If I may be so gauche as to repost something I wrote in a comments field at another site, Mr. Raster asked what I thought about this DigitalCameraHYPHENhq.com link-bait article wherein the author writes a clumsily penned love letter to the Kodak Zi8 Pocket Camcorder.

Comparing the Flip to the Zi8 seems disingenuous at best. It's like comparing OSX to Windows 7. They're two different experiences-- and they are supposed to be. And besides: debating which pocket camcorder is better is like trying to decide which turd sandwich to eat.

Articles like this are why companies get into bullet-point pissing matches. By pitting the point-and-shoot camcorders against each other in some kind of protracted war of mediocrity, consumers are really missing out on viable and significant opportunities. The first sub $99 pocket camcorder that outputs real DV video wins. End of story.

But that's not the end of the story. I'll add some directors commentary: I love the Flip. My first-generation flip is all I need. It records an hour or two -- I'm never sure which -- of ugly, compressed video that I can slice and dice up into footage to share and document moments in my lovely daughter's life. It's push button easy, and I probably have it in my pocket. That's all the Flip is supposed to do. To use the language of professional douchebaggery, that's the Flip's brand promise. I seriously hope the folks who make the flip don't get bullet-pointitis and start adding features to the flip that exist outside the realm of point it over here and push record.
I mean, seriously, if you're sitting around wishing you could take still pictures with your camcorder, you're doing it wrong.

Over the weekend I bought one of those Flip Video Camcorder. I've been having so much fun with camera built into my laptop, and with what little clips I can record on my digital camera. I've always wanted a camcorder, since I moved away from home at 17 and left my mom and dad's big crazy VHS shoulder recorder behind. At $150 for an hour's capacity of 640X480 nearly NTSC quality video, the Flip Video is the right tool at the right price for farting around with video.

So far, I'm very impressed. The built in USB dongle makes getting at your media a snap, and although the bundled software tries to manage your movies for you, you can safely ignore it and move your data around via whatever tools your operating system provides.
And the video and sound quality is decidedly not bad. Better than most $300 digital still cameras, but not as good as a $700 digicam.

But here's where a strange quirks come. Because the camera uses a wacky, proprietary codec, (3vix) you're at the mercy of the codec's implementation. (And, reading between the lines on 3vix support forums, 3vix isn't supporting Flip Video-inspired questions.) Frankly, in OSX, the 3vix Codec doesn't play so hot with Quicktime, and requires you use the 3vix "Dvix Doctor II" and a couple of wacky AC3 audio codecs to turn the movies into Quicktime files before they'll place nice with the iLife apps. (And, for what it's worth, 3vix isn't supported without conversion on the PS3, either.)

On Vista and XP, the videos came off the drive and played just fine after I installed the 3vix Codec. On OSX 10.4, the videos rendered images but not sound without additional tweaking.
But, I'd still recommend the camera to anyone who'd like to dabble with video.

So far I've posted two videos I shot with the Flip.
This iMovie edited movie called Free Zoo Day and a Windows Movie Maker edited "Virtual View" of the view from my desk today as the ice comes off the lake. Don't compare the video qualities. It's not apples to apples. (The Zoo movie was uploaded as a much higher quality video.)

Edit: Oh! An important note: I forgot to mention that even with the Codex installed, It is my experience that movies will not render from iMovie 08. I had to use iMovie HD in order to get the Zoo movie to output a file.