November 20, 2008 HD Video Made Sleek and Simple By DAVID POGUE NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/technology/personaltech/20pogue.html?em=&pagewanted=print As a tech reviewer, my pulse races whenever a product is introduced with superlatives attached. “Fastest.” “Smallest.” “Thinnest.” It makes my day; I’ve got my news angle built right in. So when Pure Digital says that its new 3.3-ounce Flip Mino HD ($230) is the world’s smallest, lightest and least-expensive high-definition camcorder, attention must be paid. That’s three superlatives in one. The original Flip and its spinoffs, like the Flip Ultra and the even smaller, sweetly named Flip Mino (pronounced “minnow”), have spent two years shaking up the tech world. They’re little cellphone-size plastic boxes that make recording video one-button simple. Bloggers and feature-counters have always spit on the Flip because it’s so shockingly stripped-down. What kind of self-respecting camcorder has no menus, no manual controls, no still photos, no video light, no flip-out screen, no lens cap, no removable memory card and no image stabilizer? There’s not even an actual zoom — only a 2X digital one that degrades your picture by blowing it up. But evidently, the masses think differently — and they have flipped for the Flip, making it a megahit. Today, according to Pure Digital, the Flip has, if you can believe it, 30 percent of the camcorder market. According to the consultants at Deloitte, Pure Digital’s revenue has grown 44,667 percent in five years. And it’s all because the camera is small, it’s cheap, it turns on in two seconds, and above all, it’s absolutely, positively idiot-proof. Three-year-olds and technophobic 90-year-olds alike master the thing in the first 10 seconds. But there was still one downside to the Flip: the video wasn’t as good as a real camcorder’s. The low-light sensitivity is astonishing — you get clear, bright video in dim situations where ordinary camcorders would hunt for focus and produce useless grainy footage. But over all, the regular Flip’s video is a little soft — ever so slightly blurred. So when Pure Digital announced that it would be releasing a high-definition Flip, you might have been forgiven for assuming that it meant the sort of pseudo hi-def that’s all too common these days. Too many cameras and camcorders record enough pixels to qualify, technically, for the term high definition — and yet the video looks terrible on playback, nothing like what you’d see on a hi-def TV broadcast. Basically, they’re cheating. Happily, the Mino HD does not cheat. It grabs really great-looking video. It’s not up to the quality of hi-def tape camcorders like the Canon HDV30. But especially when the light is good, the Mino’s video is incredibly crisp and the colors are true. Best of all, the Mino HD preserves its predecessor’s uncanny low-light abilities. The resulting scene actually looks brighter in the video than it does to your naked eye. The audio is good, too, even when you’re interviewing somebody who is 10 feet away. Clearly, there’s a lot of engineering mojo going on in this little machine’s video and microphone circuitry. (You can see and hear for yourself in this week’s Pogue video at nytimes.com/tech; I used the Flip HD to document my recent Geek Cruise to Italy, Greece, Turkey and Egypt.) There’s only one physical button on the Flip — the big red Record button. All the other buttons are touch-sensitive spots that light up on the shiny black back panel only when relevant. For example, when you’re recording, + and – buttons appear to control the zoom. When playing back, a Trash icon appears so you can delete a clip. And so on. All of this helps the Mino HD live up to the Flip’s track record for simplicity. Sure, a smaller camcorder is always more convenient than a bigger one, no matter what the event. But having a cellphone-size camera that records one hour of real 720p high-definition video presents some new possibilities. You can attach this little Flip to your arm, handlebars or helmet when doing extreme sports (the company sells a connector for this purpose). People have duct-taped Flips to their dogs’ collars for a new perspective, or to their car dashboards for scenes of driver-passenger conversation. Flips are also much less obtrusive than regular camcorders, so they’re ideal for making interview subjects, especially shy children, feel comfortable on camera. And as for spies and private investigators — well, ’nuff said. In short, the size/quality ratio of the Flip HD is just, as those crazy kids might say, ridiculous. Unfortunately, some aspects of the Mino HD are ridiculous in the traditional sense of the word. First, this model has the same 1.5-inch, square screen as the regular Flip cameras. A square screen? On a camera that takes widescreen video? That arrangement means that you wind up with black letterbox bars above and below the image. (The designers have tried to justify those gaps by displaying the “Rec” indicator and battery gauge there, but still.) It also means that the image is very, very tiny. Second, there’s no image stabilizer. Listen, we all get it — this thing is supposed to be very cheap and very basic — but the Mino HD wouldn’t be any more complicated to use if it steadied out your hand jiggles. The widescreen format of hi-def only magnifies camera unsteadiness, and it’s quite pronounced on the Mino. Good thing it has a tripod mount. Third, the Mino HD comes with a proprietary cable that connects it to your TV. Unfortunately, and incredibly, it’s a composite cable — one of those three-headed, red-white-yellow RCA cables. In other words, your hi-def video is converted to standard definition. That’s right: the Mino HD is a hi-def camcorder that can’t play your movies in high def on a high-def TV. You can watch the full-quality videos on your computer, of course, and, because the movie files are in the standard H.264 format, burn them to a high-definition Blu-ray DVD someday. With the press of a button, the Flip’s famous U.S.B. connector pops out of the camera and slides right into your PC or Mac. (That’s also how you recharge the built-in two-hour battery.) Not only does the U.S.B. jack spare you the hassle of tracking and packing a cable, but software for editing and sharing your movies is also right there on the camera. This software has been completely rewritten. It’s now identical for Mac and Windows, and is wonderfully effective. Without even a glance at the Help pages, you can view your clips, trim their ends, drag them into a sequence, add background music, and then fire the whole thing off to YouTube, save it as a new movie file on your hard drive, shoot it off as an e-mail attachment, or even upload it to Pure Digital for conversion into a DVD. (The finished disc is mailed to you in three days, and you’re charged $20.) By the way, if you order the Mino HD at theflip.com, you can get it custom-painted with hundreds of designs — or create one by uploading your own graphic or photo. Many of them look truly great, and make the Mino feel that much more personal. (Especially if you decide to offer your design to the public. Each time someone orders a Flip with your design, you earn $10. Ka-ching!) Now, you can’t sell 1.5 million of something without attracting rivals. The Kodak Zi6, the RCA Small Wonder EZ300HD and the Creative Vado HD, for example, are all similar in concept and either available now or coming soon. Most have features the Mino HD lacks. But none is likely to have quite the combination of small size, polished built-in software, customizability and high video quality of the Mino HD. On top of all of its other superlatives, here’s another title that this pocketable hi-def cam deserves: most likable. -- ================================ George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 Mail: antunes at uh dot edu *********************************** * POST TO [email protected] * *********************************** Medianews mailing list [email protected] http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
