The Flip MinoHD: ideal and affordable for YouTube HD

The Flip MinoHD High-Definition video camera is immensely affordable and portable. It produces picture of a high enough definition to be used by YouTube — even the new HD standard.

True, it looks a bit odd. And, true, it does not focus as it is fixed forecast. But for something around $200 it lets you made vidos which fit very well with YouTube.

The video sharing site YouTube now works very well with 16:9 widescreen and is thinking about accepting 1280 x 720 HD. For this sort of work the Flip MinoHD, a sleek, rechargeable 16:9, 720p HD video camera that holds about an hour of footage in its 4GB memory is one answer. Not the only answer but eminently afforable and portable.

If that seems too good to be true, it is. But not totally.

First of all this video camera is so handy and easy to carry in your pocket it is very difficult to hold still. On You Tube there are already several examples — search under Flip Mino HD — and you will see how the problem raises its ugly head when doing a panning shot. (On the other hand one of the videos of a kitten playing with a bag of cat food shows that it probably can focus down to, say, 12 inches very well.)

Plainly the makers have seen this problem for on the Flip site there is a tripod for sale for the camera and it is only $14.99 and there is an action mount which you can attach to almost anything.

It is not the future HD. It is the present. That is it works at a resolution of 1280×720 compressed which is 720p. Which is fine and what is on YouTube is a lot better than most commercial TV shows. But it is not true HD which will be uncompressed 1280 x 720 HD.

And, a bit of a downer, it is not easy to transfer to television. The results when you do this are less than great.

People who are serious about video will point out there is no expandable memory. Which is true. But bunging what you have shot on to a notebook computer is not a hassle. And the 5GB included gives you about an hour of shooting. Which is usually more than enough.

The batteries are built-in and charged when you stick the camera into a USB port on your computer. The built in FlipShare software for transferring on to the Internet  uses a software compression algorithm which does little for the picture quality. Skip past that and upload it manually and the results are better.

So this is not the best high definition 1080p purists and enthusiasts are looking for. It is 780p HD and is excellent. Indeed, until a better YouTube loading system evolves it may be better than the standards currently being used by YouTube.

This is a fast moving technology at both ends of the spectrum and this camera, amazingly inexpensive for what it is, is well up to speed.

The Flip MinoHD is is not a video camera for professionals but it is wonderful for amateur work which is going to end up on YouTube.

There is a store in Bangkok which has it on sale at the same price as the United States. At the end of the month I will get one. And then start making a lot of YouTube videos.

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