Easy Mobile Video Converting…

Maybe you caught your Mom rapping around the kitchen to the latest T-Pain song. Maybe your baby just said her first word. Maybe your buddy is going to attempt to break the world record for quickest injury from skateboarding (seriously, he didn’t even put the board on the ground yet and his arm is already broken!). Regardless, the easiest way to catch these spur of the moment happenings is with your cell phone’s video camera.

The problem you run into is that for some unexplained reason, they decided to use some wacky format for cell phones that is different than what you use on your computer. Fortunately, we are going to find out how to convert that video so you can email to your friends or post it on your website.

First things first

You need to get the video to your computer. Unfortunately, I can’t give instructions that will tell you directly how to do this here. Some phones will be able to send it via multimedia message service (MMS) if the video file is small enough. Other phones may have a cord that will allow it to be hooked directly to a computer. My personal favorite is to email the video to myself since I have an unlimited data plan and a smartphone that can send emails.

If you need help doing this, use the contact information at the top to contact The Digitante and we can work together to figure out the steps to get that video loaded to your computer.

Step two

Once you have the mobile movie file on your computer with the extention .3GP, you need to download and install the converter program from DVD Video Soft. You have two choices:

1. Free Studio – This version will convert from almost any video format to a variety of video and audio formats. Additionally, it will download and upload YouTube videos and burn CDs and DVDs. WARNING: It will try to install a tool bar. Make sure you uncheck the box if you don’t want it.
2. Free 3GP Video Converter – If you don’t feel like you need all those other features, you can download the barebones version that converts 3GP videos to numerous formats. I grabbed this one for this walk-through.

Installation is a breeze and no configuration is required.

Number three

Once you have the program up and running, you need to do a couple of things.

As you can see, you will need to find the file you pulled off your cell phone. I’ve saved mine to a directory in my Videos folder called “Mobile Videos.” You can also do some simple editing of the video file.

Next you must choose where the video will end up when it is converted. I’ve chosen to output it to my Videos folder with the rest of my videos. You can also choose the naming convention to suit your needs.

Last, you can choose the format your final video ends up in. You can use most any of the presets provided, but please remember that if you have a cell phone with a poor quality video camera, choosing high quality setting is not going to improve your video. It will simply give you a larger file.

One option is to right click on your .3GP video file, select Properties from the menu, and click on the Details tab. This tab will tell you the height and width of your video and its frame rate. Matching these closely with the presets will provide you with the smallest resulting video file while still maintaining the original quality, or lack there of, of the original video. Remember that most cell phones are going to have pretty poor quality to begin with.

I ended up choosing the AVI economy preset.

Final step

Convert!

Here is the result. Its one of my little girls crawling and then eating my phone. To watch the video, please right click and then click “Play”.

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[/kml_flashembed]