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- Average user rating: 2.5 stars out of 13 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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6 out of 7 people found this review helpful
0.5 stars
"Awesome Idea; Unusable Execution"
Pros: Small size, rugged exterior, general product concept
Cons: Unplayable video; Crashes; Mpeg4; poor ergonomics.
Summary: I bought this camera intending to attach it to my model airplane and fly it around, making an arial view of my neighborhood. This camera's poor performance grounded that idea before I ever left the house.
The most important feature of any video camera is playback of the resulting video. For my purposes, I never intended to playback the video by hooking up wires to my TV. I simply wanted to review the video on my computer. To facilitate this, I bought a memory stick and a card-reader. However if you record video onto the removable memory, the last video you record is not playable on the computer. So be sure to leave some room at the end of the card, because you will have to record another separate video, one to throw-away, so that the videos you want will play back.
Oh and another thing about filling up the removable memory... Don't ever do it. The camera can't seem to deal with this possibility and it will lock up. Forcing you to find some other way to make it responsive again.
As for Mpeg4... This format is a real boondoggle. Codec support and software interoperability with Mpeg4 seem to remain un-addressed.
I was totally looking forward to this camera and what I could do with it. I was sadly disappointed with its showstopper problems.
- 3 replies to this review
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I was shopping for a new hybred digital camera & video camera and really liked the Samsung design. Settled with the Pentax Optio 6 - 6 megapixels and records into Divx format. Divx was key to my purchase as it allows me to play back video on my PC, Mac and even my Linux boxes. Really cool thing is that the video plays back on my DVD player - no reason to author the video into a DVD simply pop the SD card out of the camera and into the cardreader on my DVD player. WORKS BEAUTIFULLY! Thanks Pentax!
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Most of your problems can be solved with a little patience. The "lock up" when memory is full is just a matter of pushing the right button. You don't need a card reader, just hook up the camera's cradle USB to your computer and download. I've never had the problem you described about needing a disposable file at the end of the memory stick's memory. That sounds like a problem with your card reader or your memory stick. The codec thing is a pain, but if you load the software its solved. You can't blame the camera for all of these problems. Try a little harder and figure it out.
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The camera records movies in raw MPEG-4 (MP4) format which is not directly recognised by most PCs. Many ways to solve the problem:
(1) use MP4CAM2AVI (free) to convert raw MP4 to DIVX (in fact it only add the DIVX label and not change any of the vid data)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mp4cam2avi/
(2) now you can view the converted vids on the PC, make sure you have DIVX codec installed - you can download it free from here:
http://www.divx-digest.com/software/divxcodec5.html
(I don't recommend newest DIVX 6 codec cuz $$)
(3) if you wanna edit the vid, you can use virtualdub (free):
www.virtualdub.org
(4) Apple QuickTime player (free) can play the raw MP4, and QT Pro ($$) do the editing
(5) Another $$ proggie I know that can read and edit MP4 is Riverpast Videocleaner:
www.riverpast.com/en/prod/videocleaner/index.php
