Send Videos over WhatsApp with Windows Phone 8.0

The Back story #

Recently I had the chance of coming into contact with a Nokia Lumia 520 running Windows Phone 8.0 and its own share of distastes.
Being an avid Ubuntu user, I keep trying to find new ways of happily using my new found device without going through the recommended channels prescribed by Microsoft (I’m looking at you, Zune).

Among its various restrictions I came across a very annoying one with a rather simple fix where you could not send videos through WhatsApp if you had acquired those videos through another means. Say, videos copied from your computer onto the phone.

My research to find a solution to this led me a post on the Microsoft Mobile Community (formerly Nokia Support Discussions and very soon Mobile Devices, whaaa?). It pointed that this was a major flaw in Windows Phone 8.0 and hopefully would be fixed in future updates.
OK, by the time you read this I guess Windows 8.1 should be out, but at the time, I desperately wanted to send that Basket Mouth (insanely funny comedian) video to a friend who was in dire need of some rib cracking laughter. I was left with no choice but to find a fix. And fast.

The Solution #

So I came up with a fix.
I know, pretty obvious. But I can’t tell if this is a thing with most people since I did not come across anything like this when Google-ing.

So, I was browsing through the files on my phone via my laptop when I realized that both video and audio files I received through WhatsApp were in the same folder. You can get my confusion as I expected Videos to be in a separate folder from Pictures even though they were all from the same app.

Upon reading another post which stated that Windows does not allow 3rd party app developers full access to its video library, it made much more sense.
I decided to check the video file properties to see if it was any special than an ordinary .mp4 video file. When I found that there nothing of that sort, I simply decided to rename the video file that I tried sending to fit the name scheme of the WhatsApp videos already in the folder. The naming scheme was VID-<YYYYMMDD>-WA<4-digits>.<file type> without the square brackets. Where <YYYYMMDD> was the date format of the day that video was downloaded. (or received not too sure). Also, the WA was immediately followed by a 4-digit numbering system which ordered the videos starting from 1. Putting it all together the scheme can tell you what videos were downloaded on which day and how many they are.

I used this scheme to rename the Basket Mouth video and when I restarted my phone (another workaround to enable me view files I copied onto my phone the “UN-recommended” way), the video was waiting for me in the WhatsApp videos folder. From there it was straight to the app and sending the video like it was nobody’s business.

If there is any other workaround you have found to make your life easier using the Microsoft Lumia vis-à-vis the WhatsApp app or any other, do let me know about it in the comments. :D