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This may sound ridiculous, but I have an iPhone 4 that I want to get some videos off of (vids that I took with the phone) and I cannot for the life of me figure it out! I searched everything I possibly could on Google, but couldn't find anything except how to sync movies to my iPhone... I just want to be able to put these videos on my computer so I can delete them and free up some space on my phone. Can someone give me a walk-through on how to do this?

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Climhazzard is the timeless evil robot who runs some of the cool stuff at CoN (mostly logging chat, since there are no quizzes at the moment), all the while watching and waiting for his moment to take over the world. -Tiddles

You might be the only person on the forums with an iPhone 4. I decided not to upgrade this generation in the hopes that next summer's version will be just a bit nicer, plus the fact that I really don't have any beef with my 3GS.

Now, that being said, with my 3GS I have never had any problems getting video off of it. On any of my Windows boxes, if I just plug the thing in via USB, it will load up just as if it were an external hard drive as long as I choose "Open Device to Display Files" when the autoplay menu comes up.

I guess the question becomes, what does happen when you try to connect the phone to the PC? And, a second question, since the iPhone 4 has a minimum of about 14GB storage once you stick the OS and such on there, what on earth kinds of videos are you taking where you need to free up space already?

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Well, my space isn't filled up or anything, but I do have a couple of 20 minute videos that I would like to get off there.

When I pplug my iPhone up and go into the photos like it's an external hard drive, it displays the videos like that are photos. It will tell me what kind of file the photos are (whether they are PNG or JPG), but it won't identify the videos, and although I can copy/paste the photos this way, if I try the videos it makes the computer lag terribly and then closes the the window with all the thumbnails in it, never transferring the video out of the phone.

Edit

I let it do it through the cam wizard this time and it transferred two out of five vids and failed on the other three. When I tried to play the videos it just opened them in the player and showed the beginning frame like it was a photo, with no option to play it. It's like they made them use a file type that only the iphone can recognize... and I never had a 3GS. I only had a 3G, so this is my first time messing with video on an iphone..

Edit

Okay, I'm having to just load them one at a time, and in irder to play them I have to click the 'view' tab and set it to 'fit to screen'. I still can't get the long videos though. I can only move the ones that are about five minutes.

This post has been edited by Sephiroth on 28th July 2010 14:53

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Climhazzard is the timeless evil robot who runs some of the cool stuff at CoN (mostly logging chat, since there are no quizzes at the moment), all the while watching and waiting for his moment to take over the world. -Tiddles

Well, the current gen still records in Quicktime MOV format, so if you have a QT player (which you almost certainly will if you've installed iTunes), they should be playing just fine. There's no "iPhone-only" or "Mac-only" type of proprietary formatting going on, so that's technically a good thing.

What you're describing as happening when you plug your phone into your PC is precisely what I would expect to see. The fact that it's lagging badly, though, would seem to indicate that there is a problem interfacing the phone to the PC over USB. Can you try plugging the phone into a different USB port or a different PC?

A brief Google search isn't finding anything similar to your issue, and it doesn't seem as if they've changed much in terms of the file system between iOS3 and iOS4 (I haven't upgraded to iOS4, though, so I can't be sure). So it would seem most likely to me that there is either an issue on the software side reading the contents of the phone, or the hardware side either in the USB controller on the port or PC, or even something hinky with the phone.

Were I you, I would say your next step should be a Genius Bar, as much as I hate to give props to Apple. At least they will be able to look at the phone physically and with their diagnostic tools, and can give anecdotal evidence if anyone else has come in with the same problem. That, of course, assumes two things: one, that you're in a location that has an Apple store nearish; two, that these videos are not homemade porn, in which case I would understand your desire to not go in to the shop with it.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

If it's a problem with compatibility Realplayer has a sweet little converter that's easy and free to use. You can download it from their website. All I can suggest aside from that is to download iTunes and let it do all the work. The two can probably synchronise.

I just thought, if your laptop has Bluetooth you could also try moving them across with that. That's how I moved my pictures over.

This post has been edited by sweetdude on 28th July 2010 15:08

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Scepticism, that dry rot of the intellect, had not left one entire idea in his mind.

Me on the Starcraft.

Quote (Rangers51 @ 28th July 2010 10:00)

Were I you, I would say your next step should be a Genius Bar, as much as I hate to give props to Apple. At least they will be able to look at the phone physically and with their diagnostic tools, and can give anecdotal evidence if anyone else has come in with the same problem. That, of course, assumes two things: one, that you're in a location that has an Apple store nearish; two, that these videos are not homemade porn, in which case I would understand your desire to not go in to the shop with it.

Haha! It's not home made porn, and I don't have an Apple store near me right now, but I'm moving to a city, on Monday, that does have one. I'll take it to them next week. Thanks for the help!

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Climhazzard is the timeless evil robot who runs some of the cool stuff at CoN (mostly logging chat, since there are no quizzes at the moment), all the while watching and waiting for his moment to take over the world. -Tiddles