Want to post photos and videos online

[Muse]

I was at a party tonight, the opening of a 3 week gallery exposition commemorating the 50th anniversary of the college radio station I work at, KALX, Berkeley. I took over 100 JPGs and 1/2 dozen 1080p videos with my Canon ELPH 100 HS camera I've had a few weeks. The videos total around 7 minutes, the bulk of it being one of 4:31. I'll cull through the JPGs (posting maybe 1/2 of them), would like to post this stuff online so other folks who work at the station can see/hear them, the JPGs maybe with my captions. I figure the JPGs don't have to retain their 12 MP status, but the videos would be best in something like HD, although the ELPH just does 24 FPS at 1080p. That 4:31 video is over 1GB!

How can I best do this? In the past I've posted galleries using Picasa. Do I need to use YouTube for the videos? Can I link them at Picasa? Do I need to use my Facebook page to organize all this? I'm not a Facebook devotee, so don't know my way around it, and have never uploaded a video. Help appreciated!

 

[radhak]

Picasa Web Albums remain an easy option for quick upload and share of pictures and videos. As this page says, you could also upload to YouTube similarly, but my company security restrictions dont allow YouTube but do allow Picasa.

It's easier to upload than you'd think, go for it.

Also, if you don't like FB, you could use Google+ to socialize your pics. You'd be almost already there when you are in Picasa or Youtube.

 

[Muse]

It's not that I don't like Facebook, it's more that I have used it so seldom and sporadically that I find it confusing. I don't feel like I know what's going on at Facebook. Seems to me that there's a bunch of things going on, and I don't get it. It might be the best choice because a high percentage of the radio station staff use it a ton, I think. They are a media savvy bunch by and large, smart phone users. Myself, I have a dumb cell phone I hardly ever use (it stays off unless I'm making the rare pre-paid service call), lean on my land line for phone stuff.

I'm pretty good with PC's. Awaiting other ideas in this thread, if nothing else comes up I'll probably poke around in Picasa, set up a gallery and post the link in the staff listserve. Maybe that can be linked into my facebook page and that of the radio station, their twitter as well (I am registered there too, but don't use Twitter at all).

Edit: One problem is the fact that the 4:31 1080p video is over the 1GB Picasa upload limit, it's 1.13GB. I suppose I could edit it down somehow, or maybe do that one at YouTube, or all of the videos there.

 

[Muse]

Picasa Web Albums remain an easy option for quick upload and share of pictures and videos. As this page says, you could also upload to YouTube similarly, but my company security restrictions dont allow YouTube but do allow Picasa.

It's easier to upload than you'd think, go for it.

Also, if you don't like FB, you could use Google+ to socialize your pics. You'd be almost already there when you are in Picasa or Youtube.

I'm right now uploading an album I created in Picasa 3.9 (just installed). I don't see the movies in the folder that the pictures are in. Picasa doesn't seem to see the movies. I assume there's some way to add the movies after the album finishes uploading. If I can't find that, I guess I'll upload the 6 or so movies to YouTube, and just give everybody the link. Would be nicer if they were all in one place. I used the Canon Utilities ZoomBrowser EX application to chop off the tail end of the 1.1GB .MOV file to achieve a file under 1GB for the big one.

Edit: I'm uploading videos to the album now but I get the impression (I think Picasa's a mess, or at least not very intuitive) that I can't have more than 1GB total storage including all my albums, so my one 973MB video will definitely not fit.

 

[CuriousMike]

I've used Picasa + Web Albums for awhile now and never knew you could upload video.
I'll have to check that out.

 

[SecurityTheatre]

I'm right now uploading an album I created in Picasa 3.9 (just installed). I don't see the movies in the folder that the pictures are in. Picasa doesn't seem to see the movies. I assume there's some way to add the movies after the album finishes uploading. If I can't find that, I guess I'll upload the 6 or so movies to YouTube, and just give everybody the link. Would be nicer if they were all in one place. I used the Canon Utilities ZoomBrowser EX application to chop off the tail end of the 1.1GB .MOV file to achieve a file under 1GB for the big one.

Edit: I'm uploading videos to the album now but I get the impression (I think Picasa's a mess, or at least not very intuitive) that I can't have more than 1GB total storage including all my albums, so my one 973MB video will definitely not fit.

