For version 1.2.1
SelectCam is copyright © 2007-2009 by P. Douglas Reeder. All rights reserved. Other programs are coprighted by their respective owners. Mention of other programs is for informational purposes, and does not convey any endorsement.
Introduction
SelectCam is a videocamera application for Palm OS handheld devices for users who want to get the most out of their device. Videos are higher quality than the built-in Camcorder application. A single control on the main form can select the best possible quality, the most compact file size, or anything in between. Videos can be directly uploaded to YouTube, and links can emailed to your friends.
Any video resolution supported by the camera can be selected, not just the two allowed by the built-in Camcorder application. Digital zoom is supported. Every encoding parameter can be tuned: Videos can be optimized for maximum quality play on desktops or minimum size for emailing to low-powered cell-phones. Videos can be optimized for fast motion or swifter encoding, for continuous play or ease of editing. Videos are encoded using the MPEG-4 Part 2 Advanced Simple Profile (ASP) codec, which is more efficient than the H.263 codec used by Camcorder on GSM devices.
Videos can be named as you record them — no more sifting through cryptically named files to find the right one! Date and time can added to filenames automatically.
Skip to navigationInstallation
HotSync the file "SelectCam Installer 1.2.x.prc" to your Palm. The application and two libraries (Bignum Library and RSA Library) will automatically be installed.
The free trial version of SelectCam is limited to taking videos up to ten seconds long, and uploading videos up to 450k in size. When you buy a license, be sure to enter your HotSync name exactly as shown. (You can see your HotSync name by selecting "License..." from the "Options" menu.) After you buy a license, select "License..." from the "Options" menu and enter the license code you received. This allows you to record and upload videos of unlimited length.
Skip to navigationBasic Operation
- Set the video quality by selecting a preset from the pop-up list.
- Enter a title for the video in the Title field.
- Press the Record button to start recording. The Record button will change to the Stop button
- Press the Stop button to stop recording.
- To pause recording, press the Pause button. The pause button will flash green to remind you that the recording is paused. To resume recording, press the Pause button again.
- To set the directory where videos are stored, select the "Set Save Directory..." command from the "File" menu. The standard location for video files is in the /DCIM directory, or one of its subdirectories, but you can save videos wherever works best for you.
- The factory presets labeled "good" and "best" require a fast SD card. See the section below titled "Using Temporary Files" in "Advanced Operations".
- Version 1 of SelectCam does not record audio.
Playing SelectCam Videos
SelectCam records video using MPEG-4 Part-2 Advanced Simple Profile (ASP) encoding, contained in a QuickTime file. (DivX, XviD, 3ivx, Microsoft MPEG-4 and Apple MPEG-4 are all implementations of MPEG-4 Part-2 ASP. They store encoded video in various file container formats.)
To play your videos on your handheld, you'll need a third-party video player. TCPMP, CorePlayer and MMPlayer are known to work. The built-in player ("Media" on Treo 650s, "Photos & Videos" on later models) does not support QuickTime containers, nor MPEG-4 Part-2 ASP.
Most desktop computers already have a suitable video player installed. If a player supports "MPEG-4 video" it likely can play the files produced by SelectCam. (Windows Media Player is one of the few that can't.) In your favorite video player, look for an "Open File..." command in the "File" menu. (Double-clicking on the video file on the desktop may or may not open a suitable player.)
| OS | Application | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| (any) | Windows Media Player | no |
| (any) | QuickTime Player | 3rd party codec required; see paragraph below |
| Windows XP | VLC | yes |
| Windows XP | Miro | yes |
| Windows XP | RealPlayer | yes |
| Mac OS X | VLC | yes |
| Mac OS X | RealPlayer | yes |
| Mac OS X | DivX Player | yes |
| Palm OS | Media/Photos & Videos | no |
| Palm OS | TCPMP | yes |
| Palm OS | CorePlayer | yes |
| Palm OS | MMPlayer | yes |
To play your videos in Apple's QuickTime Player (available for Mac OS X and Windows), you will need to install a third-party MPEG-4 Part-2 ASP codec, as Apple's MPEG-4 decoder declines to play videos recorded by SelectCam. 3ivx and DivX are known to work.
