About
We sell superhero merchandise - clothing, school supplies, party supplies, books, accessories and household products like posters and kitchen items.
Reviews (1)
Jun 11, 2007
This Flip Ain't A Flop
3 of 3 found this helpful A few things made me decide to purchase this Flip Video camcorder without hearing much about it: the price ($80 at Costco) and the demo video that can be watched within the packaging that shows the ease of recording, playing back and transfering video with its pop-up USB plug-in.
I liked the fact that it came with 2 AA Duracell batteries rather than batteries of a cheap brand. It also came with wires to plug the camcorder into your TV to watch what you recorded. It also comes with a wrist strap you can attach and a black felt cloth carrying case. What I also liked is you can stand it up thanks to its box-like design.
The instructions are easy to follow: press the red record button to begin recording, press it again to stop, press the play button to view what you recorded & press the delete button once then again to confirm you want to delete a video. It does have a direction menu around the red record button. While recording, pressing the up and down arrow keys to make the camera zoom a little. While watching playback, use these same buttons for more sound volume.
If you want to skip over a video, press the left and right directional buttons around the record button to move from one video to another. On the screen it gives a tally of how many videos are recorded & which one you are up to ("Video 3 of 6").
The sound quality is the most noticeable hiccup with this product. When I recorded myself giving an introduction to an item I wanted to sell on ebay, I sounded like I had a lisp. I tried recording my voice in different ways: far away from the camera, turning my head directly away...nothing worked. Though there were some videos I've recorded on Flip that have a crisp, clean sound.
Transferring video to a computer looked easy on the demo video: just flip open the USB plug-in and insert it right into your computer. But in the demo, the camcorder is plugged into a USB on the side of a laptop. Since my laptop has its USB ports in the back, getting the camcorder to work the first time was not successful. I went to Staples to buy a USB cable extension and this did the trick.
As stated in the instructions, the software program for Flip Video appears on the computer because the software is built into the camera. On the main page, you have the options of watching the videos, saving them, sending them by email or editing them. I like the option of adding music to the video. You can either choose the software's choice of music or your own.
The only editing option you have is deciding when the video starts and stops. You can also choose a frame from the video and save it as a digitial photo on your computer as a .gif or .jpg file.
When sending video by email, it gets saved on a website called Grouper and those who receive your email, get a web link notification for the video and whatever message you want to include in the email. What's also nice is the software program saves all the email addresses in case you want to send more videos to them in the future. The downside to sending videos is the time it takes. At least the software approximates how much time this will take. (A 30 second video will take approximately 5-10 minutes to send.)
The software also gives the option of uploading your video onto YouTube. It first saves the videos on a desktop folder for uploading and then provides a link on YouTube, providing detailed steps for the uploading.
Overall, I like it a lot but wish the sound quality was better.