Lawrence Ingraham’s Blog

High Definition Video Recording in Your Pocket

The Flip video made a big spash on the market last year. This wallet sized video camera is the model of good consumer electronics. To record something, turn it on, point it towards something and press record. To play something you’ve recorded, turn it on, select the clip and press play. To download the footage to your computer, press the USB button and out *flips* the usb connector, plug it into your computer, and copy to your hard drive. Piece of cake, they’ve sold tons of these.

The Kodak Zi6 took the Flip concept and improved on it, most notably with image resolution. Where the Flip records at 640 x 480 VGA, the Zi6 does 720p HD at 60 fps. That’s a pretty huge jump in resolution while keeping the price just about the same, $180 or so. There’s also the ability to take still photos and it uses SD HC cards for expandability. Very nice. That’s all it took for me to pick one up.

What’s this review based on

I’m not going to compare the Zi6 to the Flip anymore, because frankly it blows it out of the water for the price. I’ll be using the Zi6 as my out and about camera. I have a 14 month old daughter and never want to be too far from a camera.

I already have a Canon HV20 but it’s a little too big for taking with me everywhere. Also, because it records to miniDV, it’s a bit more work to import the clips. I’ll still use the HV20, but only for home videos and planned events.

We also have a Nikon D40 for stills, but that’s overkill for casual pictures for me. I’m more interested in how it compares to my iPhone, since I always have that with me and use it for most photos. The iPhone still has a great little camera for Twinkle posting and taking pics while I’m out, but I’m hoping the Zi6 will be a little better.

So what’s it like?

The Zi6 fits easily into your pocket. It’s about the size of my iPhone and maybe 2x as thick. The weight is pretty much the same as the iPhone too, but feels lighter because it’s so bigger. Since I usually put my wallet and iPhone in the same pocket, the Zi6 balances out nicely in the other pocket.

It takes two AA batteries, and even comes with a set of rechargeables and a charger you can use for any rechargeable batteries. Pretty cool they threw that in. My first day with the Zi6 I took around 30 minutes of video and a few dozen pictures, played back a few clips on the drive home, and was just starting to see the red low battery warning. The beauty is, if it dies on you, AA batteries are everywhere.

There’s also the usual cables for playback on a TV, it outputs component and composite as well as stereo audio, a small case and a little lanyard for strapping it to your wrist I guess. I never use those. I’ve got an 8 gig SD HC card in there, so I can record a few hours of HD video no problem. I got it on Amazon for $20 or so, can’t believe how cheap these things are now.

The screen is nice and large making it easy to see what you’re capturing. Unfortunately the plastic screen covering is glossy which makes it difficult to see in the sun or from an angle. This isn’t a problem with my HV20 or really much of a problem with the iPhone, but it’s more annoying than a deal breaker.

Since the lens is really narrow, you can’t get too close to what you’re shooting. I found that staying at least 6 feet from the subject works pretty well for both video and still shooting. There is a macro switch which shortens the lens a bit, though I couldn’t get very good results with it. There’s no optical focus, meaning the lens doesn’t change when you zoom. There is a zoom, but it’s all done digitally, which really degrades the quality. I keep it as wide as possible at all times, then crop down on my computer if I need to. Though, what do you expect for $180.

The physical controls are minimal, three buttons and a peg joystick let you do everything. I always hated these peg joysticks; maybe it’s because I have fat thumbs, but I always have a hard time using them. Pressing in on the peg starts/stops recording, or takes a picture. Moving up/down zooms in/out and adjusts the volume on playback. Left/right changes camera modes. The other two buttons change from recording to playback or delete things and stop playback.

When you’re ready to import your recordings to your computer, it’s as easy as pressing the USB button and connecting it to your USB. This is just like the Flip, and a great idea. I don’t know how many times I’ve needed to look for a mini-USB cable or pop out a memory card and slap it into a reader.

Enough teasing, show me the video already!

