Getting video online and into WordPress is more involved than moving iPhone images to a WordPress site. Firstly, you should realize that source video content should not be uploaded directly to your WordPress Media Library. Video content is data heavy and especially with HD quality video, you need a streaming video server, a standard Apache server with a WordPress installation can’t serve that much video data to your viewers. The server limitation is addressed by setting up a video stream service from You Tube or Vimeo. The solution is to embed the video’s URL into your WordPress post and a video player will pull optimized video content from the streaming server. Optimized video can have many parameters, compressed MP4 video would be a video format that allows for compression and is optimized to stream efficiently from a steaming server. You Tube or Vimeo will provide video streaming for free, but if you plan on providing HD quality video to your viewers, then you will need to upgrade to a paid streaming account. I purchased a Vimeo Plus account for $60 a year. With the Plus upgrade, Vimeo provides me with better video rendering and the capability to upload 1080p source video. Without a Plus account, Vimeo limits free-accounts to only limited HD 720p uploads. Don’t mess with the a free account if your goal is HD content on your site. All the quality HD content I have viewed on Vimeo have been contributed by authors with “Plus” status.

iMovie's video cam import options

Getting your iPhone video clips to your video editing application, in my case; iMovie, requires connecting your iPhone with a USB cable, and importing the clips with the video cam import button. There is also a wireless method of sending an iMessage to yourself with the desired video clip attached. Note: iCloud syncs only photos, not video, so iCloud is not an importing option to your Mac. Importing a lot of video into iMovie can be time consuming because iMovie must first generate thumbnail images of the imported video. I use the QuickTime player to do an initial edit of the poor clips, importing only video with potential into iMovie.

Uploading your finalized project within iMovie to Vimeo is easy just select Vimeo from the  Sharing Menu. Generally, you want to upload the best source video to Vimeo that you have, so click the  HD 720p or HD 1080p format. Then, from your Vimeo Plus account, you should review and select all your video settings to create your custom defaults. Take the time and create a preset theme for your video player, this will keep all instances of the video player looking and operating consistently within your WordPress site. Vimeo Plus users have additional video settings that basic accounts do not have, including; which domains can show your videos, as well as, hiding them from the Vimeo.com site. Many additional HD options with Vimeo are covered on their FAQ page.

The last step in getting your video online and into your WordPress post is the embedding step. I have not found a good WordPress plugin for importing Vimeo content yet, so you need to copy the necessary code snippet into your post editor in HTML mode. There are three ways to do this:

1. Paste the Vimeo URL into your post.
2. Use the Vimeo shortcode and an associated WordPress plugin.
3. Copy and paste the Vimeo iframe embed code into your post editor.

Universal embed player on iPhone WordPress post

Don’t use the first two, because they may not include the universal embed code and they may fail to scale your videos properly in mobile devices and tablet devices like an iPad. It will also ensure that the proper size and format (Flash vs. HTML5) is streamed to your device, letting Vimeo deal with the various sizes, devices, and formats required on the Internet. The iframe embedding HTML code is found in the embedding panel (Get Embed Code link) of your video’s settings when logged into your Vimeo.com account. You can reuse this code snippet for future video posts replacing the Vimeo id number and adjusting the width and height if desired.

OK, now the reality check from Vimeo:

“Note while 1080p is higher resolution, please be aware that it can take significant resources on your viewers’ computer and may cause choppy playback.”

You’ve got this awesome HD 1080 video content online but your viewers may not have the internet bandwidth, computer horsepower, or monitor resolution to see the video’s HD quality. HD 1080p video has twice as much data as HD 720p video. From my tests, it is very difficult to see the difference in quality between 720p and 1080p, unless your viewers enlarge your video to full screen mode and my guess is that most viewers don’t know about this option unless they are specifically reminded to view in full screen mode. It may make sense to provide just HD 720 video to your audience unless they are from South Korea and can pull down 50MB/sec. On the flip side, 1080p seems to be a standard resolution for many large screen electronics, so you might want to get your video content ready for the future.

iPhone camera to WordPress photo gallery

The best photography happens for me when I carry a small camera in my pocket at all times. The camera chip on my older iPhone was horrible and I deemed it unacceptable. The new camera chip (5 mega pixel) included within the iPhone 4 motivated me to upgrade from my older iPhone. A secondary goal was to eliminate my point and shoot Canon Powershot camera and carry just one camera; in my phone. I have always liked my Powershot, but having a decent camera integrated into a smart phone is just so much more practical and convenient when you want to travel simple and light. The whole process of getting pictures online can be accomplished with one device now. This post covers how I take iPhone pictures and upload them into a WordPress site with a NextGen photo gallery.

Here are the challenges: You have a bunch of trip pics that need to be uploaded, possibly image enhanced, resolution corrected, add a text image description, and finally, thumb-nailed and sorted within a photo gallery on a WordPress post or page. You might not have a computer or a wifi connection, and maybe you want to upload additional pics to your photo gallery as your trip progresses. The following process is how I get my photos online into my WordPress trip post.

Before I leave on a trip, I create a standard WordPress post for my trip. I also create a Nextgen photo gallery for my trip. Next, I embed the NextGen photo gallery into my WordPress post. Initially, I might not have any images for my photo gallery. As I start accumulating  photos of my trip, I upload my desired images to my WordPress server and FTP them into the desired NextGen gallery folder (yourdomain.com/wp-content/gallery/mytripfolder/). The only step I need to do in the WordPress/NextGen admin is to have the NextGen plugin scan for any new images uploaded recently. NextGen will scan my gallery folder for new pictures; resizing them, and creating the necessary gallery thumbnail images.

Below is a NextGen photo gallery of pics all taken with the iPhone 4 camera. If I need a wide angle shot, I use the Pano iPhone application. Pano can stitched together multiple pictures to create the wide panorama pictures you see in the gallery. The iPhone’s camera lens is flat and not optically adjustable, so the zooming function is created digitally; which usually results in poor image quality.

With the iPhone’s high resolution retina technology it is actually possible to do some image correction functions from the iPhone’s small but very crisp display. If I have an image that needs some tonal adjustment, cropping, or sharping, I can make those adjustments with my finger with Adobe’s Photoshop Mobile application. I have found that many of my iPhone’s images do not need much digital correction.

My images were uploaded from my iPhone’s camera roll with an application called FTP on the Go. This was the best uploading application with many FTP functions; including the ability to change image sizes and adjust server file permissions. It also works over Wifi, 3G, and Edge networks.

There are other options to get your iPhone pictures to your WordPress site. WordPress for iOS is an iPhone app that allows posting and uploading of pictures to a post. But the WordPress for iOS app can’t match NextGen when it comes to organizing and displaying multiple photos within a blog post.

Note: The pictures below were taken with iOS 4.01. Since then Apple has released version 4.1 which includes the HDR photography feature. HDR supposedly deals with pictures with varying light intensities and takes three pictures and combines the best areas of each of those adjusted shots. Ever taken a shot with a washed-out sky? This technology deals with those kind of challenging shots. I will experiment with HDR as soon as my jail broken phone allows me to update to iOS 4.1.

Started to upgrade blogs/sites to WordPress 2.8 today. Smooth sailing so far, the whole upgrading process is much easier now.