloud/913569/2 "2020-06-28T19:47:43Z")

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Apps like Facebook Live will capture video and stream directly. I assume there are ways to hold broadcast but record the video file somewhere for publication later. I haven’t looked closely into doing so.

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**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\
**Post date:** [June 30, 2020, 10:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/streaming-to-the-cloud/913569/3 "2020-06-30T10:50:02Z")

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Facebook Live does this too.

But the real answer is, “It’s a movie.” Hollywood takes a grain of truth and mutates it to serve the plot.

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**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\
**Post date:** [June 30, 2020, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/streaming-to-the-cloud/913569/4 "2020-06-30T15:23:07Z")

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[Hands Up 4 Justice](https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/new-smartphone-app-records-police-and-uploads-video-to-the-internet-automatically-020315.html) is an app designed for videoing police encounters. It streams directly to the cloud.

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**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\
**Post date:** [June 30, 2020, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/streaming-to-the-cloud/913569/5 "2020-06-30T17:01:18Z")

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It should be technically feasible but I couldn’t tell you which app supports that feature (possibly [Air](https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/02/air-lets-you-record-high-quality-home-movies-without-running-out-of-space/) but they use their own cloud service). In theory, the video streaming app would automatically break the raw video into temporary manageable chunks while you are recording, and in the background it would compress and upload each chunk to iCloud. Then it deletes the chunk from the phone memory and the cycle repeats. The video has to be broken up and sent in pieces because it has to be compressed. Without compression video streaming takes way too much bandwidth.

~Max