Run that video through iMovie or Windows Movie Maker (depending on your platform) and resize it. Most people don't care much for full HD, especially if it means you can't actually upload it.

You should be able to get a 4 minute video under 200MB at 1080p and still have decent quality (I have a 4:14 video at 1080p with audio that is 180MB made from WMM default save format). Most cameras use a very conservative bitrate, but downsampling or re-encoding is usually quite appropriate.

 

[Gooberlx2]

Most cameras use a very conservative bitrate

I find most cams use an insane bitrate for their sensor ability, probably because of their weak processing power to encode with good quality compression.

My ZS3, for example, captures something like 19Mbps for 720p.

 

[Muse]

Picasa is just junk AFAICT. I uploaded 4 movies to my album and can't find them. One image among the 91 photos is a big red X and appears to represent a video, but there's no way to play it. WTF How can this be? Google supposed to be such a huge successful high end tech company. Why does this thing not work?

 

[Muse]

I've used Picasa + Web Albums for awhile now and never knew you could upload video.
I'll have to check that out.

Yeah, well, I spent over an hour uploading around 500MB of video (4 videos) but can't find them in the album I was uploading them to. It's totally insane!

 

[Muse]

Run that video through iMovie or Windows Movie Maker (depending on your platform) and resize it. Most people don't care much for full HD, especially if it means you can't actually upload it.

You should be able to get a 4 minute video under 200MB at 1080p and still have decent quality (I have a 4:14 video at 1080p with audio that is 180MB made from WMM default save format). Most cameras use a very conservative bitrate, but downsampling or re-encoding is usually quite appropriate.

Thanks for the tips. I'm all in tonight, will have at it again tomorrow.

If I can't get movie uploads to show up in my Picasa album I suppose I'll try uploading them to YouTube, and provide people with the links. I've never uploaded to YouTube either, but it has to be pretty foolproof. Picasa's system appears to not work, period. It's nuts.

 

[Muse]

Well, I poked around some more before turning in. Seems the videos I uploaded didn't go where I pointed them to, an existing album, the one I'm building. Each one went to a new (but different) album, all with the same name, being the current date! I had to open each video, move it to my preferred album, then delete each of the "Sept. 10, 2012" albums, one at a time. I'll upload one more tomorrow and then try to reduce the size of the 4:31 video and upload that. I think that will work... tomorrow!

 

[radhak]

Not sure about the problems you are having - my wife uploads a number of videos to Picasa and I've not heard her complain too much (and yes, she's the complaining type ), so I thought it should be easy enough. I hope you are able to resolve your issues nicely.

As for the account limits, you are supposed to have a total of 1 GB limit to one account, but most of your pictures and videos will not count towards that limit, because, "Photos up to 2048 x 2048 pixels and videos up to 15 minutes won't count towards your free storage". So if your videos are less than 15 minutes in length and less than 1GB of size, you could upload a lot of those.

YouTube is not a bad option either, if you get fed-up with Picasa. You can create your own 'channel' (ie, your login / account) and upload, and all your videos will be in the same place. And yes, YouTube does not have the limitations.

I can personally vouch for Youtube - it even takes .mts files (HDef) and seamlessly converts to appropriate formats; I never had to bother about that.

 

[shortylickens]

Picasa is just junk AFAICT. I uploaded 4 movies to my album and can't find them. One image among the 91 photos is a big red X and appears to represent a video, but there's no way to play it. WTF How can this be? Google supposed to be such a huge successful high end tech company. Why does this thing not work?

I didnt even know Picasa did videos.
Doesnt google also own Youtube?

 

[ViviTheMage]

I use zen with my own web hosting...I assume you are looking for a free solution though?

or you could use that free image hosting that the AT guy made, I think it's bbzzdd.com?

 

[Muse]

I use zen with my own web hosting...I assume you are looking for a free solution though?

or you could use that free image hosting that the AT guy made, I think it's bbzzdd.com?

Yes, I suppose "zen" you're talking about is software?

