Good Time To Get Family History

This is the season when many of us will give or receive video cameras or haul out of the closet and dust off cameras that we already have. Rather than just catching the scenes of your holiday, which for the most part will look much the same as the scenes of the year before, why not use that video camera to create something truly special, something that 25 years from now your kids and grandkids will appreciate more than any gift from Amazon.com or Macy’s.

During the holidays families gather for meals and celebrations. This is often the only time during the year that many families get together. What a great opportunity to ask our parents or grandparents or other relatives to share stories of their lives. This does not need to be a big production. All you need is a video camera, a somewhat quiet place and some time.

Find a room away from all the commotion of the celebrations and use that as your studio. It does not have to be soundproof and a bit of background conversation from other rooms is OK. Make sure the room is well lighted and comfortable. Don’t shine spotlights at the subject but make sure that they are not seated in front of a window or other bright colored wall. The light should come from the front.

I suggest that you mount your camera on a tripod or some solid surface. Focus it on the face of the person being interviewed and leave it there. There is no need for zooming or panning. A fixed shot is best. Since most video cameras have built in microphones, be sure the camera is no more than 6 ft from the subject especially if the person being interviewed has a quiet voice.

Have the person sit in a comfortable chair, turn on the camera, and just begin. The person asking the questions should be seated next to the camera. The interview should be a conversation between these two people; the camera should be ignored and will soon be forgotten. It may take a few minutes for everyone to relax and forget the session is being recorded.

You may begin with some simple questions about their holiday memories or what it was like when they were growing up. From there just let the conversation go. Don’t worry about pauses or hesitations. The interviewer should ask questions and clarifications but the key is to let the person being interviewed do the talking. These interviews can be targeted to a single topic like the time spent in the military or details of career or vocation, or they can be more open. One topic will soon transition into others. Have patience and just let it happen.

I suggest that you do not stop the interview before you are finished and play back a portion for the interviewee. Many will be self conscience and this will have a negative impact on the rest of the interview.

Once you are finished, you can edit out the long pauses using inexpensive video editing software. Then burn the interview on to a DVD and distribute to your family members. No gift will be more valued.

Good Time To Get Family History

This is the season when many of us will give or receive video cameras or haul out of the closet and dust off cameras that we already have. Rather than just catching the scenes of your holiday, which for the most part will look much the same as the scenes of the year before, why not use that video camera to create something truly special, something that 25 years from now your kids and grandkids will appreciate more than any gift from Amazon.com or Macy’s.

During the holidays families gather for meals and celebrations. This is often the only time during the year that many families get together. What a great opportunity to ask our parents or grandparents or other relatives to share stories of their lives. This does not need to be a big production. All you need is a video camera, a somewhat quiet place and some time.

Find a room away from all the commotion of the celebrations and use that as your studio. It does not have to be soundproof and a bit of background conversation from other rooms is OK. Make sure the room is well lighted and comfortable. Don’t shine spotlights at the subject but make sure that they are not seated in front of a window or other bright colored wall. The light should come from the front.

I suggest that you mount your camera on a tripod or some solid surface. Focus it on the face of the person being interviewed and leave it there. There is no need for zooming or panning. A fixed shot is best. Since most video cameras have built in microphones, be sure the camera is no more than 6 ft from the subject especially if the person being interviewed has a quiet voice.

Have the person sit in a comfortable chair, turn on the camera, and just begin. The person asking the questions should be seated next to the camera. The interview should be a conversation between these two people; the camera should be ignored and will soon be forgotten. It may take a few minutes for everyone to relax and forget the session is being recorded.

You may begin with some simple questions about their holiday memories or what it was like when they were growing up. From there just let the conversation go. Don’t worry about pauses or hesitations. The interviewer should ask questions and clarifications but the key is to let the person being interviewed do the talking. These interviews can be targeted to a single topic like the time spent in the military or details of career or vocation, or they can be more open. One topic will soon transition into others. Have patience and just let it happen.

I suggest that you do not stop the interview before you are finished and play back a portion for the interviewee. Many will be self conscience and this will have a negative impact on the rest of the interview.

Once you are finished, you can edit out the long pauses using inexpensive video editing software. Then burn the interview on to a DVD and distribute to your family members. No gift will be more valued.

I Am Still Scratching My Head...

