I'm considering a flip video

Tdarcos · Post by **Tdarcos** » Thu Apr 21, 2011 10:16 am

Buy.Com has a very nice price on a Flip video camera, supports HD video, has a battery pack that you can replace (so you can actually have two around if you're going to be on a trip into the wilderness or something where you might not be able to recharge the camera while there and so, charging two battery packs charged in advance - one in the camera and a second one as standby - would be a good idea) and claims to allow 2-hour operation, plus can be plugged in so you can run it off a USB wall plug. About $125. Buy.Com appears to also offer a wall plug for $10 extra but I already have one of these from one of my cell phones.

I would really love having an inexpensive plug-in video camera, especially one doing HD video. My current camera is nice, but the damn thing goes through AAA batteries faster than a junkie can smoke crack! If they weren't rechargeables I'd probably be spending as much as I was when I used real film.

Rechargeables are very cheap, a 4-pack is about the same price ($10-15) for a pack of maybe 20 alkaline that you get one use. (The recharge cost is negligible, probably 1c per battery per charge, if that; but that's not even an issue, my rent includes electricity). Actually, if you buy in bulk the price is very competitive, noname Chinese manufacturers in 10 or 20 packs rechargeables are about 50c each. A 10-pack of rechargeables is about $20; a 20-pack is about $36. This means the price of a rechargeable is only about twice that of alkaline, maybe less.

I buy both kinds; for continuous slow draw (like a wall clock or a smoke detector, although those use 9V and I haven't really seen 9V rechargeables) and long-term storage, occasional draw (a used by TV remote controls), alkaline is a much better choice than a rechargeable. When I put a clock up on the wall I'd like to only have to pull the battery each time I reset it for daylight savings time or standard time and I often do better than that with ordinary alkaline. I think I'm getting about one year of operation for a typical wall clock on one alkaline AA battery. For high repeated uses, (cameras and anything else that "eats" batteries a lot), rechargeables make a lot more sense.

Plus the annoying thing is the run time is about equivalent to 1/3 the charge time; they charge very fast, on the order of a couple hours but when I use them, it seems like I get about 20 minutes of actual recording time on 3 AAA batteries.

I currently carry 10 rechargeables. 3 in the camera and 7 in reserve. (I have to have an extra in order to charge everything because the charger can only do either 2 or 4 batteries, and it doesn't care if one of them is charged, it will still charge the other one.) It also seems like either the retain time on rechargeables isn't long since I'll typically have to replace the batteries in any shoot even though they might have been in the case storage only a few days and it seems like I haven't been using them for very long.

Other video cameras supporting some form of external power supply are above the $200 mark, some as much as $300, but they do have big advantages (80 gig hard drive which means you can take it on a trip and shoot for days without worrying about reloading or video size.)

Then again, most videos I shoot are in the short length category, I'll do perhaps 8 or 9 minutes at a time and that runs maybe 200-250 megabytes, so I could do 3 hours on a 4 GB card, which costs about $10.

I currently have 2GB cards because I bought them a while ago, I have two. I had a 4GB card that apparently went bad on me. That's why I have a "standing order" that files on the camera media are to be drained to my computer the same day that I shoot them, preferably as soon as possible after shooting them, and the media then reformatted by the camera so that it's empty and ready for new pictures and video. This prevents me from losing anything I've shot other than on the same day I did it, and the chances that happens again are now very low.

I'm thinking of doing a battery experiment. Put a fresh set of batteries in the camera and then, say, put it on a tripod and point it at the traffic on the street (so the images are different from time to time) and see how long it takes actually running, shooting video before it eats a full set of batteries. I might be surprised.

We'll see how long I actually get, if I do a video continuously will it shoot for 20 minutes or half an hour. Or will it run out of charge and fail?

Flack · Post by **Flack** » Thu Apr 21, 2011 1:21 pm

I think my Flip is the generation before that one. Mine recharges through USB, and I have a generic USB-to-wall adapter that also works with it.

Mine saves files in .mp4 format and once you connect it to the computer you can just copy the files over (Windows sees it as a USB drive). So that's nice -- you don't need any additional software to access it. It actually came with some and I deleted it.

The biggest complaint about the Flip line of cameras is that it does not have a jack for an external mic. For webcasts and stuff I admit that would be nice. The newer ones say they do allow for external mics, but I believe it requires a proprietary connection. The sound on it is pretty good, but for a pod/webcast, an external mic would be nice.

On the back of the Flip there's a D-Pad, a record button (in the middle of the D-Pad), a play button and a trash can button. That's it. I handed it to my five-year-old and she was able to use it with no problem. In fact, here it is. My 5 year old filmed it and my 9 year old edited it.

[youtube][/youtube]

My only advice is, now that Cisco closed the Flip line, expect prices to drop dramatically over the next month or two. I expect them to be half price within a couple of months as retailers dump their stock.

