I will show you how you can optimize videos from the Nokia N95, Nokia N93, and Nokia N93i for videoblogging. These Nokia phones are also camcorders that shoot DVD-like quality. That means high quality video-recording that fits in your pocket. However, if you are new to videoblogging, you will find out that even just 6 minutes of video from your Nseries phone can go more than 100MB of space, the max limit in popular video sharing sites, YouTube and blip.TV.

Other bloggers have recommended how to shoot videos with your Nseries phones, but I’ll share what you can do AFTER for sharing your videos with friends, family, or whoever you want on the web.

I can be technical and explain how amazing H.264 encoding is and how it helps increase the quality of your videos while decreasing the file size, but I’ll stick to what’s more important: the settings. Lowering your file size will make it faster to upload your videos to YouTube or blip.TV and enable you to fit more footage.

After editing your movie (I’ll write a more detailed HOW TO: Make movies with Your Nokia Nseries guide later on), choose export in whatever movie editing software you have and select these settings in the software used:

The Quick Way

Export: Movie to Quicktime Movie
Use: LAN/Intranet

…or the Advanced Way

Save the original movie file or your movie from iMovie, Final Cut, or your preferred software with these settings:

• Format: Quicktime
• Compression Type/Codec: H.264
• Frame Rate: 29.97 fps
• Size: 640 width x 480 height
• Key Frames: Every 150 Frames
• Frame Reordering: Yes
• Multi-Pass: Yes
• Data rate: 1405 kbits/sec
• Optimized for: Streaming
• Audio Format: AAC
• Audio Sample Rate: 48.000 kHz
• Audio Channels: Stereo (Mono for the Nokia N95)
• Audio Bit rate: 128 kbps

Using the settings above, an original 5 and a half minute video from the Nokia N93 with a file size of 117MB was converted to only 65.7MB, but I’ll still show you that the video also improved. Look at the comparisons below.

The H264 on the left has less noise than the original on the right

Original File Info shows a larger file

Encoded H.264 video info shows file size is cut in half

Large file size is probably the most common concern uploading to the web, but I just showed you how you can optimize your videos so that you can decrease the file size, fit more footage, and even improve the quality of your videos!

If you would like to share videos longer than 10 minutes it is recommended to decrease the resolution of the video. You should not have videos longer than 10 minutes though because the regular audience will not have the patience to sit and watch the whole thing. As a general guideline for H264 encoding, it is recommended:

• For a frame size of 640 x 480, choose a data rate of 1,500 Kbps.
• For a frame size of 320 x 240, choose a data rate of 700 Kbps.

With my current Nokia N93 capable of DVD-quality video, I like to keep my videos at the original resolution of 640×480 so my readers can see the phone’s capabilities.

I do not have the Nokia N95, but I’m sure the file size will even be lower because it only records in Mono audio: one channel audio. I would love to test one out for encoding videos.