Maybe, Maybe Not
Yesterday, I was strongly considering buying a Flip Video - Ultra Series camcorder.
The nice thing is the small size, which makes it very handy to carry around. A lot of times, we get a video camera, thinking how we’ll record everything. Then, you record a lot of stuff at the beginning but, after the novelty wears off, it becomes a pain to lug the thing around and carry it around and so on. Even with the small hand-helds, you still get to the point where it becomes more annoying than handy.
But, with the small size of the Flip Video camcorder, it’s something you can carry in your pocket. It appears to be the size of a microcassette audio recorder (circa late 1980’s/early 1990’s, which is when mine is from), but records video and audio. Just slightly larger than a cell phone, it’s something I can imagine you can easily lug around and something you’ll actually use. On top of that, it uses standard AA batteries, so you don’t have an odd battery that you’ll have to charge (or hunt down to replace when it wears out) and so on.
Then, I read some reviews on it. Many of the 1 and 2 star reviews appeared to come from Mac users. Apparently, despite being advertised as working with Macs, it’s performance (judging by the reviews) on Mac systems seems dodgy at best. Plus, I would want to be able to edit videos with Adobe Premiere Pro, and apparently there are issues there as well. The Flip comes with its own software package but, according to the reviews I read, the Mac version is not quite up to par with the Windows version.
So, that basically convinced me not to buy a Flip Video camcorder.
Today, I did some cleaning and some yard work. Afterwards, I dragged out my old video camera. I am currently taking a break from converting some of my old videos (from the tape that was in the camera) into digital form.
The bummer is that the camera doesn’t seem to work in camera mode anymore. I can use it as a tape player, but, in camera mode, the video is bad. I haven’t tried recording anything (I want to convert the video tape to digital before I attempt that), so I don’t know if it records. But, just from the camera output, it doesn’t appear as though it will record video very well anymore.
So, there goes my plans to continue putting this camera to use again. And, that means I’m back to considering the Flip again. Maybe if I hear from more Mac users successfully using the thing…
Anyway, back to conversions. Maybe later I’ll have some video to put online. Maybe.
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