Holy crap, this is a big one. Best Buy has the HD-capable Kodak EasyShare V1253 camera with a $50 price break, a free 1GB memory card, a free AC adapter, and free shipping for $229.99. Even I couldn’t pass this one up, so I broke out my little yellow Best Buy card and am now anxiously waiting for this to arrive.
You may remember this camera from yesterday, as it’s part of our Holiday 2007 gift guide. And yes, Guan Yang and everyone else, I’ll post some of the camera’s high-def sample videos as soon as I can.
EasyShare 12.4MP Digital Camera – Black – V1253 [BestBuy.com]
Talked to Best Buy and they know nothing about this deal on the Kodak V1253. They confirmed everything except for the 1GB memory card. Where did you go to order this item? Thanks for your help.
Terry
We did some shooting using HD 30-fps 720p (1280×720) mode and got ASTONISHINGLY good video shuts!
It produces .mov (mpeg-4) clips and has a limit of 29 minutes per clip…
It is not the camera’s fault, but Premier Pro 3.0 and Vegas-8 CRASHED editing the mpeg-4 clips. Maybe somebody out there will come up with some good editor capable of loading, trimming and spliting the clips and generating an ultra DIVX compressed HIGH-DEF home video or something similar.
Any ideas?
Frank, were you able to view the clips on QuickTime Player and have them run smoothly? Even using a very powerful computer the clips I’ve shot at 720p play jerky on QuickTime. On the other hand, H.264 mov files play just fine. I don’t know why Kodak didn’t use the H.264 codec.
Brian
Brian:
I didn’t know it wasn’t h.264 codec what they were using to compress it. That might be the reason why all programs crash after they try to work with the clips for a while. Also, I guess I need a much more powerful computer. I am working on that.
FJF
But Frank, my question is whether you were able to VIEW the video well–without jerkiness, pauses, and jumps. Even using a very powerful computer, I have not been able to play the clips smoothly on QuickTime. Playing clips that don’t pan, of course, helps, but even slow pans had some trouble.
Brian:
Sorry, that is true. It is impossible to see the clips properly without the Xvid Codec, which I downloaded and installed. After I did that, it was possible to see the clips with only a slight failure of “space bending”. Other than that there was no more flicker. However, that helps only to watch the clips with QTViewer. It is of no help at all with the editors.
Using an editor called “Power Director 6.0″ I was able to add the clips together, do some trimming and splitting and then generating an MPEG2 file ready for DVD. The quality of the 16:9 720×480 encoding was better than anything I have been able to get going from miniDV 16:9 and compressing to mpeg2. Whatever you do, be sure to set the encoder so that it does not deinterlace, since the clips are NOT interlaced.
FJF
Hey Frank,
Thanks for the info. I have some new questions, however:
1) How did you find out the v1253 shoots video using the Xvid codec? I downloaded the codec and rebooted, yet QT still plays them back with the same pauses and jerks, so I must have already had Xvid installed.
2) But you say you can view the videos on QT. What is are your system specs? (’Cuz I’ve tried the video on a Pentium Core Duo 1.5 GHz and still had jerkiness.
Thanks!
1) I don’t know if the V1253 shoots video using the Xvid codec; what I do know is that AFTER I installed the Xvid, then I was able to see and hear the videos with QTViewer without jerks and pauses, but with some “wrinkling” of “space”.
2) The computer in which I was able to see it right has a Genuine Intel T2050 Centrino Duo at 1.6 Ghz (full screen — only QTViewer can do the job).
I hope this helps you!
I had problems with jerkyness in my videos from my v1253 also; I did a web search and found that adjusting the quicktime settings helped a LOT. (turned off directX or some such) I still have a little, but I’m sure that if I fiddled with it a little more I could fix it completely.
Just wondering, what codec is needed for Movie Maker on Windows Vista? if anyone has any idea’s cheers.