I just got the Flip Video Mino compact camcorder from Amazon and I have to say that I have really been impressed, so far, with the video quality and features of the device.
You can get full details from their web site here. The device is very straight forward and simple to use. There is a small LCD panel on the back to view what your recording, along with buttons for recording, playing and deleting videos. Best of all, it’s easy to carry around in your shirt or pants pocket; it’s about the size of a iPhone. These pictures show the size comparison to my iPod Video.
You may be shocked and appalled at the face viewed in the following example but here is a small test clip I recorded on the Mino and posted to Vimeo.
One other thing to state about this cool little gadget is the software used for editing your videos. Since the device can connect to your Mac or PC using a standard USB connection, it already has preloaded software that becomes available once you connect. For PC, you can install using the .exe installation. For Mac, the application can actually be launched from the device to edit your videos stored on the Flip’s embedded storage. Your edited results are then saved to your local hard drive. Since the Flip records to a .avi file, I normally just copy the .avi file to my Mac for viewing and uploading. The only issue I ran into during this process is that I did not have the proper codec on my Mac to view the .avi using Quicktime at first, however, Flip also provided the codec in its storage for me to install. There are utilities in the included software that allow you to easily upload your video to MySpace and You Tube, but I haven’t used those features yet since I’ve recently become a Vimeo convert.
The main reason I bought this device was for my upcoming trip to NY, so that I can create video blogs during my off-Broadway adventures. We’ll just have to see how often I actually use it.
