We’ve seen disposable or limited use camcorders before, but Pure Digital, the workhouse behind the el cheapo plastic video recorders, is promising us something new with its Flip Video cams.
While the prices are dropping and the resolutions rising on HD camcorders, these guys are going the other way, rolling out a bare-bones SD cam with TV-out features and software that allows for easy DVD creation from the source vid. What’s really getting attention is the software package includes tools to make it “as easy as possible” to upload to video sharing sites like YouTube. The cameras themselves are very similar to earlier offerings from Pure Digital, but the included suite of apps allows you to optimize and upload to your video sharing account without even opening a Web browser. Not sure if we’d use it, but grandmas will like it. By stopping by Walgreens, you can record and share your son’s entire spelling bee with the world, which is just what we were hoping for.
Flip Video [via Electonista]
This would not be bad for a cheap youtube solution all-in-one solution. But would depend on if the video quality is decent.
If you have any concern at all for video quality, a Sanyo Xacti is a much better solution. It records straight to MPEG-4 (.MP4) in suitable resolutions (e.g. 320×200). You just upload the file straight to YouTube or Google Video. I tried it with mine the other day, couldn’t be simpler.
I made the switch a couple months ago from my Canon point-shoot for video clips up to an entry-level DV camcorder to get longer shots and better quality.
After filling up another hard drive and waiting countless hours for things to import, render effects, and compress/export just to get some few-minutes YouTube videos, I am looking forward to any simple flash-memory MPEG-recording cheapo device that gives tolerable resolution. DV just ain’t worth the effort for a lot of web video.
Check out this article
Video for Everyman
By CHRISTOPHER LAWTON
September 26, 2007
Wall Street Journal Online
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119076444203939332.html
or my see my post here:
http://paulinobrener.blogspot.com/2007/09/video-for-everyman.html