The Gadgets Page

Sometimes I feel sorry for companies. Sony is usually ahead of the game, but it really feels like they have been playing “catch-up” ever since the iPod came on the market. Case in point: the Sony NW-S200 Walkman. This cigar-shaped MP3 player was made for the fitness oriented. You can see a review of it here on CNET:

• Sony NW-S205 (2GB) Reviews. MP3 players Reviews by CNET.

In some respects, this little guy is better than the iPod:

• FM Tuner: If you your gym has televisions that are broadcast on FM stations, then this is a definite benefit over the iPod, which still doesn’t believe in radio.

• The Accessories: It comes with an arm band and ear buds that actually might stay in your ears while you run. Instead of having to buy these things separately, Sony has provided them. Of course, there aren’t a hundred companies out there making accessories to go with this player, so if Sony didn’t provide them, you would just be out of luck.

• Water Resistance: It’s made to be resistant to sweat and rain. You can’t swim with it, but you don’t have to hide the thing under your shirt if it starts to pour. Of course, I’ve never had any trouble with the iPod and the rain (and yard sprinklers) it has encountered.

Of course, it just seems that Sony doesn’t get it:

• The Pedometer: Instead of an accelerometer that connects to your shoe, the Walkman is equipped with a pedometer that counts the bounces. These devices are much more difficult to calibrate and much less accurate. That’s why most programs end up recommending “steps” instead of mileage. Pedometers aren’t that great at calculating mileage.

• The Software: You have to transfer the song information using Sony’s proprietary software. If there is anything about the iPod that I would like to get away from it’s being locked into a specific software program (iTunes). Sony is making the same mistake.

• Irritating Features: The sensor that works as a pedometer can also act in other capacities. If you shake the MP3 player three times, it will change the playing mode from standard to shuffle. Don’t run too fast, or it mucks up your songs. Additionally, you can set up two different playlists: walking and running. If you’re running too fast and you need to slow down for a bit, it will “conveniently” switch from your running music to your walking music. That’s just what I need when I’m taking a breather, my MP3 player to suddenly switch songs on me.

Sadly, it seems that this MP3 player for athletes was designed by someone who has never gone on a run in their life. The reason the Nike+iPod is so cool is that it’s so easy to use. In my entire review of the product, I didn’t touch once on how to use it because it was so intuitive. It makes me feel sorry for Sony because they just don’t understand it.

Apple has helped making home movies and video that much easier by providing video and step-by-step tutorials on their website.

• iMovie Tutorial: Introduction

If you are interested in putting video on your website, weblog or even just creating a DVD to share with your family and friends, Apple just made it easier for you.

Of course, Microsoft has had tutorials of this nature online for a LONG time and no one bothered announcing it or even noticing it. If you are using a PC with Windows XP, you have Windows Movie Maker already on your computer. Here are some tutorials to teach you how to use the software and create videos of your own.

• For Beginners: Create Digital Home Movies with Windows Movie Maker and Windows XP

No matter what operating system you are using, you can document and share your life better than ever before. It’s a great time to be alive. Get out there and share it!

Via: Apple releases iLife video tutorials – The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

The Dazzle Video Capture Device is my most recent toy. I have been struggling with trying to get good video out of a Sony Handycam. The digital quality is horrible, so I went back to my sister’s old JVC analog video recorder. The camera is over six years old, but the video quality of analog is still better than the digital quality of the Sony Handycam. The only problem is that I needed to get the video into digital form somehow. I worried that a video capture device would degrade the picture so much that any quality might be lost.

Fortunately, I was pleasantly surprised.

The Dazzle DVC-90 has been an excellent little machine that coverts the tapes of recording to digital. The only complaint I have is that it doesn’t work with Adobe Premiere Elements. I have to capture using Pinnacle’s Quick Start and them save the output as an AVI file. Fortunately, nothing is lost in the process. I don’t know if the lack of compatibility with Premiere Elements is Adobe’s fault or Pinnacle’s. Either way, I’m bugged by not being able to capture and edit with Premiere Elements.

