App for simple video recording

[deshg]

Hey everyone,

I wasn't sure where to post this so have put it in general, hopefully someone can help!

My company conducts market research interviews with patients some of which involve video diaries that they record on their computer/phone and send back to us. Logistically it's a nightmare as everyone uses different software and have big problems sending the files to us when they are particularly large (and people who are non tech savvy have problems just recording the video).

Ideally i'm thinking the optimum way would be to have a simple ios (and ideally android) video recording app that allows a user to open it, press record and then record their video, then once recorded it has an option to upload the video to the cloud which we can then access. Ideally we would want to control the video format/quality etc through the app to ensure people aren't recording in too high a quality (whilst that sounds strange we don't need Ultra HD or 4K, standard SD mp4 would be fine and would make transferring the files much easier/quicker).

Obviously we could build one of these but that would be pretty expensive and time consuming so I wanted to see if anyone knows of any apps that do this or something similar that we might be able to use (paid apps are fine).

Failing this even if there was an equivalent program for windows/mac that we could use that links to the users webcam that would be better than the current setup at least.

Would love to hear if anyone knows of anything that might be suitable?

Thanks everyone!

Dave

[SameSelf]

Periscope?

[deshg]

Periscope?

Thanks for your speedy reply! I had not considered using periscope as these videos are extremely sensitive and if someone forgot to select private broadcasting (instead of public) then it would be accessible for all to see which would be very, very bad. But i suppose in theory if we massively reiterated this then they could broadcast privately just to us. However the main purpose is so that we can easily download a copy of all of the video files (they don't need to be streamed/viewed live) and my understanding is that periscope doesn't easily allow for this (it can be done but it won't automatically save a copy of all of these files into the cloud automatically)? Although i haven't actually ever used periscope so could be wrong?

Thanks so much,

Dave

[TreeTops]

" if someone forgot to select private broadcasting (instead of public) then it would be accessible for all to see which would be very, very bad."

You know that will happen. Murphy's Law.

Designate one person to do the uploading to whoever you decide to go with. Most companies are using Youtube today. Just make it private.

[deshg]

" if someone forgot to select private broadcasting (instead of public) then it would be accessible for all to see which would be very, very bad."

You know that will happen. Murphy's Law.

Designate one person to do the uploading to whoever you decide to go with. Most companies are using Youtube today. Just make it private.

Thanks Treetops, I agree Murphy's law will definitely occur! Unfortunately we can't designate one person to do the uploading, the point is that it's individuals recording videos themselves and then sending them to us so we need a facility that allows a relatively non tech user to take a video (as simply as possible) and upload it to somewhere in the cloud we can access (ideally as part of the same system). So we couldn't do it with youtube without sharing our login details to all users which would not be viable unfortunately.

[pandy]

Isn't better to allow people sent whatever they want and transcode video to common format locally?
IMHO simple script and ffmpeg should be able to deal with formats varieties.

[deshg]

Isn't better to allow people sent whatever they want and transcode video to common format locally?
IMHO simple script and ffmpeg should be able to deal with formats varieties.

This is what we're trying to avoid. The problem is more that this means everyone will use a different method to record it and as many are non techncial we need to explain to them how to do it and then how to upload/save the file (and then we need to reencode all files at our end). I'm trying to find a single super easy method that all users can use to record and upload files (either as part of an app or a website) so anyone can do it and we don't need to explain to each user separately how to do it using their specific camera/device/computer etc (some are very non technical). The file formats being the same isn't essential (as you say we can reencode if necessary) but if this is automated as well it would certainly make our lives easier. But the main point is to make the recording/uploading simple for the user (Eg visit this web page, click record, film yourself and then it will upload for you and you don't need to do anything else).

Today i have found the following 2 services which pretty much allow for this via web:
www.ziggeo.com
www.addpipe.com

If anyone knows of anything similar to these or has any opinions on them i'd love to hear them! FYI of the 2 above Ziggeo appears to be more user friendly.

Thanks!

Dave

[SameSelf]

My advice is to reach out to firms like Doctor On Demand and see what they are doing. I am certain that they keep records of the video consultation for insurance purposes. Not to mention that relying on a web app might expose you to ownership issues of the video. It is the reason professional content creators eschew Youtube in favor of Vimeo because by uploading content to Youtube you are essentially handing over the copyright to Google per their ToS, something that Vimeo does not do.

IOW, I would search for a b2b solution if I were you.