What do you do if you have a consumer electronics product that is universally considered to be the best in its category? It is a product that is selling exceptionally well and has some new and innovative improvements ready to be announced. Most companies, especially in these less than robust economic times, would be happy and continue to take the cash from the brisk sales to the bank. If you are Cisco, the giant computer networking products company, you discontinue the product line. That’s right; Cisco announced that the Flip video camera will no longer be manufactured.

If you are a regular follower of my column you know that from the time the Flip was released a few years ago I have been a big cheerleader for the simplicity and utility of this cigarette pack sized video camera. After reviewing the statements from the Cisco suits, I remain convinced that for the vast majority of consumers, the Flip is still the best small video camera available, albeit only for a few more months.

There have been several competitors surface in this product category, but all of them seem to fail to understand why the Flip was such a great product. Companies like Kodak, Sony, Toshiba and others retained Flip’s small size but their engineers and designers could not resist adding more features. While the Flip essentially has one button, the competitors added other features that get in the way of the point and shoot simplicity of the Flip.

Cisco, in the announcement of the cancellation of the Flip, related that it was no longer a viable product because mobile phones had added video recording capability. That may be true but a simple test proved to me that they were misinformed about the practicality of using phones to capture spur of the moment events.

I have a smart phone that has video recording capability. If I want to make a video recording I have to go through six steps, all of them embedded in on-screen menus before I am actually recording. With the Flip there are two steps. I turn it on and press the red button.

Some would accuse me of being a modern day Luddite but I am not a big supporter of the Swiss Army knife approach to all things electronic. Adding features adds complexity and often gets in the way of ease of use. In a car you should not need to look at an on- screen menu to turn on the windshield wipers or heater. The remote control for your TV should not have more buttons that the space shuttle. Guess I am showing my age.

I Am Still Scratching My Head...

What do you do if you have a consumer electronics product that is universally considered to be the best in its category? It is a product that is selling exceptionally well and has some new and innovative improvements ready to be announced. Most companies, especially in these less than robust economic times, would be happy and continue to take the cash from the brisk sales to the bank. If you are Cisco, the giant computer networking products company, you discontinue the product line. That’s right; Cisco announced that the Flip video camera will no longer be manufactured.

If you are a regular follower of my column you know that from the time the Flip was released a few years ago I have been a big cheerleader for the simplicity and utility of this cigarette pack sized video camera. After reviewing the statements from the Cisco suits, I remain convinced that for the vast majority of consumers, the Flip is still the best small video camera available, albeit only for a few more months.

There have been several competitors surface in this product category, but all of them seem to fail to understand why the Flip was such a great product. Companies like Kodak, Sony, Toshiba and others retained Flip’s small size but their engineers and designers could not resist adding more features. While the Flip essentially has one button, the competitors added other features that get in the way of the point and shoot simplicity of the Flip.

Cisco, in the announcement of the cancellation of the Flip, related that it was no longer a viable product because mobile phones had added video recording capability. That may be true but a simple test proved to me that they were misinformed about the practicality of using phones to capture spur of the moment events.

I have a smart phone that has video recording capability. If I want to make a video recording I have to go through six steps, all of them embedded in on-screen menus before I am actually recording. With the Flip there are two steps. I turn it on and press the red button.

Some would accuse me of being a modern day Luddite but I am not a big supporter of the Swiss Army knife approach to all things electronic. Adding features adds complexity and often gets in the way of ease of use. In a car you should not need to look at an on- screen menu to turn on the windshield wipers or heater. The remote control for your TV should not have more buttons that the space shuttle. Guess I am showing my age.

Great Video In A Small Package

If you are a regular reader you know that I often take designers and engineers to task for overloading electronic devices with so many features that the average intelligent person is unable to actually use them. Recently, as I was getting ready for a long bicycle trip, I looked for a video camera that would record good quality video and be very compact and light weight. When you are biking upwards of 100 miles in a day, every ounce of cargo is scrutinized.

While I had read about the “Flip™” camera from PureDigital Technologies®, I had discounted it as a toy. Since it was retailing for about $150, how good could it be? Well I was wrong. The “Flip™” video camera sets the bar very high for anyone designing a device that is simple to use, compact in size and provides superior video quality.

The camera itself is about the size of a large cell phone measuring 2”x 4”x ¾”. It weighs only a few ounces and will easily fit in your pocket or purse. From this small package comes a plethora of features. It has a small LCD screen that serves as the viewfinder and playback window. It has a fixed lens with digital zoom. (Don’t bother to use the digital zoom as it makes the video look bad.) The camera runs on two AA batteries and gets almost four hours of recording or play back time for each set of batteries.