A digital camera that can capture your moments as clearly as analog tape is still quite expensive right now. If you have an old school video camera lying around, it might be more useful than you thought it was. Just a small little device and you can get all your video onto the computer for a lot less than a $999 digital camera.

I wrote a lot of entries on video editing software on the PC. I thought I would collect all the entries into one entry that’s easy to refer to:

The Gadgets Page » Video in Digital Cameras Good Enough For Web

You probably already own a camera good enough to put video on the web.

The Gadgets Page » Video Editing: QuickTime Pro

For all the hype about how easy to use Apple products are, the QuickTime Pro for Windows doesn’t live up to it.

The Gadgets Page » Video Editing: Windows Movie Maker & Pinnacle Studio

Windows Movie Maker comes free with Windows, but it doesn’t edit .mov videos. My camera creates .mov videos, so this software was out for me. Same story for Pinnacle Studio. If your camera saves in another format, you might already have the software for video-editing on your computer.

The Gadgets Page » Video Editing: Nero 7 Suite (Nero Vision)

The Nero 7 Suite is very affordable, but Nero Vision hard crashed my video driver. I guess Nero should stick to burning CDs and DVDs. That’s what they’re good at.

The Gadgets Page » Video Editing: Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0

I ended up purchasing Adobe Premiere Elements and I’ve been using it ever since. I’m not a pro and I haven’t figured everything out yet, but it has made video editing easy without crashing my computer or compatibility headaches. The coolest part is that I KNOW Premiere Elements can do EVERYTHING I want to do. I just have to figure out how to do it.

If you are considering adding video to your weblog or website and you use a Mac, give Freevlog a look. They have great tutorials on how to get started and get going.

Freevlog

ZAP is a company that specializes in battery powered cars and modifying Smart Cars to be legal in the states. They have turned their powerful battery knowledge toward the iPod with astounding results.

• ZAP News: ZAP Introduces iZAP Lithium Battery Line for the iPod

According to ZAP, their lithium batteries for the iPod will extend your listening time to 60 hours. You could go on a remote camping trip and never have to charge your iPod, even if you listened for the entire trip. You might even run out of music to listen to before you ran out of battery life.

The only glitch is the $50 price tag for the battery and the six hour charging time. If you find yourself separated from places to recharge your iPod quite often, then you might be interested in this battery.

Earbuds usually don’t work in my ears. A few years ago when the white iPod earbuds were so cool to be wearing, I had to go with different headphones with my really cool iPod because the stupid things kept falling out of my ears.

The Shure earbuds that I tried out at CES were the first to ever fit in my ear AND stay in my ear despite running and bouncing around the Shure booth like a crazy girl. The only problem is that they are 200 bucks. I’m not shelling out that kind of green for listening pleasure.

These Sony Fontopia Earbuds are the perfect compromise between something that works and something that costs a lot of money. At $40, they are a steal compared to the price tag of the Shure earbuds and they are just as stable in my ear. I have walked and ran and sat at my computer with them. I’ve even pulled them out of my ears by just yanking on the cord and the little plastic bits didn’t stay in my ears (unlike the Akai earbuds I got for twelve bucks at the music store).

I can’t wear them for longer than a couple of hours because they eventually make my ears itch, but that time limit works for me. I have my huge headphones that I use for marathon music sessions.

As far as sound quality, they sound great. I can’t tell the difference between them and the Shure earbuds that I tested at CES, but I’m not one of those audiophile people who can taste the earthy undertones of music. I’m sure that there are people who could tell the difference blindfolded, but I’m not one of them.

All I want is to be able to hear my music, block out a little ambient noise, stay in my ears and come out when I yank on the cord without leaving any parts behind. The Sony Fontopia earbuds are able to fill all of those requirements AND they aren’t in poser white.

In the end, I bit the bullet and bought Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0. Of all the software, it worked with all video types and didn’t crash once, no matter what I tried to do with it. With this product, I feel like I can do so much more than the others. I feel like it has more capabilities than I will ever really need.

