Flipping for Flip Video
My office purchased a number of Flip cameras this week, so I’ve been testing one of them out. My early impressions are very positive, especially where design is concerned. It’s about the size of a pack of menthol 100’s and very lightweight. There are a minimal number of buttons to push. The designers definitely took a page out of the Apple book, right down to the boxy packaging the Flip came in.
I did need to flip through the instructions (and they were easy to follow) to figure out how to put the two AA batteries in, but after that I operated on auto-pilot. Recording, playing back, zooming were all simple things to do — easier than figuring out how to operate the camera on your cell phone (or at least my cell phone). Basically, you push the big red button. A red light appears in front of the camera so you know it’s recording. To stop recording, hit the red button again. Playback button appears to the left and a trash button (which I haven’t used yet) appears to the right. Zoom in and out buttons are above and below the red record button.
Once I recorded some footage, I flipped out the USB on the side (this is where the Flip comes in, I guess) plugged the camera into my work computer. Unfortunately, I have a 3-year-old Dell with a strange front-USB setup, so the Flip wouldn’t quite fit. I tried the back, but my monitor plug was in the way. I moved to a newer machine, plugged it in, and the software-download prompt came up. The software loaded in a matter of minutes and I was able to navigate through my video clips easily. The camera holds up to 60 minutes of video. I used up about 8 minutes of that.
The software is simple, albeit a little bit on the clunkier side than the sleek overall design of the camera itself. I figured it out relatively quickly, though (again, without the aid of the instruction manual). I reset the in and out points of some of my clips and then used the Make Movie option to bring them all together into one video. The program offers the option of adding music to the video (haven’t played around with this much, but it looks like you don’t have too many options about volume, so make sure that you don’t have much talking in your video) as well as some effects, like black and white.
There is a button called Share Video, which is good if you are an AOL user (WTF), or you’d like to send a video e-card, or if you want your video up on YouTube. Most will choose the YouTube option, I’d assume. If you are like me and want the video to go up somewhere else entirely, navigate to My Documents and you should find a folder named Flip Videos or something like that. That’ll contain the WMV of your finished video. Note: I had to ask a colleague in Alabama where my finished movie was, because I couldn’t figure it out and didn’t remember seeing a prompt. So, just remember, it’s in My Documents.
As a sidenote, the hard drive of the camera holds your raw clips as AVI files and you can always navigate to them in your My Computer folder when the camera is connected. That’s good if you want to edit your clips in Premiere or some other editing program.
As for video quality, I was impressed with how the video looked, but unimpressed with its audio capabilities. There is no external audio jack. Overall, though, this camera isn’t meant for hardcore editing projects. Stick to the quick and dirty stuff and have fun with it. For $150 you can’t go wrong.
Tags: flip ultra, flip video, flip video ultra
current affairs, videos, workplace | kristen April 18, 2008
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By Jeff, April 18, 2008 @ 9:42 am
Kirk Mastin does a side-by-side comparison of the Fip video and a Canon HD video camera here.
The results… may surprise you.