What impresses me most are the controls, or lack thereof. The camera has an on/off button and only a few other controls. There is a large red button. Push it once and you are recording. Push it again and it stops and saves the video. The only other controls are a volume control, an erase control and a playback control. All the video settings are automatic. The color and picture sharpness are as good or better than cameras selling at five times the price. Audio record volume is automatic.

You can watch the videos on the internal screen or connect the camera to a TV or a PC. Again no settings, just plug and play.

The camera has a fold out USB connector. Using that connector you plug the camera into a computer and the camera automatically downloads special software that allows you to watch and edit your videos on your PC or Mac computer. You can ignore that software and the camera becomes an external hard drive. You can access it and copy any or all the videos into your computer and use programs like Microsoft Movie Maker™ to edit your videos.

The camera works out of the box and comes with everything you need. There are no tapes or memory cards. The video is stored in the camera on the 2 gig internal storage device and will hold one hour of high quality video. It does take some time to get used to holding the camera steady since it is so light. I made a sample of the video. Click here to watch it. I recorded the video recently using the Flip Camera while riding on the Miami Whitewater Forest Shaker Trace Bike Trail.

If you are in the market for an easy to use quality video camera for vacations or family events, you can’t go wrong with the Flip. You will find it a major electronics retailers.

Great Video In A Small Package

If you are a regular reader you know that I often take designers and engineers to task for overloading electronic devices with so many features that the average intelligent person is unable to actually use them. Recently, as I was getting ready for a long bicycle trip, I looked for a video camera that would record good quality video and be very compact and light weight. When you are biking upwards of 100 miles in a day, every ounce of cargo is scrutinized.

While I had read about the “Flip™” camera from PureDigital Technologies®, I had discounted it as a toy. Since it was retailing for about $150, how good could it be? Well I was wrong. The “Flip™” video camera sets the bar very high for anyone designing a device that is simple to use, compact in size and provides superior video quality.

The camera itself is about the size of a large cell phone measuring 2”x 4”x ¾”. It weighs only a few ounces and will easily fit in your pocket or purse. From this small package comes a plethora of features. It has a small LCD screen that serves as the viewfinder and playback window. It has a fixed lens with digital zoom. (Don’t bother to use the digital zoom as it makes the video look bad.) The camera runs on two AA batteries and gets almost four hours of recording or play back time for each set of batteries.

What impresses me most are the controls, or lack thereof. The camera has an on/off button and only a few other controls. There is a large red button. Push it once and you are recording. Push it again and it stops and saves the video. The only other controls are a volume control, an erase control and a playback control. All the video settings are automatic. The color and picture sharpness are as good or better than cameras selling at five times the price. Audio record volume is automatic.

You can watch the videos on the internal screen or connect the camera to a TV or a PC. Again no settings, just plug and play.

The camera has a fold out USB connector. Using that connector you plug the camera into a computer and the camera automatically downloads special software that allows you to watch and edit your videos on your PC or Mac computer. You can ignore that software and the camera becomes an external hard drive. You can access it and copy any or all the videos into your computer and use programs like Microsoft Movie Maker™ to edit your videos.

The camera works out of the box and comes with everything you need. There are no tapes or memory cards. The video is stored in the camera on the 2 gig internal storage device and will hold one hour of high quality video. It does take some time to get used to holding the camera steady since it is so light. I made a sample of the video. Click here to watch it. I recorded the video recently using the Flip Camera while riding on the Miami Whitewater Forest Shaker Trace Bike Trail.

If you are in the market for an easy to use quality video camera for vacations or family events, you can’t go wrong with the Flip. You will find it a major electronics retailers.

Video Cameras Getting Better and Less Expensive

Since I work for a TV station I have never been a real fan of consumer quality video cameras and editing systems. Since they first became available in the 80s, I’ve always found the quality of the final product to be lacking. Even well into the 90s the cameras were not very good. Because at work I was always surrounded by high end, and high priced cameras that provided great video, I was spoiled. Even the best of the consumer grade cameras left me unimpressed.

This has changed big time. The current models aimed at the consumer market are nothing less than amazing. They are small, easy to use, and more important; they will render very high quality pictures and sound. There are some models that will come close to recording video as good as we use in the broadcast industry. Many are able to record high definition video. And good news, prices have dropped.