Yes, a free solution (I don't get paid for what I do at the radio station). I'm having better luck now. I'm at the moment reencoding the .MOV file that's larger than 1GB so I can upload it to Picasa, using Handbrake, a free utility. My first attempt worked but the video quality was pretty bad, so I'm reencoding with different settings. Handbrake has a ton of options, so I'm playing it be ear here. Got some suggestions in this thread here:

canon powershot videos super huge file size

 

[Muse]

As for the account limits, you are supposed to have a total of 1 GB limit to one account, but most of your pictures and videos will not count towards that limit, because, "Photos up to 2048 x 2048 pixels and videos up to 15 minutes won't count towards your free storage". So if your videos are less than 15 minutes in length and less than 1GB of size, you could upload a lot of those.

YouTube is not a bad option either, if you get fed-up with Picasa. You can create your own 'channel' (ie, your login / account) and upload, and all your videos will be in the same place. And yes, YouTube does not have the limitations.

I can personally vouch for Youtube - it even takes .mts files (HDef) and seamlessly converts to appropriate formats; I never had to bother about that.

Don't know that I can post the stills at Youtube, so an integrated solution at Picasa would seem to be preferable.

Thanks for that info on the file size limitations/unlimitations at Picasa. If I don't like the ~500MB reencoded version I'm making ATM (will be done in about 1 hour), I'll upload the slightly truncated ~970MB version made with Canon's Zoombrowser EX utility. It doesn't support reencoding, but does do simple chops. The only way to know what it will look like for me is to upload it and run it from my Picasa web album. My machine does a lousy job with my videos locally, it seems.

 

[ViviTheMage]

yeah, handbrake is free and will make it more manageable.

imgur.com, is that not free?

 

[Muse]

yeah, handbrake is free and will make it more manageable.

imgur.com, is that not free?

I'm very impressed with Handbrake. Whoever made it (evidently in France), has great command of English. The interface is complex but evidently very intelligently conceived and created. There's tooltips (optionally, like so many things in there). Don't know about help, it's got so much in there that's a head scratcher for someone who doesn't know much about encoding.

I don't know what imgur.com is about, never heard of it before. Handbrake appears to be just the thing I need for dealing with my ELPH created HD videos, and yes, it's free.

 

[shortylickens]

Half the pics in the Hume thread are from IMGUR. Its fast and pretty reliable. Not as good for managing albums as Picasa is.

 

[Muse]

The Handbrake generated .mp4 encoding of the 1.1GB .mov file is 570MB and plays reasonably well from the Picasa web album, I'll leave it be. I have a couple of smaller .mov files to upload (180MB and 159MB) , one's uploading right now, and I'll be done and can post the link to the other radio station personnel. I deemed one of the videos too trivial to include, so there will be 5 total. Haven't figured out how to set up a queue to upload (I tried, with no success), so I'm doing it one at a time. Discovered the hard way that if you leave the uploading page the upload terminates as if it never existed. Picasa IMO leaves a lot to be desired. I suppose if you get the hang of it, it's reasonably sufficient. Would be nice if they accepted videos larger than 1GB, I never would have had to go through all this.

Picasa absolutely is buggy. I uploaded files to my preferred album and they wound up in their own album designated by today's date, the default. I'd absolutely changed to my preferred album prior to uploading the files (one at a time, there appears to be facility to set up multiple uploads, but I couldn't get that to work). I had to move the files after the fact. It's fairly mature software, you'd think they'd have tested it, or at least worked out the bugs.

 

[radhak]

Checked with my wife - and she says she prefers Picasa for pictures and Youtube for video. She says Picasa is okay with the odd video or two, but if you have a bunch, you should go Youtube. Maybe you could split it that way - pics in one place and video in another?

If you have never tried Youtube you'd be pleasantly surprised by the ease of upload there compared to the problems you are facing in Picasa. You'd not need to downsize most videos, and you can definitely queue up a bunch of them to upload simultaneously, and of course the access rights are very finely manageable.

 

[antef]

I recently put a bunch of pictures and videos from a trip onto my G+ albums via Picasa and it worked great. The videos were 1080p .mov files, they uploaded at full size/resolution but don't count towards any space because they're all under 15 minutes. Then I shared the album link and people can watch the videos right alongside viewing the photos. It defaults to 480p or something playback but you can click the gear and change it 720 or 1080 and it plays back great. Very happy with it.

