Flip Mino HD review

So I’ve been living with a little Flip Mono HD for the last week and a bit. It’s just the size of a candy bar phone, slips in your jacket pocket weighs only 3.3oz (around 95g) and can capture an hour of HD quality footage.

At the flick of a button on the side, the USB plug flips out from the top ready to download your video onto PC/Mac and recharge the built in battery. Being the latest model available in Europe (the US have just launched the Flip Ultra HD which I guess will hit these shores before Christmas) it comes with the latest simple editing software already on the internal drive – for both PC and Mac, so you can install without downloading.

Technically it’s capturing HD at 720p resolution, 30 frames per second, 16:9 widescreen (1280 x 720) onto it’s built in 4GB flash memory. The battery powers the unit for around two hours, and it takes three hours to fully recharge via USB.

I loved its handy form factor. It’s smaller and lighter than it’s main rival, the Kodak Zi6. From the point you hold in the power button, it’s ready to record inside a couple of seconds. The screen on the back is never going to be clear enough to check if an HD image is in focus! But it’s good enough to browse through clips and delete the dud ones.

Let’s look at a real life application. I used the Mino HD to capture footage at BarCamp Belfast.

Snippets of talks, voxpops with attendees and speakers, general background footage of the venue and surroundings. It coped well. It’s discrete enough that its presence isn’t as off-putting as a camcorder or professional broadcast camera.

I’d half expected that I'd be able to hook the Mino HD up to a computer with a USB extension lead to power it, and allow me to beat the two hour battery life. But no: once hooked up to a computer, it switches over to being a USB drive, and the camera function is disabled.

The audio it captured was of good quality (mono), but at a very low level. So you’ll have to boost the level in your editing software if combining with louder footage from other sources.

It’s a small, lightweight handheld (fingerheld) camera – so it wobbles. It doesn’t have built in image stabilisation, so unless you jam yourself against a wall, or mount the Mino HD on a camera tripod (it does have a standard tripod mount on the bottom) expect the pictures to be a little shaky. But packages like iMovie 09 can come to the rescue offering video stabilisation of imported clips.

The BarCamp Belfast video was shot entirely on the Flip Mino HD, and edited in the older iMovie HD. Nothing fancier required.

I was surprised when I paused the imported content just how sharp a still from a clip could be. I pointed the Flip out a train window on a sunny day in London and realised that I’d be able to use a still from the footage as a background image (at 1280 x 720 anyway). Good vibrant colour. If you pan around from a very bright scene to much darker scene, you’ll notice the white balance correcting and adjusting. And I was impressed with the quality of lower light shots.

To transfer the images off the camera and onto your computer, just plug it into a USB2 socket. The built in FlipShare software allows you transfer clips on and off the camera, trim clips and then sequence them, before adding a title and credit, and exporting the finished movie as a .MOV (H.264, AAC). It can upload directly to Youtube and MySpace, though doesn’t have the settings for Flickr yet! The software ran quite happily on my Atom-powered Dell Mini 9 (running XP) and Mac Mini. For more sophisticated productions, just import the clips into iMovie, Final Cut Pro, Pinnacle etc.

Part of me would love the Mino HD to boost its gain and capture audio at a louder level – or offer a jack to plug in an external mic. It takes a surprisingly long time to transfer footage off the Flip and onto your computer. Even using USB2, 1GB is a lot of storage to shift around. If pushed for time, popping out an SD card and replacing it with a fresh one would have been faster. Given that the camera recording HD, it’s a shame that the video out (cable supplied) is only a Component video feed.

But for most of the scenarios that you’d want to use a pocket sized HD camera ... you can live without those features.

It’s not really intended for shooting a feature film – though some enterprising filmmaker will try! It would be ideal for voxpopping – short head shots, no need for zoom and close enough to the subject to use the built-in mic and not get too much background nose. Would love to have a go in the summer with Tech Camp and send out one group with the normal shoulder-mounted DV camera, the other with a Flip, and then compare the results.

An hour of footage is normally plenty. And I quickly got used to the shake and the audio. Years ago, people took perfectly good photos with Kodak Brownie cameras. And today, it’s possible to capture excellent video footage with a Flip. While I found that it did reduce the number of photos I took, the size and usability of the Mino HD balanced out some of its constraints and downsides. Retailing for £169.99, it seems pretty good value.

Any bigger or any heavier, and I don’t think I’d carry it around! So for me the Kodak Zi6 and even the promised Ultra HD (with its AA batteries, stereo mic and two hours recording) would be too big and heavy for my pocket.

