The Flip works with Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Mac OSX.
Once you insert the Flip into the USB port on your computer, a pop up window appears, as shown in Figure 10. This allows you to make the first choice which is “View your Flip Camcorder Videos using the program provided on the device.” Click on that choice starts the software on the camera. The first time you do this, the Muvee Video Mixing Software is installed. Since the software is in the camera, there is no disk included, and no other installation and/or setup necessary.
click to enlarge
Figure 10: Choices given when Flip is attached to a computer.
You can also choose to save the video to your computer, but you can do this from within the software as well. In fact, the software allows you to do most of the things you will want to do quite easily. The software installs a 3ivx MPEG-4 decoder in the program menu. Although a minor complaint, we really wish that the program could label such additions to the program menu with the name of the program that uses it so that we would be sure not to uninstall it accidently.
Once the software is installed you will see a simple window like that shown in Figure 11.
click to enlarge
Figure 11: Flip software main window.
From this window you can do many different things including saving, sharing, and/or deleting. The software is extremely easy to navigate. As shown in Figure 11, each video is shown on the screen and the options to save, share, or delete them are obvious.
You can share your videos by email right from the software interface. To send your friends a link to the video by email you need a free AOL account. Or you can choose the “Save for email” button to format the video and save it on your computer to be attached to an email that you create later.
To send the video in a greeting card, you simply choose the video you want to send, choose from a nice selection of different greeting cards, and fill in your email address, your recipients address, subject, and message. The program does the rest, including formatting the video and sending the greeting card. The email contains a link to view the video online at Pure’s website.
The program also handles sharing directly for YouTube, AOL Video, and My Space. This is an amazingly easy way to post a video, especially for the all-popular YouTube. You simply choose the video, enter your user name and password, and the Flip software will prepare the video in the proper format and upload it automatically. No wonder everyone likes this camcorder!
You also have the option of uploading the video to some other website. You simply choose “Upload to Other Websites” and the video is formatted and put on a folder on your desktop called “Flip Videos for Uploading.”
The beauty of this is that the videos are automatically converted into the best size and format. You don’t have to worry about choosing a format or converting the video.
If you have a DVD burner on your computer, you can also burn the videos to a DVD. Alternatively, you can also take your camera to a CVS, a Rite-Aid drugstore, or other commercial outlet that handles Pure DVDs. They will burn your video to a DVD for about $13.
You can also easily make a movie from the video clips. Although the program has an “Edit” option, you can only edit by shortening or rearranging clips. However, you can use this, along with the movie mixes feature to create a movie. You can choose from 6 movie styles which comes with default music or you can use music stored on your computer. Like the greeting cards, the movies are cute. There are not enough choices to keep you happy forever, but the basic choices create a nice little movie.
Another good feature is the ability to snap a picture of any frame of the video as you play it by simply click on the “Snap” button. The picture can then be saved to your computer for future use.
Although the software is easy to use, we did have two problems. Once when we inadvertently closed the program we did not find the program in the program list. The only way we saw to restart it was to search through the hard drive for the executable or to pull out the camera’s USB plug and reinsert it. Also, on one of our test machines, we sometimes got an unexpected error when we tried to delete a video, but in spite of the error, the video was deleted properly.
The Flip comes in several other versions. The all-black Mino is smaller. At a suggested price of $179.99, it is a little more expensive but has a rechargeable battery. The Flip video, their less expensive version ($129.99 list), has lower resolution, less memory, and fewer features. We highly recommend the $149.99 list Ultra over the Flip video. Get the Mino if you like the idea of a rechargeable battery.