You shouldn't have problems if they're not too long, but I'm not sure about videos >1 GB. You were able to get them to show up in the Picasa software? I just had to install QuickTime before they would show up.

 

[Muse]

I recently put a bunch of pictures and videos from a trip onto my G+ albums via Picasa and it worked great. The videos were 1080p .mov files, they uploaded at full size/resolution but don't count towards any space because they're all under 15 minutes. Then I shared the album link and people can watch the videos right alongside viewing the photos. It defaults to 480p or something playback but you can click the gear and change it 720 or 1080 and it plays back great. Very happy with it.

You shouldn't have problems if they're not too long, but I'm not sure about videos >1 GB. You were able to get them to show up in the Picasa software? I just had to install QuickTime before they would show up.

The Picasa web album AFAIK is completely independent of the Picasa application that runs locally, except insofar as you can upload to a Picasa web album using the local Picasa app. Picasa as an app kind of concerns me. It wants by default to suck in every JPG it sees on your drives. I'm not at all sure I want to let it do this, but haven't sorted it out yet. I think you can turn off that feature. I just haven't given it the time to figure out how I like it. One thing I certainly don't like is the fact that the Picasa application doesn't appear to have a very useful photo editing functionality. It gave me about 3 choices for crops, I wasn't even able to set my own crop boundaries, which is very disconcerting. I could have used a different application to crop the approx. 40 JPGs, I wanted to crop, but because I was in a hurry, I just accepted Picasa's very kludgy cropping tool's suggestions, one or the other and was done with it. I only had so much time to devote to the album, wanted to get it up and send out the link.

I don't believe you need Quicktime installed to view the .mov videos in Picasa web albums. All that's handled by Picasa's servers.

It defaults to 480p or something playback but you can click the gear and change it 720 or 1080 and it plays back great. Very happy with it.

I didn't realize the videos defaulted to 480p or that you can change that to 720p or 1080p. I just experimented with it. On my desktop system, the 720p looks really nice, but the high res is choppy and even looks slow mo at times. I think a lot depends on the power of the system you are using to access the videos.

I have a couple more Picasa web albums I want to create in the next few days, parties I've gone to over the last month. I think parties make super web albums, at least the ones I've gone to lately.

 

[antef]

The Picasa web album AFAIK is completely independent of the Picasa application that runs locally, except insofar as you can upload to a Picasa web album using the local Picasa app. Picasa as an app kind of concerns me. It wants by default to suck in every JPG it sees on your drives. I'm not at all sure I want to let it do this, but haven't sorted it out yet. I think you can turn off that feature. I just haven't given it the time to figure out how I like it. One thing I certainly don't like is the fact that the Picasa application doesn't appear to have a very useful photo editing functionality. It gave me about 3 choices for crops, I wasn't even able to set my own crop boundaries, which is very disconcerting. I could have used a different application to crop the approx. 40 JPGs, I wanted to crop, but because I was in a hurry, I just accepted Picasa's very kludgy cropping tool's suggestions, one or the other and was done with it. I only had so much time to devote to the album, wanted to get it up and send out the link.

I don't believe you need Quicktime installed to view the .mov videos in Picasa web albums. All that's handled by Picasa's servers.
I didn't realize the videos defaulted to 480p or that you can change that to 720p or 1080p. I just experimented with it. On my desktop system, the 720p looks really nice, but the high res is choppy and even looks slow mo at times. I think a lot depends on the power of the system you are using to access the videos.

I have a couple more Picasa web albums I want to create in the next few days, parties I've gone to over the last month. I think parties make super web albums, at least the ones I've gone to lately.

Yes, you can definitely choose where it looks for pictures, I have mine only looking in My Pictures. I always thought it had decent editing tools but I've never really tried them much.

What you need QuickTime for is to see .mov files locally in the Picasa app and to upload them via the program. Without QuickTime, the files won't show up in the Picasa app at all. This forces you to upload from the browser, and when I tried this the full resolution wasn't preserved. As soon as I installed QuickTime however Picasa was able to see the videos alongside all my pictures and uploaded them in full res when I synced the album.

Smooth playback definitely depends on the computer, but 720p looks good enough and should be smooth even on an old single core CPU with a gig of RAM.

Definitely give it a shot with another batch of pictures and post back your results.