Videos recorded at 352x288 (CIF) resolution cannot be displayed at full resolution on Treos or Centros; you must play them on another device (such as a TX in landscape mode) to see the full resolution.
Skip to navigationSharing Your Videos
SelectCam records video to files on your SD card, or to the hidden internal drive on your handheld. Files on an SD card can be e-mailed, beamed, or sent via Bluetooth using a utility such as FileZ, Resco Explorer, or VFS Exchange. Files can be transferred to a desktop computer using a hardware card reader, or via USB drive emulation software such as Card Export from Softick or Missing Sync from Mark/Space. (Missing Sync drive emulation does not work under OS X 10.5 "Leopard".)
Some digital cameras and other handheld electronics can play QuickTime videos stored on SD cards.
No conduit is provided to sync your videos to a desktop computer. If you own Missing Sync, you can use its Folder Sync conduit. Configure a folder on your handheld (such as /DCIM/SelectCam/upload) to sync to a folder on your hard drive (such as ~/incoming/videos). Set the sync Direction to "Handheld overwrites desktop" or "Synchronize"
YouTube Upload
You must have a verified YouTube account to upload videos. Sign up at www.youtube.com. You do NOT need to create a "mobile profile".
Service is provided by Google, which sets terms and conditions at their sole discretion. This application uses the interface currently documented by Google, but Google may change the interface in incompatible ways. This application is not endorsed by Google.
Your mobile provider's data charges apply, so please make sure you have a flat-rate data plan. Also, check to see if you have a monthly data limit, since video can require up to 10 megabytes per minute.
(If you have a Wi-Fi sled, you can upload for free, when you're connected to a free Wi-Fi network. If a friend has a Palm TX or LifeDrive, you can put the SD card with your video in it, and upload the file using its Wi-Fi connection and a copy of SelectCam.)
- Select "Upload to YouTube..." from the "Online" menu.
- Select the video file using the file dialog. It can be a video file taken by SelectCam or the Camcorder application, or even by a digital camera that uses SD cards.
- Enter a title, description, category and tags (keywords) in the YouTube Video Upload dialog.
The description should be sentence-based, rather than a list of keywords. You can enter up to 255 characters in the description field, although only two lines are displayed. You can cut and paste text using the Edit menu.
Tags may be separated by spaces or commas. Use dashes, not spaces, in compound words.
By default, anyone can view your video. If you check the Private checkbox, no one will be able to view your video until you visit youtube.com and add them to the list.
- Enter your YouTube username and password into the login dialog.
SelectCam never stores your password, only the security token returned by YouTube. If you have entered your username and password recently, this dialog won't appear.
- Upload progress messages will be displayed in the status display. While a video is uploading, you can use SelectCam (but recording video will probably produce unsatisfactory results). Do not switch to another application, or the upload will abort.
- When the upload completes (or fails), a dialog will inform you. (You may then switch to another application.)
The YouTube servers will then start checking to see if the file duplicates an earlier upload, violates copyright, or is otherwise unacceptable.
This will take several minutes to several hours, depending on how busy YouTube is.
To find out the status of your upload, visit www.youtube.com
You can email a link to your video now, or select "Email Link To Last Upload" from the "Online" menu later.
- Optionally, log into YouTube and add a soundtrack to your video with the AudioSwap feature, or captions or subtitles using the Captions and Subtitles feature. (You'll probably need to do this with a desktop computer — web browsers for Palm OS handhelds aren't quite up to the task.)
You can email SelectCam videos using your usual email application. See its documentation for how to attach files to an email. Video files can easily fill up your recipient's inbox, so be thoughtful.
You can also email a link to the last video you uploaded to YouTube. Select "Email Link To Last Upload" from the "Online" menu. This will launch your registered email application with most of the email filled out already. SelectCam remembers your last upload, even after it exits, so you can upload a video from your handheld, add a soundtrack (using YouTube's AudioSwap feature) when you're next on a desktop computer, then email a link from your handheld when you find someone who might like to see your video, even weeks later.
Skip to navigationAdvanced Operation
Custom Settings
The camera resolution and zoom can be adjusted in the Format Preferences dialog, accessed from the "Options" menu. You can also choose to save video uncompressed, if you plan to edit it on a desktop computer. You can select whether video is saved to a temporary (.temp) file, and whether .temp files are immediately encoded. (See the "Using Temporary Files" section below.)
