I’ve been a fool.
You know when you’ve been doing something for so long that you don’t bother to see if there are other options.

On occasion, I’ll record a bit of video from my iPhone. On even rarer occasions, I want to send it immediately from wherever I am.
I have been sending it via Twitvid, but I’ve just discovered today, that you can upload it to YouTube directly from the camera application. And if you click the option to share it afterwards, it’ll give you the URL, so you can copy/paste it to Twitter.

But is that a good idea?

Uploading HD video is great, but O2’s 3G network is so slow, and it’s also capped. There’s a high chance of me topping my 500mb-a-month limit, with the size of HD video. As a comparative sample, I found a 10 second video clip I made in Birmingham a few months ago. It’s a guy in a duck suit wandering about outside a nightclub talking to people.

So as a test, I sent two versions to YouTube – one SD, one HD.
I also used a Twitter client to upload one to Twitvid.
From this initial test, considering I did all this over wifi, I have to say that the Twitvid version took ages. It took so long, I had to wake my phone from sleep, twice.
I then watched all of them on the phone, then on my computer.

I have to say the Twitvid version looks better, than YouTube SD.
This surprised me somewhat, so I downloaded it to my computer, and emailed myself the SD version from my phone.

The Twitvid one is bigger?
This is a bit of an issue for me. It’s nearly 200kb larger on a clip only 10 seconds long.
AND there are adverts to watch on Twitvid on the desktop. Not only does it take longer (in this test), and use more data, but it also makes people watch adverts.

The only time I don’t care about data, is when I’m on wifi – and then I can just upload the HD version to YouTube anyway.
So I think I’m just going to share it with YouTube in the future from the camera app at SD, unless I’m on wifi, in which case I could just upload the HD version.
Twitvid? Well..maybe as a backup.