Re: Flippin Pocket Cameras

"Scubajam" <jmcgauhey@xxxxxxx> wrote in message news:59969469-006d-4af9-9930-e7fb5b9390c7@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Jul 20, 5:40 pm, "Gary Eickmeier" <geick...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"rd" <H...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:h41ske$1kh$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

> I have Premier Elements 2 but have been thinking about upgrading to get
> Vista compatible. (dual boot presently)
> What did you mean by
> "Don't fear when you first connect the camera to an HD display and the
> video looks picket-fence. It smoothes out when properly displayed and
> processed on the computer."
> Does that mean the video does not look good connected directly to a HDTV
> via HDMI? I hope not.

Sometimes not. Has to do with video processing in such a small unit. Has to
convert its h264 files to HD video on the fly.

> Did you buy the special HDMI cable for the Ultra or does the Kodak cable
> fit. I need to get that cable unless I will really hate the picture
> quality on an HDTV.

Bought a $30 adapter to go from mini to regular HDMI.

32GB would be nice but if I really get 2 hours of video on the

> 8GB I'll be happy. (are there quality settings?) I can lug my laptop
> around if I think I'll be shooting more. This is really for the still
> equivalent of snapshots though and not serious documentary type stuff.
> When you run the Ultra video through it's software and end up with WMV
> files... are they still the same HD resolution?

Yes, of course. But I would hate to have to convert the files one by one.
What I did was make a pseudo movie out of the test clips, then imported that
into Premiere Pro and added a title, cut out a scene. But Elements 7 can
import either camera's files natively and edit them.

Any obvious degrading of

> picture quality? Will be a week before I get the toy. Went for free
> shipping and now wish I had paid the $7 to get it here sooner.
> This page had some interesting demo shots:
>http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/product/60197/review/flip_ultrahd.html
> Note that it recommends clicking lower right to see in HD but I had to
> first click on top of "You Tube" for You Tube site and then click the HD
> icon.
> Dan

Video was kind of crummy, reviews even crummier. Just not much info out
there. Going to do a test myself right now. Have both the ZX1 and Ultra here
at home. Shot some side-by-side stuff indoors and out, hand held.

And yes, image stabilization would be an obvious boon to these little guys,
but they are not too bad to hold steady.

Gary Eickmeier

I was looking for a small sized HD video camera but found too many of
these cheap ones were lacking quality or features. Finally found the
Canon TX1 which has 10X optical zoom, optical image stabilization,
Canon lens, stainless housing, etc. Having used it a bit, I am not so
enamored with it. It does take good quality images, which are
recorded as 720p avi files; that surprised me. it uses FAT 32, which
has a 4 GB maximum file size. This is OK, and worked fine with my 4
GB and 8GB cards, but it certainly isn't AVCHD compression as one only
get 13 minutes of quality recording on a 4GB card. This is very
limiting. So I purchased a 16 GB card, understanding FAT32 still
limits individual files to 4GB, but now it won't record more than 10
seconds at a time. I'm not sure if I changed a setting, if it's the
card, or what (limited time to troubleshoot). The small form factor
is nice. I flew some handicapped kids on my Cessna 172 over the
weekend and it was very nice to have a small camcorder to press
against the windshield and shoot back. In such a case, inches count
to get the widest angle possible. There was no difficulty editing the
avi file, until I tried to combine it with HDV files from other
cameras. (I did a wedding for fun for a friend and used 3 cameras, 2
HDV and the TX1.) The TX1 avi files, when rendered with the HDV,
changed to 4:3 aspect ratio for some reason (probably square vs
rectangular pixels). I tried Magix and Ulead pro editing programs.
Finally I separately rendered the TX1 avi files into HDV mpg2, then
combined, edited, and all is fine. Still, I'm working on that
blinking 10 second clip problem. It wasn't there with 4GB and 8GB
cards. Might have to return to those. I'm very dissappointed in the
limited recording time, but other than that, the images are very good,
quality is good, features good. The TX1 cost about $600, much more
than the other small cameras. This was much more than I wanted to
pay, so I found an ebay deal from one who claimed to be a Canon
authorized dealer, with reconditioned units at $249, less than half
price. That's what I paid. it uses a proprietary battery, but
they're cheap, so I bought more, and several extra flash cards. Just
adding this in case anyone is interested. I had not heard of this
camera until I did the research. It's marketed as a 7mp still camera
with video capability, but I primarily wanted the video. Form factor
is more like the cheaper video, of course there are some that were at
$1,000 with this form factor also.

Jim McGauhey
Washington State



Jim,

I also bought and use the Canon TX-1 for much the same reasons you did, and I am still very pleased with the HD results from such a tiny camera. The 10X zoom, image stabilization, and tiny size which allows it to fit in my top shirt pocket are very irresistible.

The short recording time you have encountered when switching to the larger SD card is very possibly the result of not using Class 6 cards. Since the files are recorded as MJPEG, and not AVCHD, this little camcorder actually puts a much higher stress on the SDHC card than a full 1920 by 1080 AVC model like several of the the other Canons. Therefore I urge you to measure the speed of your SDHC card and see how it is rated, speed-wise.

There is a buffer overflow warning indicator which Canon uses to show the problem during recording when the SDHC card cannot keep up with the data rate. You did not mention if it came on during your recordings.

I have not used 16 GB cards but have used 8 GB without issues.

Hope this helps,

Smarty

.

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