These video cameras come in many “flavors” each with a host of features and capabilities. This week and next I will try to provide some pointers on what each type offers so you can compare what you need with what is available.

Let’s start with the recording media itself. In other words how does the camera store the video that you are shooting. There are four basic types. Each type has pros and cons.

Many of the most popular cameras are still tape based. Many use DV tapes. These inexpensive digital tapes are smaller than the older analog 8mm or Hi 8 format tapes and much smaller than the “ancient” VHS tapes. Unlike the former, DV tapes store the video images in digital form. This allows for very high quality images and sound. The tapes do require a motorized system and as a result these cameras consume a bit more electricity than some of the others. This results in shorter battery life. Also there are many mechanical systems and many moving parts in the tape transport mechanism. This can be prone to damage from dirt and sand.

A newer technology is based on DVD storage. Although smaller in size than your regular 4.5 inch DVD, the technology is about the same. The images are stored in digital form on a mini DVD disc and can be played out from the camera or imported into your computer for editing. Again, the DVD drive uses an electric motor but it consumes less energy than the tape based cameras. While the disc reading mechanism has some moving parts, it is much less complex than the tape based systems. You can easily transfer the videos to a computer for editing or play them on a DVD player

The third type of storage is based on “hard drive” technology. Just like the hard drive in your computer or some MP3 players, the images and sound are stored on computer disc. Unlike the hard drive in your computer, these are sealed mechanisms and specially designed for rough handling. They are a permanent part of the camera, so when you have filled it up, you need to transfer the video files to another media before shooting more.

Finally there are cameras that use flash memory. There are no moving parts as the video is recorded onto memory cards just like many digital still cameras. When the card is full you replace it with another. The cards can be inserted into a PC or MAC and you can transfer the video for playback or editing. There are very few moving parts and power consumption is low.

More next week about lens optics and controls

Video Cameras Getting Better and Less Expensive

Since I work for a TV station I have never been a real fan of consumer quality video cameras and editing systems. Since they first became available in the 80s, I’ve always found the quality of the final product to be lacking. Even well into the 90s the cameras were not very good. Because at work I was always surrounded by high end, and high priced cameras that provided great video, I was spoiled. Even the best of the consumer grade cameras left me unimpressed.

This has changed big time. The current models aimed at the consumer market are nothing less than amazing. They are small, easy to use, and more important; they will render very high quality pictures and sound. There are some models that will come close to recording video as good as we use in the broadcast industry. Many are able to record high definition video. And good news, prices have dropped.

These video cameras come in many “flavors” each with a host of features and capabilities. This week and next I will try to provide some pointers on what each type offers so you can compare what you need with what is available.

Let’s start with the recording media itself. In other words how does the camera store the video that you are shooting. There are four basic types. Each type has pros and cons.

Many of the most popular cameras are still tape based. Many use DV tapes. These inexpensive digital tapes are smaller than the older analog 8mm or Hi 8 format tapes and much smaller than the “ancient” VHS tapes. Unlike the former, DV tapes store the video images in digital form. This allows for very high quality images and sound. The tapes do require a motorized system and as a result these cameras consume a bit more electricity than some of the others. This results in shorter battery life. Also there are many mechanical systems and many moving parts in the tape transport mechanism. This can be prone to damage from dirt and sand.

A newer technology is based on DVD storage. Although smaller in size than your regular 4.5 inch DVD, the technology is about the same. The images are stored in digital form on a mini DVD disc and can be played out from the camera or imported into your computer for editing. Again, the DVD drive uses an electric motor but it consumes less energy than the tape based cameras. While the disc reading mechanism has some moving parts, it is much less complex than the tape based systems. You can easily transfer the videos to a computer for editing or play them on a DVD player

The third type of storage is based on “hard drive” technology. Just like the hard drive in your computer or some MP3 players, the images and sound are stored on computer disc. Unlike the hard drive in your computer, these are sealed mechanisms and specially designed for rough handling. They are a permanent part of the camera, so when you have filled it up, you need to transfer the video files to another media before shooting more.

Finally there are cameras that use flash memory. There are no moving parts as the video is recorded onto memory cards just like many digital still cameras. When the card is full you replace it with another. The cards can be inserted into a PC or MAC and you can transfer the video for playback or editing. There are very few moving parts and power consumption is low.

More next week about lens optics and controls