But for now, the Flip Mino HD is back in its box, wrapped up, and speeding back to London in a padded envelope. I’ve never owned a camcorder – no embarrassing home movies for Littl’un to worry about! – but I’d seriously think about getting a Flip. It appealed to my (normally well hidden) inner filmmaker.

Radio 4's iPM, the East Belfast Herald, and the rights issues that mean podcasts are shorter than the original radio programmes

I've been listening to Radio 4's iPM for ages, and I usually resist the temptation to participate by commenting on their blog or emailing in a sentence to describe an event in my week. But their trail a couple of weeks ago for an upcoming piece on the demise of the local newspaper trade came right on the back of meeting Fiona Rutherford, editor of the recently launched East Belfast Herald (mentioned on AiB).

So I popped a comment on the iPM blog and thought nothing more about it until I listed to Saturday's podcast - and was ever so slightly disappointed that they hadn't picked up the story of a local paper launching in the face of an industry trend that favoured closure.

Then Fiona emailed this evening to say that she'd been interviewed on Saturday for iPM.

Did I sleep through that bit of the podcast?

No. Sure enough, on Listen Again/iPlayer (the one week catch up service for the radio programme) the interview is there just before the 8 minute mark, tucked in-between the end of the Andy Burnham interview and listeners' news. But because the item was overlaid with some scene-setting Van Morrison music, it had been stripped out of the podcast.

Unlike the Listen Again version, the podcast doesn't spontaneously combust after a week, but lives on on your hard drive until you delete it, so the rights payments for using the music would presumably be higher.

The upshot? BBC podcasts are usually shorter than the original radio programmes, with any significant music (and the words spoken over the music) removed. And in this case, about two minutes shorter: Fiona's interview - the one item in the programme I was looking out for was completely missing. Edited out.

May the Fourth be with you

... for all those misguided Star Wars fans out there.

Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival now up and running

Really just a quick reminder that while the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival is now in full swing, it's not too late to browse through the programme and secure some tickets. (Though the online booking page does suggest that around half the events have sold out!)

This afternoon, Zoë Conway wowed the packed crowd in The John Hewitt as she fiddled alongside accomplished guitarist and husband John McIntyre. Once again, their chemistry was on show as they worked through their impressive set. One friend in the audience described it as:

"Possibly most erotically charged and sweet performance I've heard. Her partner completely fixated on her. Beautiful voice."

Well worth going back to hear after her great performance in the January Out to Lunch festival. And a cultural first as it was Littl'un's inaugural attendance at a concert.

While waiting for Argos to rummage around their storeroom for some flat pack units yesterday lunchtime, I caught some of the Junior Circus from Belfast Community Circus School's performance in Arthur Street - part of the Festival of Fools that runs until Monday 4th. Excellent stuff.

Pizza Hut not immune from the current financial crisis

I can no longer count on the fingers (and thumbs) of one hand the number of outlets in Victoria Square that have switched off their lights and locked their doors permanently. Every week, there seem to be more stories of well-known and respected brands and outlets facing financial trouble. Not to mention the continual shrinkage of Northern Ireland's remaining manufacturing industry.

Perhaps the biggest shock of the last week was the news that five of Northern Ireland's fourteen Pizza Hut franchises were closed with immediate effect on Friday morning: Coleraine, Dungannon as well as Belfast's Dublin Road, Connswater and Yorkgate outlets.

The Dublin Road branch has been there since my student days, outlasting the Chicago Pizza Pie Factory around the corner, and serving as a venue for QUB Radio Club (no, not the Queens Radio station ... way before that) Christmas Dinners that were rarely ever held in December! And I remember a run-in with the Yorkgate branch for its miserly Chicken Supreme which had a really meagre sprinkling of chicken bits spread thinly across the pizza. They'd apparently been told off for being too generous with the toppings.

While the administrator is confident that the four branches in Ballymena, Carrickfergus, Glengormley and Lisburn can stay open, the remaining five branches are trading with a cloud over their heads while more sums are done. Over the years, I've eaten in all five!

• The branch at Carryduff memorably allowed one of our Youth Fellowship who didn't like pizza to go outside to the KFC and bring back a gourmet chicken meal to eat alongside the rest of us may not survive. Now that is customer service.
• The Odyssey was more prone to long queues - managing to delay my pizza longer than the time it took my wife to eat hers one night.
• Bangor was good.
• Castlecourt's Pizza Hut Express serves up tasty lunchtime-sized snacks (even tried the salad side order once ... just once).
• And the Victoria Square branch has barely had time for the purple paint to dry.