MPEG-4 encoding parameters can be set in the MPEG-4 Encoding Prefs dialog, accessed from the "Options" menu. See the Controls section below for details.
Custom settings can be saved as a Preset. A number of presets are already set up for you. To create a new preset, adjust the settings in the Format Preferences and MPEG-4 Encoding Prefs dialogs, then select "Save Prefs as Preset..." from the "Options" menu. To delete a preset, select "Delete Preset..." from the "Options" menu.
To move a preset to the bottom of the list:
- Select an existing preset from the pop-up menu on the main form.
- Select "Save Prefs as Preset..." from the Options menu, and save the preset with the same name.
- Select "Delete Preset..." from the Options menu, and select the original preset from the list.
If you delete all presets, the default presets will be re-created. You may have more than one prest with the same name.
Using Temporary Files
The best quality videos can be achived by recording raw video to a temporary (.temp) file, then encoding it in a second pass. This requires an SD card that can write quickly. (Ideally, 3 MB/sec.) Due to idiosyncracies of Palm's implementation, it also helps to use an SD card that has only a few files on it and is mostly empty.
Several default presets which use temp files are included. You can also enable temp file usage by checking "Record to Temp File" in the Format Preferences dialog accessed from the "Options" menu. If you check "Encode Temp File Immediately", the encoding pass will start automatically, after you press the Stop button. The encoding pass can take two to five times as long as the recording pass.
If "Encode Temp File Immediately" is unchecked, you can take another video without waiting for the previous video to encode. Temp files take a lot of storage, so don't wait forever to encode them. To encode them, select "Encode Temp File..." from the "File" menu and navigate to the temp file. The resolution of the final video is determined when the temp file is recorded. (Set it in the Format Preferences dialog.) The compression and other parameters of the final video are determined during the encoding pass. (Set them in the MPEG-4 Encoding Prefs dialog.) You can even encode a temp file several times, with different MPEG-4 settings. Later versions will overwrite earlier versions.
Skip to navigationControls
Main Form Controls
Presets Popup List
The factory presets cover many situations but you can add as many presets as you like. Set parameters in the Format Preferences and MPEG4 Preferences dialogs (see Options Menu, below) and use the "Options|Save Prefs as Preset..." menu item to save them.
The "smallest file" and "med." (medium quality) factory presets record directly to a movie file. They work well with average-speed SD cards. The "good" and "best" factory presets record to a temporary (.temp) file, then encode the temp file to a movie file. This requires an SD card with a fast write speed (ideally, 3MB/sec.), but produces the best possible videos from your handheld. The "352x288 temp" factory preset only records to a temp file. See "Using Temporary Files" in "Advanced Operations" above.
Title Field
Set the title for your video here. You can cut, copy and paste using the Edit menu commands. The video file name includes the title.
Record and Stop Buttons
Press the Record button to start recording. It will change to the Stop button. Press the Stop button to stop recording.
Pause Button
While recording, press the Pause button to pause recording. The bars will flash green to remind you that recording is paused. Press pause again to resume recording.
Pause also functions when encoding a temp file.
Elapsed Time Display
This display lies above the record button. While recording, the elapsed recording time is displayed, in minutes, seconds, and frames. There are fifteen frames in a second. While encoding a temp file, the time of the current frame is displayed.
Status Display and More Button
This display lies above the pause button and title field. When the application in opened, and when the Save Directory is changed, it displays the Save Directory. After recording is complete, it displays the name of the file written.
If errors occur, the status display will contain a short message, and the More Button (labeled "M") will appear. Tap the More Button to display a longer error message in an alert. In the error alert, you can tap the Details button, to see technical details of the error. This is mainly useful when reporting bugs.
Battery and Signal Strength Gadgets
To view the battery level and radio signal strength gadgets, tap the preset pop-up list, or select "Format Preferences..." from the Options menu. These gadgets will be visible in the upper-right corner of the screen.
File Menu
The menus can be accessed in the normal way: press the menu key, or tap in the upper-left corner of the screen. You can tap the upper-left corner of the screen even if the viewfinder is displayed.
Set Save Directory...
Opens the Select Directory dialog
The directory you are currently in is displayed just below the title bar. Tapping on the yellow button to its left changes to the parent directory of the current directory.
