Flip Video Ultra

Now that we are more or less having family gatherings once per month, I thought it was worth it to take another shot at making videos, since there is only so much you can convey from photos.

I was hoping to score something flashy, but the kind of HD camcorder that caught my eye is still in the $1000 range, and that's too damn much.

Worse, most of these videos would eventually end at youtube, so HD was really a god damn waste of resources, even if it was worth it for archival purposes.

Almost by accident, I ran into the Flip Video series. By looking at the specs it did not look like much, a tiny camera, almost no zoom, and one hour of video capacity.

What the hell is that going to be good for?

I got sucked into the reviews big time: pretty much everyone loves the damn things.

Why? Because they are simple, and they work.

Two weeks ago I took delivery of a Flip Video Ultra, it was $117 at Amazon and shipping was free. And that's where the fun started: In two weeks I have shot more video than the total amount of video I shot during the year that I owned my previous camcorder, a JVC miniDV that I sold in pristine condition more than five years ago (it was a year old, yet it had not been used for a full hour of total recording time).

See some of my videos at Youtube.

The reviews are right, this thing is basically perfect for the job. The quality of the video is not stellar, it looks a bit washed out but I was able to clean it up a bit with iMovie 7. Everything else is great. I can take videos of PJ, plug it into my Mac Book Pro and in less than half an hour I have already edited the video and uploaded it to youtube. VLC doesn't like the audio codec, but that's the only thing I have seen so far.

I have seen the output of the camera as:

1. Youtube, web resolution. Looks as bad as every other youtube video, no surprise here.



2. Youtube, AppleTV. Looks much nicer.



3. Youtube, iPhone. Looks fantastic.



4. AppleTV, h264. Looks very nice, not as nice as Youtube for iPhone.

I haven't made DVDs yet, so I have no idea what it looks like.

So far the videos have been a hit, and even PJ likes to watch himself on youtube, which is kind of funny in a meta way.

The good:

1. Inexpensive (not "cheap", it feels very solid, a quality product, not a cheaply made piece of shit). < $120 is a lot of bang for the buck.



2. It does one job, and it does it well.



3. It's fun to use.

The not-so-good:

1. I am a moron, because I did not read the instructions booklet I missed that the battery compartment has a lock button, so I spent my first week constantly pulling out the damn door by mistake.



2. The record button doesn't give enough feedback, so it is hard to tell if it engaged unless you are looking at the LCD.



3. An SD slot would have been great, but I am not losing sleep over it.

How not to ride a Segway

Don't do this with your Segway (from The Fail Blog):

What?

Thanks to Alex Esotérica for showing me this:

Moo

Slow news week, so here's something that Alec Esotérica sent me:

I am under the influence of prescription narcotics (got snipped on Monday), so I have no idea if the video looks *that* weird to somebody with a clear mind.

The Job Market in 2009

Many thanks to Phil Greenspun for pointing me to this:

No one was spared, not even the children

Please, I beg you, do not watch this video:

TiVo, YouTube to deliver videos to TVs - Internet- msnbc.com

SAN FRANCISCO - TiVo users will be able to watch YouTube clips on their televisions by year's end, TiVo Inc. said Wednesday.

That's the latest move by YouTube to reach beyond the Web's regular boundaries. Fans of the popular online video provider can view its videos on their cell phones and Apple TV, a box that streams movies from people's computers to their TV.

[From TiVo, YouTube to deliver videos to TVs - Internet- msnbc.com]

When I setup our AppleTV's I thought that the Youtube feature would just sit there unused. Next thing I knew, PJ was spending as much time browsing Youtube from his AppleTV than from his iMac (which is great, it means less bickering between PJ and Ivette about who gets to use the iMac). I also like it a lot, after spending just a half hour browsing videos on a 37" HDTV, you don't want to go back to your computer.

Of course, the feature needs work, but it is most an issue with searching and browsing. The videos look pretty damn nice.

Yes, he is

The long awaited reply to Sarah Silverman's video:

Rogue satellite destroyed by SM-3 ship-launched missile

It looks almost like when Alderaan was blown up.

What I am really enjoying about the press coverage of this event is how everyone pretty much understood that the shooting was more than just removing the threat of that dangerous satellite plummeting down to earth: it is also a technology demonstrator of a functional ballistic missile shield.

I also think it's really cool that the kill vehicle is kinetic (basically a huge bullet) instead of an explosive warhead. Tom Clancy explored this scenario with a similar platform, except the kill vehicle was an anti-air warhead. The technical challenge for that scenario was that the tracking software was making it follow the hottest part of the ballistic inbound, which is wrong since it would aim the missile at the tail end of the flying fireball surrounding the inbound. The warhead flies faster than the velocity of the explosive in the intercept missile, so by the time the missile blows up, the inbound is already too far to feel the explosion. Clancy's solution: switch to a radar tracker, which let them (at least in theory) track the actual inbound.

Fun stuff.

Where's your God now?

I know, just horrible.

Screw THAT

Thanks to Paul for this one:



One of the things that set us apart from animals is that animals don't do the same kind of stupid shit that us humans do.

Banned From YouTube: Parody Guitar Videos | The Underwire from Wired.com

[From Banned From YouTube: Parody Guitar Videos | The Underwire from Wired.com]

The shredder got banned from Youtube! This is one of my all time favorite series of parody videos. Basically Santeri Ojala takes a video where one or more "guitar gods" are playing, and then he records his own music over them. The results are extraordinary.

The first one I saw was with Carlos Santana. I had no idea what was going on, but I couldn't understand why it sounded so terrible. Not only Carlos was horrible, but everyone in his band was playing completely off-key, yet the music was obviously in sync with the video. I thought I smelled a rat, so I checked his list of videos and tried one with Paco de Lucia. Same thing, everything was in sync, but the music was horrible.

That's when I got the joke. Just plain beautiful. By the time I was done watching the third video, Iron Maiden's, I had laughed so hard that I almost got an asthma attack.

By the way, here's Santeri Ojala playing side-by-side with Slash:

Yes, she is

If you are not familiar with the Jimmy Kimmel show, he has a running gag where he waits until the end of the show to claim that he "ran out of time for Matt Damon."

This is Sarah Silverman's revenge:

Happy Mornings

1,500 inmates practice "Thriller"

Inmates at the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center (CPDRC) in the Philippines. Wikipedia has some background information on the video.