I took the Zi6 to the North Carolina Zoo the other day and captured some clips of animals doing what they do. It was a beautiful sunny day at the zoo, so the footage came out really great. While the Zi6 can record in 60fps, I did most of my recording in standard 30fps. I’d bet if you were recording sports or something moving quickly, you’d want 60fps. These animals weren’t moving much though.

Here’s some footage of a seal swimming. You can really see the detail in the water. Embeded below is the scaled down, compressed Vimeo version, but you can download the raw quicktime here for all the quality. (right-click save as…)

These flamingoes get all pissy towards the end. Good example of motion and capturing the audio. Vimeo below, download raw quicktime here. (right-click save as…)

I did take some 60fps footage just as a test. Here’s my wife and daughter on the carousel. I think the vimeo embed is capped at 30fps, so to see the real quality you’ll need the raw quicktime. (right-click save as…)

How about the pictures?

I shot just a few pictures to compare the quality between the Zi6 and my iPhone. Overall it’s a big improvement. The native resolution of the Zi6 is 2048 x 1536, while the iPhone is 1600 x 1200, so a slight bump there. All that’s important though is the quality of the pictures. I’ve put the Zi6 photos on the top with the iPhone pictures on the bottom. Click on the photos to download the raw pictures. Which do you prefer?

The Carousel Sign

A Cactus

Some Puffins, shot through glass

The African Safari View

I’m not loving either, but the Zi6 wins it for color depth and brightness. However, pretty much any point and shoot camera will probably kill both of these for still shots, so I wouldn’t want to rely on the Zi6 as my primary camera.

Getting stuff on your computer

Like I said earlier, connecting the Zi6 to your computer is a breeze with the built-in USB connector. I’m a Mac user, and it automatically opened iPhoto for importing. Both the photos and the video get imported into iPhoto. Since the Zi6 records to h.264, you can double click the video files to open in Quicktime and export from there if you like. That’s the easiest way to access your full res video.

If you’re interested in making a little edit of your clips, you can fire up iMovie and it’ll see your clips at launch and start making thumbnails out of them. Again, since it’s already in h.264 format, there’s no importing and converting required. However, iMovie is limited to 960×540 exporting, so your 720p video will be scaled down to 540p. I don’t have a problem with this for most applications, but I can see how this is a problem.

Here’s the video I put together from the Zoo trip exported at 540p from iMovie on Vimeo. Notice the lack of steady cam on the Zi6, especially in the first few shots. Update: iMovie 09 has a cool “Stabilization” feature which could help with this. Here’s my review of iMovie 09 using the Kodak Zi6.

Final Cut is the best way to edit and export the full res video. I have Final Cut Express and after scrubbing through the footage in iMovie, piecing together a rough edit, was able to export the clips as XML into Final Cut with no problems. I’d imagine this is how most people will do it, I just like the ease of iMovie for these sorta edits.

Final Conclusion

If you’ve read this far, you know I love this camera. I’m no video expert, I really can’t tell the difference between high end HDTVs, but for what it’s worth, this camera rocks. If you can budget $200 for a camera and are in need of some video, this is the way to go. Get an 8 gig SD card, a few rechargeable AA batteries and you’re good to go.

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I’ve been an iPhone user since the price drop last year. No I wasn’t lined up at launch, I’m in a contract with work that I couldn’t get out of. But everything aligned with the price drop, and I can’t look back. I always had my iPhone jailbroken, just my nature I guess, so I’ve been playing games on it far before the app store was announced. I’ve had a fun time with Labyrinth but there hasn’t been a game I could say I really liked. Until Trism was released, of course.

Trism is available on the app store for $5, and I’ve probably logged a good 10 hours of play since purchasing it last week. The idea behind the game is simple, line up triangles on the board so you have three or more of the same color touching. In a sense, it’s very similar to Columns, Meteos, or even Dr. Mario. There’s the usual special blocks which pop up, a Rainbow if you get 5 matching triangles which can take the color of any block, a bomb which will end your game if you don’t destroy that block in the allotted number of steps, etc. This makes for a really fun, pick up and go game I can play while waiting for a chicken sandwich at the cafe, or for the wife to choose between the black shoes or the brown.