In the middle of the dialog is a list of files and directories in the current directory. Directories are listed with a slash at the end of their name. If there are more entries than will fit on the screen, arrow buttons will appear on the right side. Use the arrow buttons or the up and down buttons on the 5-way controller to move up and down in the list. Tap on a directory to enter it.
Tap on the "Save in this Directory" button to set the current directory as the place to store new videos. Tap on the "Cancel" button to exit the dialog without setting the Save directory.
Press the hardware menu button to open the help dialog.
To switch to the hidden internal volume (or back to the SD card), tap the pop-up menu in the upper-right corner. Files on the hidden internal volume use up storage memory and few video players or utilities can access them. Resco Explorer can copy files from the hidden internal volume to the SD card, but FileZ cannot.
Encode Temp File...
See the section "Using Temporary Files" in "Advanced Operations" above.
Create Subdirectory...
Creates a subdirectory within the Save directory, and makes in the new Save directory. Enter a name for the subdirectory in the dialog.
Delete File...
Opens the Delete File dialog. The current directory display, parent directory button, Cancel button, and volume popup function the same as in the Select Directory dialog.
In the list of files and directories, tapping on a file selects that file. An alert will ask you for confirmation before the file is actually deleted.
Edit Menu
The Edit Menu commands allow you to edit the video title. Note that you can copy text in a different application, switch to SelectCam, and paste it.
Options Menu
General Preferences
Opens the General Preferences dialog, which allows you to set how your videos files are named and whether the viewfinder is resized.
The filename of each video will always include its title. You can optionally add the date and time. At the top of the dialog, a sample filename is shown using the current settings.
Pushbuttons select whether the date is not included, included at the beginning, or appended. Select the date format from the popup menu. (If you want even more control over the date format, edit the field to the right of the pop-up.)
Time format controls are similar to date format controls.
The "Resize While Recording" checkbox appears only on the Treo 700p, Treo 755p, and Centro. If checked, your video will be stretched to fill the viewfinder while recording. Uncheck this to raise your frame rate slightly.
If the "Resize While Encoding Temp File" checkbox is checked, your video will be stretched to fill the viewfinder when encoding a temp file. Uncheck this to speed up enocding slightly.
Filename pattern and viewfinder resizing are independent of the presets.
Format Preferences
The Resolution pop-up menu displays all the resolutions your camera supports in video mode. (640x480 and larger resolutions are only available when using the camera as a still camera.)
The Zoom pop-up menu allows you to select between 1x and 2x digital zoom.
The Video Encoding pop-up menu allows you to set whether video is encoded using MPEG-4 part 2, or not compressed at all. Uncompressed videos are extremely large, but are useful if you are going to edit the video on a desktop computer - they avoid the loss of quality inherent in compression, and you can edit a video clip to start from any frame. Apple calls this component video.
If the "Record to Temp File" checkbox is checked, raw video will be written to a file with the extension .temp. If your memory card can write quickly (ideally, 3 MB/sec.), this is faster than encoding the video on the fly, and you'll get a better frame rate. This file must later be encoded.
If "Record to Temp File" is unchecked, the "Encode Temp File Immediately" checkbox has no effect.
If "Encode Temp File Immediately" checkbox is checked, after you stop recording, SelectCam will automatically enocde the raw video. This can take two to five times as long as recording.
If "Encode Temp File Immediately" checkbox is cleared, you can take another video right away. Later, you must select the "Encode Temp File" menu item from the "File" menu. Don't wait forever before encoding temp files, they are huge!
Selecting a preset changes the Format Preferences.
MPEG4 Preferences
A Target Bitrate of 0 means bitrate is set automatically. This is usually the best setting.
Large values of I-VOP Quantization compress more while small values give better picture quality and take more processing time. The useful range is 3 to 10.
Key Frames (a.k.a. Intra- or I-frames) are self-sufficient, while non key frames can only be decoded with the help of key frames. If you start playing in the middle of the video, the picture will be distorted until a key frame is decoded. Frequent key frames make seeking and editing easier, at a cost in file size. There are fifteen frames per second.
A larger Motion Search Range allows better compression of fast motion and moderately increases computation time.
