Looks like there are a few features included in the RCA Small Wonder EZ-201 that might make it preferable over the Flip Video camcorder. Notably, the ability to use an SD card and also, when the optional DVD dock comes out, the ability to create a DVD by docking the camera — no PC needed. I’ll post some sample video as soon as I get my hands on one.
I’m testing out the flip video camera by Pure Digital. I’ve got to say… it’s a pure pleasure. The camera is marketed toward the lowest common denominator interested in creating and sharing video. So it’s designed with “easy” and “fun” in mind. I bought the $150 1 GB video corder that stores up to 60 minutes of 640×480 30 fps video.
Notice there are only 4 buttons! As you can imagine, the big red button is for ‘record’. I picked it up and was able to record a simple video, edit and upload in a matter of minutes. The best thing about this camera is that there are no accessories. Even the software resides on the camera. When you plug it into your PC, it launches an application that lets you do simple edits and even walks you through uploading your video to YouTube or Grouper. For the video below, I used the Macintosh software on the Flip Video camera. Though you have to actually install it to your machine, the experience is only slightly more clunky than the very smooth PC experience. And for use in the field? No pieces to lose and two double AA batteries to make it work. I’m not yet sure how it will perform in low light conditions, but I have a black and white IR helmet cam on the way for that kind of use.
In this video, I demonstrate that Zooey and I still battle over control about where the ball should go after a retrieve. She insists that a proper retrieve places the ball at about five feet from the human. I presume because it’s a good soccer distance for a solid kick. Regardless, I threaten to stop playing when she doesn’t bring the ball all the way back, and she continues to insist on the five foot placement. Titan is not sure what he should be doing in all of this, but it’s interesting enough to be involved. He has a svelte summer buzz cut.
I extracted an image from the video but had to adjust lighting, contrast and saturation in order to see Titan’s face clearly. Not bad, but it’s a shame it needed so much adjustment. (But yea for iPhoto for making this so easy.) Conveniently, the Flip seems to save a good quality image frame every second. This means it’s pretty simple for the user to “snapshot” save an image from the video. However, if you want a frame that falls between two seconds, you’re out of luck. You need to go to the original AVI on the Flip disk rather than through the provided software. That’s actually what I did to produce the image below. Consider that an expert feature that they allow for, but don’t expose in software.
The YouTube video quality is pretty poor. That’s probably because the video is being transcoded twice. For a 1.31 minute video, flip video stored a 32 MB AVI. The quality is actually very good. To upload to YouTube, the flip transcoded the video to QuickTime (about 10 MB). It uses a Sorenson Video 3 codec at a data rate of over 800 kb per second. Not so bad, but there are better codecs. Then YouTube transcoded a second time to Flash Video (H.263 and down to 3.7 MB). And, again, they don’t use the best codec or setting possible. So the video you see above — after being processed twice — is very poor.
Here is the same video uploaded directly to Blip.tv. Because I uploaded the original AVI without transcoding and then blip transcoded using On VP6 and dropped the frame rate to 15. The quality is quite good. Plus, Blip gives you access to the original (or add additional formats), if you prefer. The file size of the embedded FLV below is about 6 MB:
And here is a link to the original AVI!
The good thing, from my point-of-view, is that you don’t have to go through this transcoding process if you don’t want. I can grab the original AVI off the camera and transcode and post it the way I like. But that would marr the very “easy” nature of the Flip, wouldn’t it?
Looking at the metadata in the avi, I can see that the creation date of the video is the same day as I recorded it but approximately 8 hours off. Since there is no way to set the camera clock, I suppose this makes some sense. However, I’m not sure what would happen if I let the batteries (which came pre-installed) die and then replaced them.
Finally, a most interesting and exploitable idea for this camera is that one could easily replace the software on the camera with custom software. That means, someone who wanted to hand these cameras out to a particular group of people could provide a means for automatically processing and uploading the video to some custom website. Of course, this potential may exist with other cameras that act as disk drives, but this is the first that really demonstrates the enormous potential for seamless capture, processing and upload at such an accessible price.
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