Flip Video Vlog: A Tale of Two Formats

The eternal question: how important is the equipment when you tell a story?

When I was in the fledgling stages of photojournalism I would blame my equipment alot.

If I only had this lens, or that camera body, or a certain tripod or whatever, I would be able to create photos like the big guys. As I left full time photojournalism to live a more balanced life, I found myself drifting back to storytelling. Several years later here I am: a budding filmmaker/storyteller/content creator at the Univeristy of Washington.

Now that my aim is film, that eternal question comes up again: how important is equipment?

As you can tell, my class has been using the diminutive Flip Video camera. And just like the constraints that Lars von Trier created in 1995 with 'Dogme 95' to make film more creative and real, I am finding the constraints of the Flip Video cmaera have made me a better film maker.

Because I have limited technical choices I am forced to concentrate on using what I already have in the most creative way possible.

Yesterday I set out to film the exact same mini-film using a Canon XH-A1 and a Flip Video camera. I actually taped the Flip Video to the side of the Canon XH A1 to nsure that each shot was exactly the same. Both sets of identical footage were editied exactly the same way: down to the frame! I wanted no bias in this test.

Both cameras were set to auto everything (Flip Video is always this way!) and only minimal color correction was applied in Final Cut Pro to make them both roughly the same color tone. I also cropped out about 30% of the Flip Video footage to make it have a 16:9 aspect ratio like the Canon XH A1.

When you see the side by side of HD vs. Flip remember that I have removed 30% of the Flip's resolution!

16 hours later I have answered in my eternal equipment question.

I have to say my results surprised even me.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• xh
• a1
• canon
• communications
• flip
• video
• filmmaking
• cinema
• budget
• bike
• lesson
• mcdm
• uw
• digital
• media
• new

[BlackholeLtd]

nice iPod mic.

[Witchymel]

Thank you for this video, I am just entering the foray of filming for YouTube as a side venture. Trying to learn all I can!

[Witchymel]

@provid1234 The whole point of it was to show that you DIDN'T need to spend big bucks to get a decent film/video from your efforts.

[rocklikeatree]

@CammonRandle From what I can gather, it appears he used an iPod nano with an external microphone (it looks like the Belkin TalkTune Stereo for iPod; $50.00ish on Amazon), and then would have synced the audio and video in Final Cut. I'm only making assumptions here, but that would be my guess. The reviews for the Belkin mic seem to make it out to be a better microphone than what is built-in the Flip (which, I will admit, is pretty decent unless there's wind or tons of background noise).

[provid1234]

it is not fair to the xh a1. The video is being heavily compressed to fit in youtube which degrades about everything. The flip mino hd's compression is just awful. How do you think they fit hd video onto a 4 gb internal memory? For people looking for budget camcorder they should get a canon vixia series such as the hv30 (and an external mic). I recently bought an hv30 (as well as other accessories) to move to hd from my sd professional xl1.

[Moldrid1026]

Brilliant! Thank you for showing what can be done with ordinary low-cost consumer equipment. As we guitarists say, you don't need a $4,000 custom-shop hot rod to sound good because, after all, "The music is in your fingers." I've got the Flip Mino HD and it is spectacular.

[nocturnlbyn8chr]

Out standing, well done.

[CammonRandle]

My question is what did you do for audio on the flip version of the video?

[DOBM]

I did so much enjoy your posting Kirk. YouTube unfortunately loses the HD factor, my interest is how a consumer HD camcorder compares with the Prosumer Canon. Given the right light conditions, similar codecs etc, there is damn all difference (in fact sometimes the simpler lens in the Consumer device may yield better results and your video sometimes demonstrates this). Is it about someone who really knows what they are doing and the extra degree of control they may get with the more exotic cam?

[DouglasFlather123]

Kirk,

Really exceptional. Thank you for producing this. You've demonstrated and underscored a key polemic I've been trying to articulate for months.

I'd love to see what you're able to produce with the mino and some low-cost, low fuss lights!

Cheers,

Doug Flather