How do I upload an iPod Nano video to YouTube?

Congratulations, you have an iPod Nano from the generation that I believe represents the very best iPod that the company ever shipped, one that had tons of useful functionality that has never reappeared in an iPod, be it a fancy iPod Touch or a more humble entry in the line. One capability that you’re asking about is video recording. You can’t make photos with the device (weirdly) but you can record videos. Simple. Smart.

Another feature of what Apple calls the “fifth generation iPod Nano” (Apple has a handy cheat sheet to identify all the different generations) is that it includes a built-in FM receiver. I don’t listen to FM radio that much but it turns out that a lot of gyms and other facilities have devices hooked up to their televisions that broadcast the associated audio via an FM frequency. With the 5th gen Nano you can easily tune it in and listen. With any other iPod — or iPhone — you’re out of luck. Puzzling, but there it is.

You’re probably used to being stuck in iTunes to manage your iPod Nano content and that’s where this gets a little bit confusing, because you’ll need to use a separate program to actually download the video files from the device.

First, though, to help step you through the process, I used my own iPod Nano (5th gen) to record a simple video of me panning across a gorgeous cloudy sky here in Colorado. That gave me four videos on the device, as you can see in the image below:

As you’ve already realized, the videos are there, but getting them off the device? Not obvious.

In fact, you’ll need to look in your “Applications” folder on your iMac and launch “Image Capture” while the iPod Nano is plugged into your computer. When you do, it’ll show you the videos available, with sizes, thumbnails, etc:

I know, none of those videos looks particularly thrilling. They’re just tests. I’m going to grab the first one by simply clicking on it, then clicking on “Import” on the lower right. To avoid confusion and keep my Desktop neat, I’ll then rename “IMG_0003.mp4” to “colorado-clouds.mp4”.

Now it’s time to turn to a Web browser, whatever’s your fave.

Go to YouTube and log in to your account. Now on the top you’ll see a little “Upload” button:

Click on it and there’s a nice big drop target that shows up:

Now it’s ridiculously easy: Simply drag the Mp4 video file onto the target and it’ll automatically upload onto YouTube:

When it’s done — and it probably won’t take much time at all since the videos are probably relatively modest in size — you’ll be able to make whatever tweaks and adjustments you want to the visibility, title, description, etc.

Here’s what I specified for the Colorado Clouds video:

The URL is shown near the top. Click on it and you’re viewing your newly uploaded video. That’s also the URL to share, which you can do by clicking on “Share” near the bottom or even embedding the video, as I’ve done here:

I admit, the video isn’t thrilling. But the process is straightforward and now ya know how to do it. Good luck, and I hope the videos your children share are fun and interesting!