Upload iPhone HD video to YouTube via Pixelpipe.

I saw a recent Apple Byte episode in which host Brian Tong mentioned that there is no way to upload a full 720p HD copy of a video captured on an iPhone 4 without first syncing to a computer. I can imagine why he would think that.

Just a few days after getting my shiny new iGadget I shot a video of my nephew playing with the garden hose in his backyard. He was having fun squirting himself in the face and the only camera on me was my iPhone. I downloaded iMovie for iPhone and created my masterpiece (isn't everything created on an Apple product a Masterpiece). I quickly found that the export to YouTube feature produces less than pleasing results. Come on Apple, 360p! While it is true that the iPhone 4s built in tools only provide for sharing of a compressed 360p version of a video I went back to the AppStore and found an app that allows me to upload the full quality video to YouTube and Vimeo.

Pixelpipe is a media distribution gateway that allows users to publish text, photo, video and audio files once through Pixelpipe and have the content distributed across over 55 social networks, photo/video sites and blogs, and online storage.

Before downloading the PixelPipe app I created an account on the main PixelPipe.com web site and setup a few "pipes" or destinations. I realized later that I could also have done this via the PixelPipe app. A "pipe" is the connector between the PixelPipe app and one or more destination sites where you want your content to be uploaded. For example, I set up pipes for flickr, picasa, and Dropbox and many others.

PixelPipe destinations

I setup some of my pipes as default routes. This means that any media I select to upload will automatically go to these default pipes. I have defaults for Dropbox and Box.net so that my photos or videos will be synced over the Internet to a folder on my iMac.

PixelPipe setup pipe

For each pipe I created, PixelPipe created a routing tag. The routing tag explicitly tells PixelPipe where to upload the content overriding any default routes. If you want your content routed to different photo sets you can create a routing pipe and tag for each one.

PixelPipe routing tags

Content uploaded equally well over both the AT&T cellular data network and Wi-Fi. I had no trouble uploading a 50 second iPhone 4 video (editing in iMovie) over the 3G network to YouTube. I showed the results in my prior post.

PixelPipe is not just a platform for routing images and video. It is also a micro-blogging platform as well as way to route content to other micro-blogging platforms such at twitter, tumblr and posterous. There is so much that PixelPipe does that I am feeling overwhelmed describing it all. Suffice it to say, that if you have a smart-phone device, PixelPipe provides a way to use that device to post your device created content out to the world.

Author: Khürt Williams

A human who works in information security and enjoys photography, Formula 1 and craft ale. #nobridge

2 thoughts on “Upload iPhone HD video to YouTube via Pixelpipe.”

  1. Hmm... I used to have this app... but as of today, I don't see it in the UK app store. Is it US only now? Or has it been removed again? Thanks.

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