Pure Digital Flip Ultra Camcorder Review

We saw a lot of compression artifacting, blocks of chunky rectangles that appear when video or photos have been compressed a lot to save file size. It should not come as a surprise to anyone that the video did not look very good. Unlike most camcorders, or even still cameras, there are no options to select the quality of your video files. All video is shot in 640 x 480 at 30 fps.

Media (3.0)
The Flip Ultra records video onto an internal flash memory. There are two versions of the camcorder: a 1GB version that holds about 30 minutes of video and a 2GB version that holds about 60 minutes. There is no way to expand the capacity short of cracking open the body and fiddling with the flash storage. This has been done with relative ease on flash memory iPods, so we’re sure something is in the works by hackers somewhere.

Though the capacity of 1 GB or 2 GB is quite small, flash memory has the benefit of being shock resistant and relatively weather resistant. We expect this camcorder could undergo some harsh treatment and still retain data.

Editing (7.0)
Undoubtedly, the biggest appeal of the upgrade from the original Flip to the Flip Ultra is the built-in editing software. Once the camcorder is connected to the computer, a screen pops up asking if the user would like to run a program called Flip Video for PC (Pure Digital is one of the few manufacturers to include an equivalent version for Macs, a platform often ignored or given inferior software by most manufacturers). This software will not operate without having the camcorder connected to the computer.

Because this is such a crucial part of the camcorder, and one of its few redeeming qualities, we’ll go through the PC process step-by-step. The first time you connect the camcorder to the computer and access the software, you’ll have to install a portion of the software and the proper codecs.

After that, the editing software opens and all the video clips appear as thumbnails, four to a page. This is the page that will greet you every time you open the software. To open a clip, just point and click on it.

This screen gives you very, very basic editing control over each clip. From here you can trim the start and end points. You can also move the timeline cursor to a specific point in the clip, then press the Snap button to create a still image, which is saved as a low-resolution JPEG. (Ignore the fact that the clip shown here is black. When operating, you can see the clip just fine.) To go to the next clip, click the Next arrow on the right. To return to the thumbnails page, click the tiny button under the video clip labeled Smaller.

The screen that appears when you select a clip.

If this is as far as you want to edit, you can click Save Video under the Features list on the lower left. The software then give you the option to transfer the edited clips to the computer, Save for DVD at Retail (meaning it prepares a folder of clips that your local photo-mat can transfer to a DVD), or Save for E-mail.

As stated several times before, the editing capabilities with this software are severely limited. It makes iMovie look like a million-dollar editing suite. At least this portion of the software is indicated to be powered by Muvee, creators of similarly easy-to-use editing tools. Within the Flip Ultra’s version, you can create little “Movie Mixes,” however, that stitch your clips together. To access this tool, click Make Movie under the list of Features on the lower left. First, you choose a style: No Style, Nostalgic, Kaleidoscope, Playdate, Classic, or Journal. There are no descriptions for what these mean; you’ll just have to experiment. After that, select your audio track. It can be original audio you recorded, preloaded music to match the style, or you can select an audio file from your computer. Then select the clips you want to include and click Make Mix. A few seconds to a few minutes later, you have your completed movie. That’s it. There are no options for tweaking intro and outros, no fades, no titles, no anything. Whatever the “style” dictates is what you get.

Finally there is the popular Share Online feature, which is equivalent to saying YouTube, that winning horse every camera company wants to ride to the bank. The Share Online screen has three options: Share by E-mail, Share Greeting, and Share Online. We’ll focus on Online.

The Share Online screen has optimized the process for AOL Video and YouTube. You can select other video share sites, but you’ll have to do a little more legwork. We wanted to upload our video to YouTube. After selecting the proper clip, we click Continue. A login screen appears for our YouTube account. The software then preps the video and automatically performs the upload. Our attempt failed the first time, and we had to restart the process. The second time was successful. When completed, a screen pops up that asks if you would like to jump over to YouTube’s site to view the video.

Overall, this is a very easy process. Pure Digital has succeeded in making this as idiot-proof as possible, thus winning the hearts of millions of technophobes. If you want to skip the in-camera software and use your own, the camcorder is recognized as a storage device the same way a thumb drive would be. Clips are located in the DCIF folder, ready for drag-and-drop onto your desktop.