Monday, January 03, 2011

Saving Large Video Recordings From An iPhone

This is a pain. This needs to be fixed. Workarounds should not be needed, but for now we do what we must...

There is some kind of limitation on the iPhone 4 (and iPhone 3GS apparently) that will not allow you to download / save video that you have recorded if it is larger then about a couple hundred MBs. If you have recorded video on your iPhone of any significant length of time—and your file ends up being say, 1GB or so—you simply won't be able to copy it to your system. Picasa can't even do it.

The simplest workaround that I have found as I Googled:
  1. Use iTunes to Sync your phone
  2. Open up My Computer and navigate your way to C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\
  3. Open up the folder contained at this location (it'll have a lengthy name ce46da1123whatever)
  4. Select View → Details
  5. Select View → Size or click on the Size column label to sort in ascending or descending filesize
  6. Look for the largest file(s)
  7. Copy them to the location of your choice, rename them and add the .mov extension
  8. Done!

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