The fact that I have enjoyed Photoshop so much is another reason I was willing to plunk down the 100 bucks. I always have been able to do anything I’ve needed to do with Photoshop, it just took me a while to learn how to use it. I find the same true for Premiere, except the ease of use has been amazing.

To evaluate Adobe Premier Elements, I downloaded the trial version just like I did with all the other software I tested. The trial version is a little crippled because it adds a watermark to the upper lefthand corner of the screen if you burn a DVD or use and NTSC exports. It let me do a lot of editing and exporting with no watermarks, however. I was able to create this video using the trial version of Premiere Elements.

• Pick Me! » Time To Cut The Grass

The title at the beginning was a pre-made title that was one of many that Premiere provides. I created the entire video in less than half the time it would have taken me to do it with QuickTime Pro. Of course, it costs three times the money, but you really get what you pay for in this case.

I tried burning a full-length DVD and the warnings that they give are not exaggerations. It took over eight hours for my computer to encode and burn the DVD. This seems a little long considering that there is other software out there that can encode and burn a DVD in an hour or two using the same computer, but the DVD that I made worked in my Xbox and the DVD by the treadmill, two very picky machines that will reject DVDs without reason at times.

I’ve been really happy with Adobe Premiere Elements and I plan to use it for all my video editing. As soon as I learn to use it for capturing video from an old-school VHS machine, I’ll give you a step-by-step review of the ease (or frustration) of that process.

The next software I tried when editing video was Nero 7. Nero Vision is the video editing software that is part of that suite. I was easily able to edit the clips and add titles and credits. It crashed a couple of times, but they were simple crashes that could be easily fixed with a reboot.

I was very happy with Nero Vision while I was using it. Compared to QuickTime Pro, it was insanely easy to add clips and titles. I was eagerly learning how to use it and edited the entire Starling Fitness Video Confessional with it.

Then came time to export the video to a format that could be used on the web. This is where I ran into trouble. I tried the “Portable AVC” export, which would be good for an iPod or my Treo, but it was too small for the web. Then I tried the “Standard AVC” export, which is the one that worked for my Starling Fitness Video Confessional. I ran into problems when I tried the “Cinema AVC” export. It hard crashed my video driver, leaving me with a blank screen, unable to even Ctrl+Alt+Del reboot.

I had to turn off the computer and scan the disk to make sure everything was alright. My computer was fine and my video was unharmed, but I cannot use software that causes hard crashes like that, so Nero Vision was disqualified, which was a shame because it was so easy to use.

Nero Vision might work for your computer. If you want to try it out, you can download a trial version here:

• Nero 7 – Trial Download

The second software I tried was Windows Movie Maker. It is included with the Windows XP Service Update Pack. It was already installed on my computer and I didn’t even know it. I had to disqualify it immediately, however, because it doesn’t work with .mov files.

Because my camera creates .mov files, I would need to find another program to convert my file before I would even be able to use the Windows Movie Maker, so I didn’t go any further with that software.

The same was true with Pinnacle Studio, which is a shame because it was bundled with a really good video capture device that would have worked really well for me. If your camera makes videos in a different format, you can download a trial version of Pinnacle Studio here:

• Pinnacle Systems – Studio version 10.5 – Trial Download

The first software I tried was QuickTime Pro for Windows. It cost me $30 and I wish I could get my money back because it wasn’t worth it.

It’s probably very likely that you have Apple’s QuickTime on your computer already. If you look on the menu, however, a lot of items are blocked from use because they are QuickTime Pro menu items. When you pay the 30 bucks, they give you a key to open those options.

The problem I ran into was that it was difficult to add a title screen. I ended up creating a .jpg in Photoshop and adding it many many times so that a title would show up on the first screen. This is very time consuming and unnecessary if you have REAL video editing software.

Additionally, I had trouble with QuickTime Pro crashing several times when I was trying to edit a video. They were simple crashes and I was able to just re-run the program and get back to work. They didn’t damage the video I was working on or hard crash my computer, but they were annoying.

If you want to add video to your weblog, I wouldn’t recommend paying the money for QuickTime Pro. It allows you to do little things like cut, copy, paste and rotate, but other than that, you’re left with not much else.