By Nels Johnson

Some hardware looks so good on paper that you wait too long to get it — unless you have a bad day with your regular gear and that thing you had your eye on is readily available and swaps into your production kit headache-free. Such was the case for me with the Flip Video Mino HD, Pure Digital's pocket-sized camcorder which is now a permanent addition to the equipment I bring to any live performance. Since I got it, the company was acquired by Cisco and Sony came out with the formidable Webbie HD. But the Flip's reported 14% of the digital camcorder market underscores its fundamental usability on a variety of deep levels.  

Size Matters: the Mino HD vs. Renegade V950 and the Mino HD file transferring / charging.

If you currently use a cell phone like the Motorola Renegade V950 to shoot, say, shows in crowded nightclubs, you'll appreciate this comparison: same size and weight (almost exactly), similar price (depending on the contract/carrier) but way different in video, audio and data transfer proficiency. While the V950 and similar phones are already good at this type of work, the Mino HD blows them away: 1280x720/H.264 (720p) video, 64kb/44.1K Hz audio, 4GB of SSD storage with a built-in USB plug — compared to the Renegade's 320x240/MPEG-4 (3GPP), although you can put an 8GB micro-SD card in the V950.

Not only are the Mino's digital A/V specs superior, but the mic and camera quality also surprised me (granted it's a video recorder, not a phone). Noisy music coming off a stage, captured by the Mino, can actually be enjoyed at playback time. Down-sampling HD video clips for web and file sharing is accomplished by plugging in (and charging) the Mino directly to your desktop/lap via USB, then firing up QuickTime Pro. You can move files in both directions but the Mino's storage capacity — 4GB — is only good for about an hour of raw footage.

The Mino records at 16:9, which leaves room at the top and bottom of the 4:3 viewfinder for LCD readouts indicating battery status, whether or not you're recording, how much recording time remains, or how far you are into playback. Mechanical controls include a switch on the top left side you that flips out the USB connector, a clickable power button on the top right side (both easy to use when holding the device in one hand) and a big red stop/start button, also used for to invoke the Mino's settings menu by keeping it depressed at power-on time. The other controls on the back panel, file delete/navigation, fast-forward/rewind, volume, zoom, are all touch sensitive but easy to master.

On the bottom left side is a jack for non-standard (composite) TV out. Connecting the Mino to my 32" ViewSonic LCD TV with the cable included in the box, then playing back from the Mino, exceeded my expectations — given the small size of the camera and mic—not to mention the production values of the captured footage. Sadly, this port does not double as a headphone jack for monitoring or playback. On the bottom of the unit is a screw socket for an industry-standard tripod. As noted above, picture quality is basically crystalline but bright colors can suffer washout. Also, fast motion will usually incur more blur than would a larger camera with a bigger lens. Finally, not surprisingly, the Mino does not do a great job in low-light conditions — nor can you take still pictures. A dictaphone feature would have been sweet as well.

Back on the plus side, battery life has yet to be a problem, assuming reasonable charging habits. The Mino's tiny screen makes a big difference here (power consumption-wise). Shooting lots of footage, playing it back, connecting to the TV, deleting boring files, etc., hasn't caused any unexpected problems for me so far. Of course, every time I plug the device into my laptop, it starts charging (when copying files, for example). See Figure 2. You can also use your iPhone's cigaret lighter USB adapter to charge the Mino in your car.

Both iMovie and iPhoto play nice with the Mino HD. In my experience, iPhoto recognizes it but doesn't render thumbnail previews of the video files even though it import them. iMovie recognizes the device, generates thumbnails, then fails to import any of the clips. Choosing Import Movies from iMovie, then navigating to the 100VIDEO folder on the Mino, imports to iMovie.  Your mileage, as they say, vary. I usually do all my transcoding, trimming and audio track wrangling with QuickTime Pro and Audacity.

Maybe Cisco will transform the Mino HD into a dedicated realtime video capture and output device for live conferencing and webcasting.

Flip Video Mino HD

SCORE: 

PROS: Price, superior audio and video specs, compact size and simplicity.

CONS: Limited storage, tiny screen, no headphone jack.

BOTTOM LINE: There's a reason why Flip has captured such a large share of the consumer camcorder market.

MSRP: $229

CONTACT: www.theflip.com