What’s unique about Trism is the use of the iPhone’s accelerometer to control gameplay. After you clear blocks, the holes that are left get filled in with other blocks nearby. You control which way the blocks slide by tilting the iPhone. That means you get to look like a fool flinging your phone around in public, which is always a good conversation starter.

There’s three different play modes in addition to the tutorials. The timed version throws bombs and locks if you take too long to get matches. The infinite version lets you play forever, so long as no bombs blow up. Finally the tilt version is more of a puzzle than a game, requiring you to tilt your iPhone to line up blocks in the least amount of moves. I usually play the timed version, it’s the most challenging for me.

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My friend Sean Zimmerman is getting married in August. He’s a great guy, so I didn’t mind spending the money and time flying across the country for a weekend with the guys to celebrate. I can’t call it a bachelor party, since there were no strippers or over intoxication, but the spirit there. We all met up in Seattle for a few days, a city I’ve never visited but always wanted to.

In between a visit to the Space Needle and a viewing of Batman, we caught up with a Seattle Mariners game. Now, I’m not a baseball fan, so I really couldn’t care less about the game. I was just happy to have a beer with the guys, and they love baseball, so it worked out. I heard Safeco field had an agreement with Nintendo which lets you use the DS along with the game over their wireless. They used to charge fans $5 for this, but now it’s free and I was dying to check it out.

First off, you need to find a Nintendo station at the stadium to download the Nintendo Fan Network game. There’s one every 20 sections or so, flip open the DS and download it, couple minutes setup max. After you first launch the game, you need to pick a username and where you’re sitting. Then you’re connected to the network and can access all the features available.

The main menu has 6 sections you can explore:

• Food and Beverages – Order food to your seat, the single reason you need a DS. More on this later.
• Fan Network Audio and Video – Tune into the closed circuit tv for instant replays and listen to the play by play announcers, kinda cool but delayed a few seconds from the jumbotron.
• MLB Stats and Standings – As you’d expect, live stats and division standings. Probably great for those baseball fans without an iPhone.
• MLB in Action – I think this was the Pitch Tracking page, shows you approximately where the last pitch was in relation to the strike zone with related speed. Kinda cool.
• Fan Network Games – Things to do when you’re really bored, puzzles and crosswords, etc.
• Fan Network Messaging – The app with the most promise that sadly under delivers. More on this later as well.
• Log Out and your Profile – As you’d expect.

I’m sure if I were a hardcore baseball fan, I’d be loving this stuff. The fact that you can be at a baseball game and be immersed with baseball near and far is great. Extremely progressive compared to the days of buying a program and keeping score with a pencil like I did when growing up (yes I was a fan back then, Bash Brothers baby!).

The biggest selling point is the food ordering system. They have a fairly full menu of foods available to purchase; drinks, appetizers, entrees. You put in your credit card information, place your order, and within 5 minutes it’s delivered to your seat. The people sitting around me were all curious how it worked after a couple beers were magically delivered.

There’s a charge of 15% for the delivery, on top of the already crazy prices, so I can see this adding up fast. For 2 beers it was $18 compared to $15, a small price to avoid getting out of my seat and standing in line for who knows how long. It’s really amazing how smoothly this process went, literally 5 minutes from start to finish, cold beer in hand and I never left my seat. My friend Grant left a few minutes before I ordered, and we were halfway done with our beers before he got back.

Then there’s the Fan Network Messaging. You can see a list of everyone with a DS at the stadium, and send them messages. They get the message, and can reply. Sounds great right, a no brainer right? Well, it’s completely worthless.

