Is That a Camcorder in Your Pocket, or Are You Happy To See Me?

These days, you can find videos of just about anything on You Tube. That’s a great thing really, but if you want to upload video to You Tube (or any other site that hosts videos for that matter, including your own) you need a video camera. Most video cameras are too bulky to lug around all the time, or aren’t as well suited as portable web cams as they might be. Others are not suited for direct connection to the PC. So, when I was out looking for a camera that was highly portable, inexpensive, and easy to upload to my PC, I settled on the Aiptek A-HD .

First, a word of warning: if you’re looking for a top quality model for serious home movie recordings, then the Aiptek A-HD is probably not for you. But recently, when looking for something to record some of the escapades on a recent pub crawl to Nashville, Tennessee, I found the A-HD to be just the thing.

The first consideration, of course, was size. The camera fits compactly in your pocket, and no one need ever know that it’s there until you’re ready to use it. And of course, there’s price: at around $150, you won’t be out too much if you break it or lose it. That also makes this a great starter model for the kiddies. If you’ve got a budding movie maker in the family, the Aiptek makes a great gift for them. And guess what? He or she can even film 720P high definition wide screen shots with this camera.

What You Get

The Aiptek A-HD camera includes the following accessories:

• Lens cap
• Manuals
• Software CD
• Lithium-Ion Battery pack
• USB 2.0 cable
• AC charger
• Component video output cables.
• HD Component video output cables.
• Carrying strap.


Getting Started

The A-HD is quite simple to use, and after a quick once-over of the manual, you should be ready to go with it in no time. The unit is designed to fit in the palm of your hand, with the built-in microphone located on top next to the lens housing. The flash is just below the lens, and just above the record button.

We like the layout of the A-HD, which makes it easy to toggle between various lighting and distance modes. As you hold it in your palm, your trigger finger rests on the record button , while your thumb maneuvers the control joy stick. This allows you to easily engage the digital zoom, adjust the camera to various light conditions, and turn the flash on and off. You can see all this on the flip up, side-mounted LCD display screen. Flipping the screen open also serves to turn the unit on and off, though there is a control on the screen that will power it down for you, too.

A small hatch on the bottom opens to allow you to change or remove the memory cards with ease; uploading to your PC is then a snap if it has built-in SD card ports as mine does. Otherwise, you can load from the USB cable which also serves to charge the A-HD’s battery. A small rubber panel attached to the back of the camera is removed to allow you to connect for USB, standard AV, or HD output (the latter two using different cable sets).

A word of advice: right away, you’ll want to buy a memory card. One of the features that make this an ideal web camera is the fact that it stores pictures, video, and sound on SD Memory cards, up to 8 GB maximum. And since the built-in memory is just 6 MB, you won’t get very far (in fact, in HD mode, you’ll eat up that entire allotment in just about 12 seconds). Aiptek lists the following video capacity for an 8 GB SD card:

HD (1280 X 720) 240 Mins
D1 (720 X 480 ) 576 Mins
CIF (352 X 240) 1280 Mins

Operation Notes

While you are using the camera, the LCD screen displays such information as current recording quality mode, picture resolution, recording mode, battery life, zoom level, remaining recording time, exposure mode, flash status, and light sensitivity. While recording video, a progress meter informs you how much time has elapsed, and a blue led around the toggle joystick flashes.

We like the fact that the dual still/video camera functions are so easily interchangeable. You can easily engage video with the front mounted record button, but if you then happen to see something you’d love a snapshot of, a simple press on the camera button next to the joystick makes that happen.

The menu and mode buttons on the opposite side allows you access various settings such as PAL or NTSC output, video recorder mode, review and play of recordings, video and picture resolution, and more. Learning to do all this on the fly was fairly intuitive, though we had to cheat a little and consult the manual from time to time.

Shooting Video

Our first outing was the aforementioned trip to Nashville, and we shot video in all three modes. All videos are recorded in .MOV format for playback on Apple’s Quicktime. We found that the lowest quality was best suited for web videos intended for playback on the PC, offering the perfect balance between decent picture and smaller file size. A 50 second clip in the lower quality CIF mode consumed about 4.5 MB of disk space, which is manageable for web streaming and sharing by e-mail with friends and family.

For archival quality purposes, we much prefer the HD mode with its crisp clean picture (on the PC anyway) and widescreen display. This is, however, a memory hog, and a 28 second clip consumed about 14 MB of space. The playback for this mode was a little choppy on my PC, though I suspect it might play better if I upgraded to 2 GB of RAM as I probably need to. The other modes played just fine. Playback on my HD TV was downright awful, though, in everything except HD quality.

Sound quality is about what you can expect for a player of this price, and audio playback is nowhere near as good as the picture quality can be. The microphone sensitivity seems to drop off fairly rapidly as distance increases too, but considering the price it’s not as bad as it could be.

On the downside, it’s hard to keep the camera still without two hands, and even then it’s only as steady as you are. You can, if you like, set it on a timer to record from a tripod or other pre-positioned location. A notch is included on the bottom into which you can secure the camera to a tripod, by the way.

Then too, the A-HD is very finicky about the media files it will play back. It’s called a media player, but loading Quicktime movies onto it that were not recorded by the A-HD proved futile: they were not recognized at all. Even files recorded on the camera, removed to my PC and re-named and then placed back on my SD card did not come up on the A-HD file menu.

Taking Pictures

By no stretch of the imagination should you consider the A-HD a real digital camera, because it’s not. There are a few basic adjustments you can make to the lighting settings, and only two distance settings (30-50CM and anything over that) that you can toggle between via a lever on the side of the camera. You actually will see the picture on the screen change focus as you do.

Resolution can be selected at 3, 5, or 8 megapixels, and although quality can be hit or miss (vibration of the hand can blur the images rather easily), the A-HD can still deliver some surprisingly clear, crisp colorful shots, especially when you consider that this is a multi-purpose device.

Other Uses

The A-HD can also be used as a digital audio recorder by selecting the audio-only mode. You can also connect it directly to a video output source such as cable box, DVD player, or VHS VCR to record video on the device for later playback. You will actually see the video displayed on the screen, so you know what you’re recording.

Battery Life

A full charge will last about 90 minutes for video playback and recording. The manual quotes 200 still pictures on one charge as well, with a full charge taking about an hour on the PC, less with the AC charger.

Durability

The plastic case did not re-assure me initially, but we’ve already dropped it once (with the screen extended) and the unit came through no worse for the wear. With average use, and not abuse, the A-HD should last long enough for you to get your money’s worth from it.

Overall
For the price (we paid $135 at Circuitcity.com), the A-HD has a lot going for it. Ideally, I would give it around 3 ½ stars, but given the price it’ll round up to four for Epinions purposes. Don’t expect it to replace a dedicated camcorder anytime soon, but for a highly-portable, multi-function web camera that’s perfect for the PC and a great option for the kids you could do a lot worse than the Aiptek A-HD.

(SHAMELESS PLUG: If you'd like to see a sample of the web-quality video, I have a piece shot at Bosco's Brewpub in Nashville. It was pretty loud, but if you try you can hear me talking about the beer, and my wife telling me to speak louder. )

http://www.bruguru.com/beerchannel.htm