Can you help me create a video-sharing workflow?

Hi all,

I’d like to be able to send short videos of myself to customers to answer fast questions, say HI, help with small issues, etc. Here’s what I’d like to be able to do:

  • Record short videos on my Mac and/or iPhone/iPad
  • Quickly and automatically have those videos synced up to the cloud
  • Have an URL generated automatically linking to the video that I can then copy/paste into an email or Slack message to a customer
  • Allow for viewing on any platform, regardless of what technology the customer is using

I doubt I’ll record long videos (most will be 5 minutes or less) and then don’t need to be shareable to many people. Mostly, only one person will need to see it and it can vanish shortly after that.

There are several, paid services such as BombBomb, Bonjour, and Covideo that offer version of this. I’m happy to pay for a service that does this well, but so far the ones I’ve looked at are either very expensive (starting at $50 a month and up for one person) or seem to have buggy software and weird user interfaces.

Wondering if there’s a way this could work with some combination of iCloud, Dropbox, and/or Hazel. I already use all of those.

Any suggestions? Thanks a ton for your advice!

Dave

You could use QuickTime to the record the videos, save it to Dropbox, get a link to the file, and have Hazel delete the file automatically X days after it was created for you.

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I definitely think this is do-able, and would suggest dropbox-uploader.sh to use to get the Dropbox share link after Hazel moves the file into place.

It takes about 10 minutes (or less!) to setup Dropbox-Uploader the first time, and it’s terrifically handy.

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I’ve been looking for something like this on my Mac! TJ, you’re a hero :smiley:

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Like @RosemaryOrchard said: dropbox is your friend here.
I myself have 2 folders in dropbox that are monitored by Hazel, one for files I share for 1 day and files I share for a week.

I drop a file in the folder (usually a short video), get the share link and post it, after the given amount of time Hazel removes the file, so cleaning up is automatic.

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Awesome! I’m so glad I mentioned it. I often fall into the trap of thinking everyone must know about the stuff that I know about.

dropbox-uploader.sh is a handy tool for working around the fact that the Dropbox app itself is entirely un-scriptable, and has lots of other features as well.

The other thing I sometimes use it for is uploading a file when Dropbox is either not running or busy syncing other files. Because it is accessing Dropbox directly, you can get it uploaded faster than if you waited for the app to sync.

FYI - it can be installed via brew install dropbox-uploader but when you go to use it, the name of it is dropbox_uploader.sh. I think brew has a thing against underscores. Because reasons. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The first time you run it, you’ll have to go through the process of setting up Dropbox OAuth, but the script walks you through all of the necessary steps, and it’s a one-time setup, and well worth the hassle.

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