Review: Flip Video Ultra
Posted on February 4, 2008DB sent me an IM last week about the Flip Video camera, saying that he was thinking about getting one. I had seen it before, and had some questions about its video quality (I’ve seen some cheap video cameras before and they put out some really shitty video), but after some searching around Youtube, we found that quality isn’t actually all that bad. I figured what’s the worse that could happen so I ordered one from Amazon. And even better, I managed to sell my old camcorder in less than 24 hours to make up for part of the hole in my checking account.
I ordered the orange 60 minute Ultra series model. It set me back $170 shipped. Amazon took its sweet time getting the camera out of the warehouse, but once it shipped it arrived swiftly. It’s a neat little device. Very compact, very simple. Just a few buttons, and no gew-gaws. In the box you get the camera, a soft pouch, a TV cable, some batteries, a wrist strap, and the documentation.
The video quality is surprisingly good for such a small lightweight device. It’s certainly not going to record your next award-winning festival film, but it’s perfect for the blogger on the go. It records VGA (640×480) video at 30 fps. In low light the video quality suffers, so it might not be the best choice if you want to record secret sex videos. Just a warning to the perverts.
Here’s a short video Tyler recorded at work when I was showing him the camera:
Folks From Work from Joshua on Vimeo.
(By the way, a brief endorsement for Vimeo. I elected to use Vimeo to upload my videos because Youtube’s quality sucks, and I didn’t want a bunch of mouth-breathing retards leaving comments. Viddler was an option too, but I don’t like the look of their flash player. So I went with Vimeo. Looks good and has high quality.)
On iMovie
One of my concerns was how well it would work with iMovie. It turns out, not that well. Kinda. iMovie doesn’t recognize the Flip as a camera source. And the Flip records as .avi (though 3ivx mp4, which means damn good quality .avi) which iMovie doesn’t do. So in order to get your video into iMovie, you have to first convert it into .mov using QuickTime (which requires Pro, triples file size, and takes awhile unless you’ve got a fast machine). But once that’s done, iMovie works wonders with the video.
There’s an included video editor but, to be honest, it sucks. And Mac users, it’s a PPC binary, not Universal, which means it’s f’ing slow as well. There’s a software update for the camera that may or may not include a new, Universal version, but the installer crashes on launch. Why does it crash? NSFont, a Cocoa class to establish font handling in the app. I emailed support so hopefully I’ll hear back sometime soon. My other option is to boot the laptop into Windows and try to update that way, but honestly, I don’t want to use Windows.
Oh, and Linux users (read: BorK), there’s no included software for Linux, but being as the camera just mounts as an external drive on my Mac, I’m assuming you can mount it as a flash drive on your Linux box and drag the videos to your hard drive, using your editor of choice, the same way I do.
And finally: Check your local store for the camera. Today I was grumpy to see that at Sam’s Club they had my camera for $144.82, and with a nice little case too. But I won’t be bitter. Just a fair warning.
Amazon’s offerings of the Flip Video series | My Vimeo Account | The Flip’s Homepage
Filed Under Tech, Videos | 4 Comments
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Seems like a cool gadget. That would be the same resolution and speed of my camera. I have looked into an ATC2K for a while there, same res / speed.
Your vids do look nice. And us linux folk have to find work arounds all the time anyway.
Wow the ATC2K would be cool, just for being able to mount it to your bike or helmet.
Please Flip Video was designed by idiots. Apple leads the market and the FV dopes didn’t have enough sense to make it fully compatible with iMovie. I have a FV full of videos and can’t download them to my iMac. Flip Video customer service doesn’t care. Flip Video sucks.
I received my flip as a gift. I recorded about 9 short clips, no more than 5 minutes total. Went to upload it through “Flip Share” and clicked to download the update, which sent my screen into a blank screen & did nothing so after a few minutes I did a forced quit (nothing) then pulled out the flip & forced quit. Not sure if the update went through, so restarted the Mac. Well not only has my flip frozen, but none of my video will upload to my Mac. Flip customer service had me delete and redownload the software and update, unplug the battery and restart the Mac all to no avail. So they said someone from tier 2 customer service would be in touch in 48 hours. It has been almost a week and I have yet to have a response. Needless to say FLIP is a big FLOP!