The MVFAST and SEA pushbuttons select the motion estimation algorithm, Motion Vector Field Adaptation Search Technique or Successive Elimination Algorithm.
If you record to a temp file, you may encode the temp file several times, changng the MPEG-4 encoding parameters. New versions overwrite old versions
Selecting a preset changes the MPEG4 Preferences.
Save Prefs as Preset
This menu item creates a new preset with the current values of the Format and MPEG4 preferences.
Delete Preset
Removes a preset. This cannot be undone.
License
If SelectCam is not licensed, this menu item opens a dialog, which displays your HotSync name and you can enter your license code. When ordering on the MobiHand website, be sure to enter your HotSync name into the form exactly as shown! Capitalization and spacing matters! Spaces are optional when entering your license code, and you can use upper or lower case. You may find it easiest to copy your license code from the email and paste it in the License dialog.
If SelectCam is licensed, this menu item opens a dialog displaying your license code and HotSync name. Be sure to record them in a safe place in case your handheld requires a hard reset!
If you replace your handheld, be sure to set up your new handheld with the same HotSync name - your license will not work with any other HotSync name.
Online Menu
Upload to YouTube
See YouTube Upload above.
Visit YouTube Mobile
Visit the Mobile version of YouTube, using the Blazer web browser ("Web"). Older Palm OS handhelds can't display videos from YouTube, but you can always check the status of your videos.
This requires a data connection to the Internet. Your mobile provider's data charges apply.
Visit YouTube (Desktop)
Visit the full version of YouTube, using the Blazer web browser ("Web"). Blazer has trouble displaying the full interface, but some features aren't available in the mobile version.
This requires a data connection to the Internet. Your mobile provider's data charges apply.
Read Manual On-line
Read the SelectCam manual using the Blazer web browser ("Web").
This requires a data connection to the Internet. Your mobile provider's data charges apply.
Buy License
Connect to the MobiHand website to buy a license for SelectCam, using the Blazer web browser ("Web"). This requires a data connection to the Internet. Your mobile provider's data charges apply.
When you receive your license code from MobiHand, launch SelectCam, select "License..." from the "Options" menu, and enter your license code.
Check For Updates
Check if there is a more recent version of SelectCam, using the Blazer web browser ("Web").
This requires a data connection to the Internet. Your mobile provider's data charges apply.
Email Link To Last Upload
See Email above.
Disconnect
Disconnects any network connection currently active. This may be useful if you pay by the minute.
Skip to navigationSolving Problems
No Codec Available Alert
The ROM on your handheld lacks the MPEG-4 encoder: "MPEG4Encoder.prc".
At present, no third-party encoder is known to be available. While this file can be copied from another handheld into RAM, you should obtain professional legal advice as to whether this is legal in your jurisdiction. The Treo 680 has a buggy MPEG-4 encoder which crashes the handheld, so SelectCam does not attempt to use it.
You can still use the uncompressed encoding.
Tags Too Short Alert
Each YouTube tag (keyword) must be at least two characters long.
Videos Stop Recording At Ten Seconds
This is a limit of the free trial version of SelectCam. Buy a license (if you haven't already) at http://www.mobihand.com/product.asp?id=14801, or using the "Buy License" command from the "Online" menu. Then select "License..." from the "Options" menu, and enter your license code.
If you ever are forced to hard-reset your handheld, you'll need to re-enter your license code. Be sure to record it in a safe place!
If you replace your handheld, be sure to set up your new handheld with the same HotSync name - your license will not work with any other HotSync name.
No Camera Alert
This handheld does not have a camera, or the camera libraries have an incompatible interface. Pressing the record button will create a video file of changing colors. You can encode temporary video files recorded on other handhelds.
You can still upload videos to YouTube, if your handheld has the HTTP library from Palm.
Neither Record Nor Upload Alert
Uploading videos to YouTube uses the HTTP protocol.
Without a compatible camera or HTTP library, SelectCam can't do anything useful, and so will immediately exit.
Skip to navigationVersion History
| Version | New Features |
|---|---|
| 1.0 | initial release |
| 1.0.3 | digital zoom |
| 1.1 | YouTube upload uncompressed video cleaner operation on Centros |
| 1.2 | Send email with link to last upload visit YouTube read manual on-line upload works on handhelds without cameras battery and signal strength gadgets buy license check for updates |