Tdarcos · Post by **Tdarcos** » Thu Apr 21, 2011 4:07 pm

Flack wrote:My only advice is, now that Cisco closed the Flip line, expect prices to drop dramatically over the next month or two. I expect them to be half price within a couple of months as retailers dump their stock.

Thanks a lot, Flack! I'll wait a while then. I don't need another camera, I can manage with one camera for what I'm doing. When I can buy a fairly good pluggable camera for under $100 I'll buy it.

It was like when I first decided to get a UPS, I said that they had to drop to no more than $100. Well, one comes out that's available for $99 so it's under my threshhold of pain. Then the cashier, bless her soul, tells me, "Oh, by the way, there's a $50 mail-in rebate on this. You can get the coupon at the front of the store." And I did get the rebate, so I got it for $50.

My current UPS is half the size of an unabridged dictionary, roughly twice as thick as a telephone book and 1/2 as wide. And I think it cost less than $40. I think I've used it "in anger" a total of 10 times, meaning that it provided the most important protection, to cover a temporary power dip lasting under 10 seconds about 8 times, and has provided power long enough to allow a graceful shutdown the other two. One we had a power failure for most of one day and the other was for two days.

When power goes out it beeps, and as the battery runs down further, it beeps faster.

The rest of the time it provides just clean power as a surge protector and I'll never know how many times it keeps equipment from being hit by spikes.

One time I helped out my sister. I was living with my family at the time and we get a power failure. So, I shut down my computer, and everything else is off. But my sister is worried because her expensive fish don't have a running air pump in their aquarium. But she does, ten minutes later courtesy of my now unused UPS. So to maximize the amount of time the pump can run - we're talking about a 10 or 20 watt pump - I don't plug in the lamp for the aquarium, just her air pump. I figured it could probably run for days if necessary.

It worked. Her pump continued running until power was back, then I took my UPS back and reset my system.

Tdarcos · Post by **Tdarcos** » Thu Apr 21, 2011 4:09 pm

Flack wrote:That's it. I handed it to my five-year-old and she was able to use it with no problem. In fact, here it is. My 5 year old filmed it and my 9 year old edited it.

Youtube sayeth, "There was an error, try again later." After I wrote this, then the video worked.

Flack · Post by **Flack** » Thu Apr 21, 2011 4:38 pm

TigerDirect has the 2 GB non-HD version (refurbished) for $49.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... =P229-1130

They have refurbished HD ones for $99:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... =P229-1058

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Thu Apr 21, 2011 6:36 pm

Is it available on razor-thin margins? Unless my reading is a little off, Tdarcos has $0.71 to his name, an electronic copy of Portal 2, whatever money was left over from the Crepe Fund, and little else.

Tdarcos, where are you buying domains for $70? I know Register sells them for a year at $35. I want to make sure they're not fleecing you.

Tdarcos · Post by **Tdarcos** » Thu Apr 21, 2011 7:17 pm

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:Is it available on razor-thin margins? Unless my reading is a little off, Tdarcos has $0.71 to his name, an electronic copy of Portal 2, whatever money was left over from the Crepe Fund, and little else.

Tdarcos, where are you buying domains for $70? I know Register sells them for a year at $35. I want to make sure they're not fleecing you.

I had to renew about seven domains. I never deal with Register.com, they're one of the most expensive places around. Register basically charges full retail list price for domain renewal or registration. As the saying goes, "they're priced like what you pay when you're buying cigarettes at an airport."

Registration service basically, is a commodity product. DNS is pretty much the same, someone types in a name and your server returns the IP address. And everyone does it the same, and everyone has some sort of automated system for making changes using a web browser.

I've used about 4 different places as either registrars or as management systems for hosting and equivalent services. NearlyFreeSpeech.net uses a customized minimalist system. GoDaddy.com uses their own customized one with a bit of pizazz and eye candy that swaps screens in and out. KVCwebhosting.com and Hostgator.com use Cpanel.

So I'm not going to even pay close to full retail for domain registration. Do you think I'm that stupid with money? I'm one of the scrimiest bastards and the cheapest sons-a-bitches in town when it comes to spending money! Don't you remember I'm the one that mentioned that GoDaddy has a loss leader on domain names at $1.04 for the first year?

There is only one thing that I will spend money on that cost is not an issue or it's at best a secondary, and that's safety. Often I can get the item I want to be sure things are safe at the lowest cost, but price is not a consideration when it comes to safety. Or the only time it comes into consideration is if it's completely unaffordable, a condition I've never had happen in many years. If that ever happens I'll only consider bothering with whatever it is if it's unavoidable and has to be done. Then you can believe I'm going to exercise extreme caution and care.

