30 Apr 2008
New toy: Flip Video Ultra camcorder
I acquired a cool new toy yesterday -- courtesy of my lovely girlfriend Susan, and Warner Brothers, which gave it to her at the end of a business presentation (gotta love the ad business!).
Pure Digital "Flip Video Ultra"
It's a tiny handheld camcorder that records to internal solid-state memory, and has a USB plug on the side that pops out. Plug it into your computer and you'll find software (Windows and Mac) on the camera, ready to use.
The quality is really not so bad. Here is a quick clip of my dog, which I shot at 11PM last night, edited slightly, and uploaded to Flix55.com:
Gads, I sound so silly talking to my dog! :-)
Some quick tech notes:
- The provided OS X software runs directly off the camera -- nothing to install
- It's a PowerPC app, but it ran fine on my MacBook Pro (Rosetta emulation)
- An MPEG4 codec from 3ivx.com is provided. I was able to play the videos without it, but I installed anyway
- For sharing, the app will recode your video in a "Flip Videos for Uploading" format -- Quicktime .MOV (codecs: QDesign Music 2, Sorenson Video 3)
- This "upload" version is a lot smaller, but the audio transcodes poorly on websites that use ON2 Flix Engine to generate Flash video (FLV) -- like Flix55.com
ps: Yes, I set up the video transcoding backend at Flix55.