As many of you remember when Andy McCaskey and I went our to the Consumer Electronics Show in 2008 we shot a great deal of video with pro-cameras but we also shot a huge amount of back channel video with Flip Video Cameras so today I thought I would bring you part of the camera review with the camera shooting me talking about the device.
Be sure to scroll down and look at all the important details about the Flip Video Mino.
Note the Video that was uploaded to YouTube rendered horribly here is the link. I was ashamed to put it on the website. I have processed the video here locally with Camtasia. Be advised I would not recommend the utilization of the onboard video software to process videos for YouTube.
Using the Software that is included in the device it took about 15 minutes to render and push the 5 minute video to YouTube. I would though recommend other third party software to edit the .AVI files!
Here are some stats:
- 40% Smaller than Ultra Series
- 2GB on board Memory
- 60 Minutes Recording Time
- Sealed Internal Rechargeable Battery
- Unit is Recharged through USB Port
- Connects to a TV through included cables
- Lighted Controls on the back of the Unit
- Digital Zoom
- Software On Camera for PC or Mac
- $179.99
- Amazon, Best Buy, Circuit City, Sears, Walmart.com TheFlip.com
Notice: Flip Video Mino was provided to Geek News Central for this review no promise of favorable review was given. All review units here at Geek News Central are tested in as near real world conditions as possible.
Review gear that is not required to be sent back is normally given away on my podcast. GNC is not a big publishing house we have 3-4 paid bloggers and I do the majority of the product reviews.
Wow… I was totally hooked until the end. I don’t know what your internal policies are, but you should NEVER keep stuff anyone sends you for actual use other than the soul purpose of archival and review. We put our faith in you that you aren’t abusing your position as an authoritative news source and accepting freebies is a BIG NO NO in the SPJ Code of Ethics. I’m glad that they did send a box to ship it back in… very few companies actually do that.
You must understand that where I work, we constantly get freebies sent to us and it’s ridiculous how many reporters jump in and try to take it home. This stuff is there to give free publicity and if we like it enough we *might* give a critique/review, but that’s almost never the case. It’s a vicious circle that small businesses usually don’t understand; however, in today’s society we find more and more corporations paying off the media with these freebies.
I have the first version of the Flip and it’s great. I only use the on-board software to save it to the computer and then move the file over to iMovieHD to do any editing. Never have had it crash or any other problems with it. For the price it does what it should. The digital zoom sucks, wish they could have done a little bit of optical but that would have raised the price with adding another lens and mechanical parts. Low light shooting isn’t the greatest, seems to have a lot of noise. But with that all being said, if I didn’t already own the first gen model I would pick the new Mino one up in a heart beat.
That little cam displays your video quite clearly. Very clean. Definitely think it is worth the $179. My cameras seem to render faster if I use firewire. What about this one?