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FAMILYCAM VIDEO UPLOADING FAQs |
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How do I Upload my own Movies? |
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If you have the means to extract your video from your own camcorder or your legacy tapes and get it onto your PC or your Mac yourself, you can use our special Movie Maker and Uploader application. You can extract your video onto your PC or Mac using a wide range of tools and techniques and we offer guidance on how to do this in our Video Preparation FAQs. The FamilyCam Movie Maker and Uploader app first converts your video files to a streaming quality format and then uploads them directly into your FamilyCam account.
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Does the FamilyCam Movie Maker and Uploader run on a Mac? |
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Yes. The current version is available for Intel Macs running OSX as well as for Windows XP or Vista PCs.
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What format should my movies be in for uploading? |
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We provide detailed guidance in our Video Preparation FAQs. Our FamilyCam Movie Maker and Uploader can accept a wide range of different video formats, for example:
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Quicktime MOV |
E.g. movies exported from Apple's iMovie |
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DV |
E.g. video captured directly from DV tapes |
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MPEG |
E.g. from a hard-drive camcorder |
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VOB |
E.g. from a recorded DVD |
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DivX AVI |
E.g. from any DivX conversion software |
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Other AVI |
E.g. from webcams and solid-state cams |
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MP4 |
E.g. from common video phones |
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M4V |
E.g. videos prepared for Apple iTunes & iPods |
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WMV |
Windows Media Video movies |
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In general, you should use the highest possible quality video source files when uploading using the FamilyCam Movie Maker and Uploader app.
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What does the FamilyCam Movie Maker and Uploader actually do? |
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When you give the FamilyCam Movie Maker and Uploader app a source video file to upload, it first checks that the video format is acceptable. It then converts the video to our standard FamilyCam streaming format which is H264-encoded MP4 video at 768kbps.
Once the Movie Maker and Uploader app has converted your video file to streamable MP4 format, it then uploads the MP4 video file to our servers where it will be transferred into your FamilyCam account.
By first performing a conversion to streamable MP4 on your PC or Mac, we can ensure that the time it takes to upload your video files is as short as possible.
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How long does it take to upload video with the FamilyCam Movie Maker and Uploader app? |
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One hour of MP4 video at 768kbps occupies approximately 350Mbytes. To upload a file of this size using a typical broadband uplink (0.5Mbps) should take approximately 90 minutes.
For comparison, one hour of video in pure 50Mbps DV format (extracted directly from a DV tape) occupies around 20Gbytes and such a file would take up to 4 whole days to upload. And even an hour of DVD quality video at 5Mbps would take about 8 hours to upload. This is why our Uploader performs the conversion to streamable MP4 first.
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Can I give the Movie Maker and Uploader app multiple video files to upload? |
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Yes. If you choose more than one video file to be converted and uploaded at the same time, the resulting MP4 movie will be comprised of all the video files you selected for that upload.
When choosing multiple video files to upload into one final FamilyCam movie, all the source files in the batch must be in the same format. If they are in different formats, the Movie Maker and Uploader application will alert you that it cannot deal with different formats in a single upload.
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Can I upload wide screen (16x9) video as well as standard 4x3? |
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Yes. Most modern camcorders capture video in wide screen 16x9 aspect ratio. For example if you have a modern hard-drive camcorder, you can copy the MPEG video files directly from the camcorder hard disc to your PC's hard disc and you can feed these MPEG files straight into our Movie Maker and Uploader app.
When the Movie Maker and Uploader app is given wide screen 16x9 video to upload it produces a 768kbps MP4 video file with dimension 720x404 pixels.
When the Movie Maker and Uploader app is given standard 4x3 video to upload it produces a 768kbps MP4 video file with dimension 720x540 pixels.
These are the two fundamental FamilyCam video streaming formats.
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How can I achieve the best possible quality using the Movie Maker and Uploader app? |
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If you would like to fine tune the preparation of your video BEFORE you give it to the FamilyCam Movie Maker and Uploader app, the best possible method is to prepare source files in exactly the correct H264-encoded MP4 format for direct upload to FamilyCam. We provide guidance on how to do this in our Video Preparation FAQs.
When the FamilyCam Movie Maker and Uploader app is given an MP4 file prepared at 768kbps (720kbps video and 48kbps audio) at a dimension of 720x404 (16x9) or 720x540 (4x3), it recognises that the format is perfect for FamilyCam streaming and it doesn't perform any conversion. It just uploads what you give it directly.
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Does the FamilyCam Movie Maker and Uploader support full HD video? |
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YES, we do now support video source files shot in full HD (1920x1080) or in "720p" HD (1280x720) on the latest HD camcorders. You MUST use the latest version (2.2.0) of our Movie Maker & Uploader app to encode and upload HD source video files.
We also support practically any non-HD format at all standard definition resolutions (720x480 NTSC, 720x576 PAL, 1024x576 PAL) plus any video resolution below these (from 320x240 upwards). And we support almost any framerate (15, 24, 25, 30 etc.) and a wide range of source formats (MOV, AVI, MP4, M4V, 3GP, WMV, MPEG2, VOB, DV, DivX) and a very wide range of compression codecs.
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Why does the FamilyCam Movie Maker and Uploader app fail when I use it at work? |
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Sometimes, especially in large companies with very strict IT security, the corporate firewalls are locked down and only allow basic web and email traffic in and out. All other "ports" are often blocked as a matter of routine policy. The FamilyCam Movie Maker and Uploader application uploads video to our ingestion servers through a special port (3742) and this can often be one of the ports blocked by corporate firewalls.
If you are affected by this, please contact your IT administrators first of all. They may be able simply to open port 3742 for you, and this will certainly pose no risk whatsoever because it is a harmless port number. However, if your company's policy prohibits any such change, you will only be able to use our uploader app at home.
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Questions?
Contact us |
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| Email: support@familycam.com |
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