Easily share Cycorder videos off jailbroken iPhones

Oct 02, '08 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: pglock

We have a number of first-generation iPhones fully unlocked and jailbroken using Pwnage from the iPhone Dev Team. (The iPhone 3G is not currently software-unlockable with any degree of reliability.)

One of the challenges for both 'official' (installed from Apple's App Store) and 'unofficial' (using installer.app or Cydia) apps that create content (photos, videos, text etc) is how to share the content. One approach taken by several apps is to offer to send an attachment via email. While this is fine for text files and photos, it's not so appropriate for larger files like video. You could also install OpenSSH and use scp to get the files, but that involves opening up root access which I didn't want to do for users who are a bit less tech savvy.

Here's our particular problem and solution. I have installed the Cycorder app, which allows you to capture video, but relies on scp and a knowledge of where the files are to move files off of the phone. By a bit of experimentation, I have managed to change the location where Cycorder saves its files. By changing the save location, I can then share/delete videos using Air Sharing (an 'official' app from the App Store). The general technique could also be useful for other applications.

Here's what to do; I'll assume that you have a Jailbroken iPhone, so Cydia and installer.app are already available. If not, go and jailbreak.

  1. Use Cydia to install Cycorder.
  2. Go to the Apple App Store and install Air Sharing.
  3. Use Cydia to install Mobile Terminal.
  4. Open the Mobile Terminal app and cd /private/var/mobile/Applications/.
  5. Type ls -la to take a look at the installed applications. If you've only installed Air Sharing, it will be the first folder in the list. If it's not, check the other folders and when you find it, make a note of the folder name -- mine starts with 9DAAB941- (if copy/paste worked, this would be a great time to use it!).
  6. Type cd ../Media to go up one folder level and into the Cycorder storage area.
  7. Type mv Videos Videos.bak to move the default video store out of the way.
  8. Type ln -s "../Applications/Air_Sharing_folder/Documents/Air Sharing/Public" ./Videos to create a symbolic link to the Public folder of Air Sharing for your videos. Replace Air_Sharing_folder with the name of the folder that you noted earlier.
Now when you record a video, you can use Air Sharing to manage and share them to anyone with a webdav client.

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