There is no way to send customized messages to people you don’t already know, so you’re stuck with the canned messages they provide. “Great game isn’t it” – “Doesn’t that traffic suck” – “I love Nintendo” etc. Even if someone sends you a message, you have to respond in a canned message. “Yes, baseball is fun” – “I like the Mariners too” – “Agreed, the umpire is blind” etc.

The only way to send a custom message is by being someone’s “friend” and entering a code to confirm. Of course, you can’t send this code to anyone over the network, has to be face to face. But how do you meet up with someone you’ve never met? No clue. There’s no option to “friend me” through the system, or to send your seat location or anything. Sending a message with “Where are you sitting” gives the responses “In a green seat” or “In better seats than you” etc.

So we’ve got potential to make a cool, friend making system of like minded people, but it’s shackled. Only people who already know each other can really use it, and odds are good they’re sitting next to each other anyway, typing back and forth making fun of the friendless people. “Where are you sitting” – “Right next to you, hee hee”

Sure there’s kids here who might be offended or tricked into meeting up with some strangers, but you’d think they could figure out a way to make it work. Credit card authentication for age verification, something like that. They’re sitting on a gold mine here and they’re just rubbing up against it.

So if you’re heading up to Seattle anytime soon and get the chance to check out a Mariners game, make sure you bring your DS. The message system is a “swing and a miss” but the food ordering “knocks it our of the park” so to say. I can’t help but wonder how long it would take for them to web-base this stuff though, my iPhone could handle just about everything this offers and then some. Maybe at Cisco field…

Here’s a few more pics in case you were curious.

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So I’ve been playing with the new search engine Cuil a bit. I’m not going to get into the user interface, which I think is pretty good but weird, rather the search results. I’m sure things are going to change, and this whole early release has some functionality missing, but the search is just plain wrong.

Take for example a search for Lawpower, my design site. I’ve worked hard to get #1 on google, even though the guys at Lawpower law firm have the .com and more good links. So I’m numbers 1, 3-9 on google as of this writing. the .com guys are number 2 and 10.

Now do the search on cuil. I’m in the top left corner, but my code site is listed above my main page. Where’s the lawyers with the .com? Nowhere to be found, in any results! How is that possible?

Another oddity, I’ve been working with my mom’s dance studio website to get her ranking better for “kids dance lessons” (11 at time of this writing, so close!). Course I wanted to see what that ranked on cuil, and it get an error saying that there were no results?

So for now, cuil is totally worthless for me. It’s a cool idea, I guess, but I don’t see why Google or any other search engine could change a theme and destroy them. I’ll try again in a week or so and see if anything happens.

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I’m the proud owner on a Penryn Macbook Pro. I ordered mine the day they were released and have been using it as my primary machine for work and home since at least January-ish. Only a few weeks after using it, I started noticing some funky vertical stripes coming from the bottom of the display, kinda like every other LED decided to stay turned off. This usually happens when I wake it from sleep.

I did some research on this when it first happened and there wasn’t much online yet. Today there’s a few discussions about it. Since I’m about to head out for a long weekend, I decided to take it in to an Apple Store today to get it sorted out. I took that picture above this morning to show the genius, assuming it wouldn’t happen when I wanted it to.

When I showed the genius the photo and explained the problem, he knew all about it. According to him, it’s a known issue with some Penryn Macbook pros which Apple Engineering doesn’t have an answer for. They don’t know if it’s hardware, software, completely confused. He told me he’d take my computer and run some diagnostics if I wanted, replacing anything that failed, but that it probably wouldn’t fix the problem. Frustrating to say the least.

What he did recommend was a quick turn off and on of the display. This seems to do the trick most of the time. He showed me a key command I didn’t know of before to do this quickly. To turn off the display, hit Command – Option – Eject. Then once it’s off, hit any key to turn it back on, and you should be back in business.

While there’s no current fix for this issue, he told me to call applecare every so often and check if anything’s been resolved. In typical Apple style, if there’s a fix and it happens outside warranty, they’ll cover it. However, there’s no fix yet, so don’t hold your breath.

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