How to Add/Take Videos with Your Palm Pre!
The other day, I noticed the PreCentral that someone has hacked the Palm Pre to shoot videos. Well, it took me awhile to follow the directions but I finally got it working.
Beauty of open source, when you make something open source, you get all these hackers flocking to make free apps. This video hack example proves how quickly the open source community can develop programs. (faster than Palm development team!)
The video right now does 320×240 pixel only and there’s no sound but I am finding that the video feature is a cool add-on until Palm developers make it part of their default apps. And certainly, this video hack proves that video will be added on to the Pre in the near future.
Here’s step-by-step instructions for computer-dummies so you can enable this cool video feature.
1) Download video-cam-test.zip here. (via PreCentral Forum) Unzip it of course.
2) Download both WebOSDoctor(Sprint or Bell), download WebOSQuickInstall from PreCentral and put them in the same directory like this:
*NOTE: If you don’t have Java installed, you will need to install it, just goto Java.com to install. If you can run WebOSQuickInstall.jar, you have Java installed so…
3) Click on WebOSQuickInstall.jar and it should automatically install any files needed. (for the first time)
4) Then connect your Palm to your computer via a USB cable.
5) Then click on the “+” button on your WebOSQuickInstall program and select both ca.canucksoftware.videocam_0.1.1_all.ipk and com.canucksoftware.videorectest_1.0.0_all.ipk.
6) Now, click on “Install!” and it should install on your Palm Pre.
7) Reboot (Power OFF and ON) your Palm Pre.
You should see new app like this: (Press IT!)
9) Hit the “ON” button on your Pre.
10) Hit “Start Rec” to start recording and “Stop Rec” to stop.
11) Now, this app doesn’t actually show you the video itself while its recording so you will simply have to shoot your Pre. (somewhere…)
12) To re-play your videos, you will need to transfer the MP4 files to your computer.
To do this, connect your Pre to your computer via USB cable and choose “USB Drive” option.
13) Browse your Palm on your computer and you should see MP4 files in the root directory such as “09_29_09_04_48_20.mp4″ which is basically timestamp for your videos.
14) Copy the MP4 videos over to your computer and either use SMPlayer to view the videos or upload to YouTube.
*NOTE – I found that the portable SMPlayer works the best, don’t use the install version, I haven’t got those to work.
Enjoy~
FULL VIDEO Step-by-Step directions on how to install the video hack on your Palm Pre for computer dummies:
(Download This YouTube Video using FREE FLVDirect software)
Test videos I made:
My first video with Palm Pre in front of mirror:
My second using whiteboard:
My third while at Fishermen’s Wharf:
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October 9th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
Do you plan on adding audio sometime?
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October 10th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
Thank you for this nice Tutorial!
I will translate it in german Palm Pre Forum
regards
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October 10th, 2009 at 11:43 pm
I didn't make this but I think audio should be available soon or later, this is just the beginning I think.
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October 12th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
hey
i got an error no device found. i already connected the palm via a USB cable. but the webOS can't find it. help
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October 12th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
make sure your pre is in developer mode
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October 13th, 2009 at 11:04 pm
what is develope mode?
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November 21st, 2009 at 7:28 pm
Thanks for this- I got it to work- however the videos play back only with SM player and they are sped up/playing at least twice normal speed and SM player doesn't seem to show the progress bar when playing- any idea why and how to stop this? what are the start rec alt1 & start rec alt2 buttons for? thanks
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December 22nd, 2009 at 11:55 am
Can some1 help , QuickInstall is not connecting to my Pre ” Error No device detected ” . My pre is connected to my computer , I can see it on My Computer .
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December 22nd, 2009 at 12:20 pm
What is the develope mode. Quick Install is not reading my pre. Thanx
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January 25th, 2010 at 6:58 pm
The video supported by Palm Pre is MP4, 3GP we usually used. I like to use Moyea Video Converter to convert any other video format like FLV, AVI, MKV, M2TS, VOB, SWF, F4V, MVI, VP6, MOD, etc to MP4 (H.264, AAC encoded) or 3gp (h.263, AMR encoded) for playing in Palm Pre, I like to set the resolution to 320*480, framerate to 29.97kps, and this converter can give me the best quality, fast speed, lifetime free update, good services and so on.
http://www.my-video-converter.com/video_converter/
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January 31st, 2010 at 10:43 pm
Mine keeps saying that ca.canucksoftware.videocam is not running, and ive triend installing it again, no luick
any sugestions?
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February 26th, 2010 at 9:52 pm
I have the same problem, my pre display an error “ca.canucksoftware.videocam is not running” when i turn on the videocam.
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