I had to buy some goggles for eye protection once because I was going to be doing some hammering of an item that might kick up splinters, and Home Depot had two kinds, the ones like eyeglasses for around $3 and the ones that are like swimming goggles that cover not only the front of the eye but the edges too, and those were $1.99. Those were what I wanted, because I wanted the complete protection kind. Had the prices been reversed and the goggle types were more expensive, I'd still have bought them and not complained one bit.

I bought a car once that was very nice except the paint on the trunk was a little faded. My girlfriend at the time wanted to help - painting can be fun - so I said fine. I found spray paint in a close shade, and at the same time I bought some eye goggles (this was several years ago, they are not the same ones I bought for the above example although they were the same kind, the 'complete around all sides of both eyes' style), gloves to keep the paint off our hands, and filter masks so as not to breathe the fumes even though I was painting on the street. And I insisted she use all of the safety equipment. As I did as well.

I'm not BP Exploration, Inc., I don't play lip service to safety, it comes first and foremost. You only get one set of fingers, eyes, hands, lungs, etc. and you have to defend them vigorously. I've even had cases where I paid for safety fixes of other people's stuff out of my own pocket. Knowing how cheap I am you have to realize that means that whatever it was, was so egregiously unsafe that it offended my standards enough for me to want it fixed and I was willing to put my money where my mouth is.

Flack · Post by **Flack** » Thu Apr 21, 2011 7:41 pm

What are the odds a person would tell two unrelated stories in the same post that both involved buying goggles?

js · Post by js » Fri Apr 22, 2011 6:17 am

Hahaa, yeah, and I'm considering a houseboat on the canals of Amsterdam.

Only 12+ year waiting list. Do you think I'll get my houseboat first or will Paul get his "flip video" first? GAME ON KNUKKA

AArdvark · Post by **AArdvark** » Fri Apr 22, 2011 6:25 am

I had to renew about seven domains

in order to fit all the drivel on the internet.

Flack · Post by **Flack** » Fri Apr 22, 2011 8:32 am

js wrote:Hahaa, yeah, and I'm considering a houseboat on the canals of Amsterdam.

Only 12+ year waiting list. Do you think I'll get my houseboat first or will Paul get his "flip video" first? GAME ON KNUKKA

If you film a video of yourself making some crepes in high definition, I'll kick in $10 toward the houseboat.

straw · Post by **straw** » Fri Apr 22, 2011 12:09 pm

I need a flip video and an electric grill first. Oh, and an Internet connection to upload the baked files to youtube.

Flack · Post by **Flack** » Wed May 04, 2011 8:19 am

Prices are dropping.

FlipHD Mino on Amazon: $89 (4GB, 1st Gen)

FlipHD Mino on Amazon $99 (4GB, 3rd Gen)

FlipHD Mino on Amazon $129 (8GB, 3rd Gen)

js · Post by js » Wed May 04, 2011 4:05 pm

My disability just came in so I'm one step closer. Just need 40 rechargeable batteries - what kind does the flip video take?

Tdarcos · Post by **Tdarcos** » Wed May 04, 2011 6:02 pm

js wrote:My disability just came in so I'm one step closer. Just need 40 rechargeable batteries - what kind does the flip video take?

Let's not be funny here. The Flip has an internal battery, it doesn't use removable ones.

Flack · Post by **Flack** » Wed May 04, 2011 7:08 pm

The 3rd generation Flip uses a rechargeable battery pack, or 3 AAA batteries.

Tdarcos · Post by **Tdarcos** » Wed May 04, 2011 7:25 pm

AArdvark wrote:
I had to renew about seven domains
in order to fit all the drivel on the internet.

Actually, that's close.

Ihnstae.com (I added this when I found it was available)
Inhstae.info
SaveMoneyOnTaxes.Info
paulrobinson.us (not to be confused with my permanent domain paul-robinson.us )
W64A.com (it's only 4 characters long)
U32A.com (same)
talesofzenith.com

According to GoDaddy I own 36 domain names. (I am being kind of literal here; some of those belong to my company rather than me, but since I am the entire board of directors and the only officer anything the corporation does is my action, it's effectively the same thing.)

This is in addition to paul.washington.dc.us and viridian-development.com which are not registered with GoDaddy. They can't handle geographic-based domain names and as it turned out, the renewal fee for viridian-development from the registrar it's currently with was less than $1 more than GoDaddy so it didn't really make a lot of sense to go through the trouble of doing a domain transfer just to save about 90c.

If it had been $10, that would have been another thing.

Flack · Post by **Flack** » Wed May 04, 2011 8:14 pm

ZATS-A-LOTTA-CREPES!

js · Post by js » Wed May 04, 2011 10:24 pm

Tdarcos wrote: Let's not be funny here.

You've certainly got a lock on that!

AArdvark · Post by **AArdvark** » Thu May 05, 2011 3:08 am

Best of!