While the iPad takes fantastic video, the upload options are limiting. Using the raw video for a podcast is simply not an option due to the large file size generated by the 720p HD video it shoots.
The best option, so far, seems to be recording then editing in iMovie. Once you have it in iMovie, you can export many different ways.
Since I am interested in podcasting and vodcasting, exporting to YouTube or Facebook wasn’t one of my goals. My goals were:
- Capture video on the iPad to use as a Vodcast.
- Export that video into a format that I can later upload to iTunes U (.mov, .mp4, etc.)
- Avoid using a desktop computer
That being the case, my only option was to export to the “Camera Roll.”
Once selected, you have 3 options: Medium, Large and 720p HD. There is no indication of the file size produced by these three options, so I tried each one.
By the way, any video exported to the iPad Camera Roll will need to be brought to your PC (via USB) or Mac (via iPhoto) if you want to make use of it. The iPad does not allow for uploading via the Safari browser, so you must grab the media off your device manually to do anything with it. So there goes bullet #3.
For a 4:30 video, the resulting files are in MOV format and the sizes were:
- 720p HD – 375 MB
- Large – 188 MB
- Medium – 126 MB
Thinking forward, if a normal lecture runs about :30 mins, even on “Medium” you are looking at a video wighing in at over 1 GB (if I did my math right).
That is just way too big for a podcast download.
Now if you were uploading lectures or classroom materials to YouTube or Vimeo, and storage/download size were not an issue, an iPad 2 with the iMovie app would be a great tool.
The iPad 2 is great for short-form movies, student-produced vignettes or even brief interviews – anything really, that is kept under 10 minutes.I’ve uploaded these to iTunes U with no problems at all!
However, attempting to produce a 30-minute video on the iPad for download via iTunes U would require some extra steps to get that file size down (namely, editing in the iMovie app, exporting to camera roll, then converting the vodcast down on a PC or Mac to a smaller file size).
Seriously, who wants to do all that work?
Still, the iPad 2 and the built-in HD video camera are a great resource, and are useful in many ways. But for creating long-form, download-able videos, I’d recommend exploring other methods.
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