I’d hoped to ecstatically announce the discovery of a new Picasa feature that makes posting video blogging recordings to YouTube or Picasaweb extraodinarily easy, however I’ve begun to have sync issues with the tool and am in the process of troubleshooting the cause.
So instead of talking about how Picasa now includes a groovy new feature for recording of pieces to camera, which can then be quickly uploaded to either YouTube, Picasaweb, or both, I’ll have to outline the nature of the bugs I’m experiencing.
My first recording, which was 20 seconds long, worked like a treat. The recording process was dead simple. I was able to login to YouTube from within Picasa, provide metadata on the title, description and tags, and then sit back and watch the upload complete successfully at which point YouTube took over, processed the files and made them available shortly thereafter.
Picasa-YouTube video uploader
The problem emerged when I began to use longer pieces to camera. I’ve been on the same machine with the same connection the whole time. The only difference has been the duration of the clips. In the 3 attempts I made that went over 90 seconds apiece, all experienced sync issues that grew progressively worse over the course of the recording. See “Overview of Picasa Video Capture” below for an example.
Having just gone back and recorded a 49 second clip, I’ve found the shorter one was successful. Therefore my initial impression is the problem is somehow related to duration.
Unlike my previous experiences with audio-video sync issues (as outlined here), Picasa records the clips as Windows Media files, not QuickTime. So I’m not sure how much I can rely on the results of those tests – though the audio codec may certainly still be the culprit.
I’ll continue to troubleshoot this issue and will post my findings here. In the meantime if you have any experiences in this area please leave a comment to enlighten me.
Take One: Picasa 3 Webcamera Capture Test
Description: My first test recording.
Take Two: Overview of Picasa Video Capture
Description: I’ve just discovered that Picasa 3 has introduced a video capture option that enables you to record video messages or take still shots and upload them to the web. This clip covers the basics of the tool and discusses some of the technical hurdles I’ve experienced over the last 12 hours.
Take Three: Picasa Video Capture Troubleshooting
Description: Continuing to have trouble using Picasa 3′s new video capture tool. This is another test to see if duration of the clip has any affect. The only success I’ve had so far was the very first recording, which came in at 19 seconds. All subsequent attempts have failed – recordings have exceeded 90 seconds each.
YouTube indicates there was an error during the upload. Same clip uploads successfully in Picasa but then displays sync issues after processing.
Hi-
I’m having the same problem when creating a movie out of a photo slide show and uploading to You Tube. It goes through the whole process and then craps out at the end. I hope they jump on this quick. This is a great new feature, but it’s obviously not working. At least not for me! Keep us updated! Thanks
This is a shame Picasa video to youtube doesn’t work right. It was one of the reasons I was so excited about joining Picasa. I do hope the bugs are worked out quickly!
Strange behaviour from Picasa3 on all fronts it seems. I was able to capture exactly one video. Then, it seems, the trial period was over and I could capture nothing else – it just doesn't save anything.