But sitting in the Connswater car park on Saturday lunchtime, it was still shocking to see the East Belfast branch - that had hosted memorable family lunches - closed for ever. Now just a perch for breathless sea gulls.

Throwing pearls before swine?

When Reverend Fun is on form, he's hard to beat!

(Copyright Gospel Communications International, Inc - www.reverendfun.com)

Spirit of Belfast - coming to a Cornmarket near you

Back in November 2007, the steel squiggle Spirit of Belfast came top in the public poll to chose which piece of public art should adorn the space in Belfast’s Cornmarket Arthur Square.

Since the announcement, the pedestrian area has been paved, Victoria Square has opened, the pedestrian area has been thoroughly dug up … but another set of streets has commenced.

In front of Carphone Warehouse, in the spot where the bandstand used to be, they’re making preparations for Dan George’s sculpture to be erected. In case you’ve forgotten ...

Spirit of Belfast - four curved stainless steel squiggles, complete with “a ribbon of light provided by very energy-efficient light emitting diodes” whose “intensity, color [sic] and movement will be programmed as called for by events, the time of day ... or special celebrations within the city”. It intends to become “the hearth of our city centre”, drawing people to its interactivity as it weaves together steel and reminds of us of the fabric (linen) of our history.

Update - September 2009 - It's finally being installed.

Lisburn NCP parking machine failure (update - or not!)

Parking in Bachelors Walk for a birthday dinner in Uno's Italian Restaurant, I realised that there was another 45 minutes before the parking restrictions would end and the Traffic Wardens Attendants would go off duty.

Putting money into the nearby parking meter - it's marked #23 if DRD, Roads Service or NCP Services are reading - I suddenly noticed that the expiry time wasn't incrementing towards 6pm.

Instead, it thought the time was already the next morning ... no answer from the phone number marked on the ticket machine and the tickets. It just rang and rang and rang. No answering machine. Pity that NCP don't man their office to match the ticketing times.

You can catch a quick review of Uno's on Lookaly.

Update - turns out that if you overpay - which is inevitable as you pay in 15 minute increments, once the time goes beyond the 6pm cut off, the ticket and machine roll over and display the time that charging starts the next morning.

BarCamp Belfast 2009 - reflections

BarCamp Belfast hit the Belfast Campus of the University of Ulster on Saturday.

BarCamp Belfast is a user-generated unconference for designers, developers, startups and geeks to share and learn in an open environment.

Unconference means that there are no fees to register and attend, food and caffeine are freely provided, there are no invited speakers but instead the attendees volunteer to give talks, organising the schedule on the day.

BarCampBelfast - some highlights from Alan in Belfast on Vimeo shot entirely on a Flip Mini HD.

Andy McMillan is the driving force behind the Belfast event, and along with a team of capable and obedient slaves, pulled off the event which had over 350 people registered before it started, thirty or more talks given across the day, and hundreds of networking opportunities for the participants who came from all across Ireland as well as a few from further afield.

Traditionally, BarCamps are ... well, it’s difficult to use the word “traditionally” when it comes to a free-form event. So let’s say that many other BarCamp events are a hotbed of technobabble and rapid prototyping. But there were few hackers strutting - or even mashing - their stuff in Belfast on Saturday.

Other than a few references to APIs, the majority of what I could hear was focussed on business development in the world of web design, project management, life coaching, managing clients to maximise satisfaction and profit. There were a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of networking, and a teeny bit of self-promotion by some speakers!

Of course none of that’s bad. In fact, the quality of the talks was incredibly good. It reflects the local market and those of us who are engaged with the event and its wider ecosystem. Looks like it’s a social island after all!

While the geek stereotype tends towards introversion, fear of daylight and inability to communicate except by means of a keyboard, you wouldn’t have known on Saturday. Amongst others ...

• Lee Munroe squeezed in a great opening session on the seven deadly sins of Wordpress and how to beat them - accessible and applicable to non-Wordpress bloggers too. Then he flew off to run the London Marathon!
  
• Paul Mcenhill talked about improving how we take, process and organise photographs: he’s still at school, but that didn’t reflect in the insight and tips he provided.
  
• Dee Harvey and John Campbell escaped from the darkened recesses of the BBC NI news room to start a conversation about the semi-permeable newsroom.
  
• 4iP’s Ewan McIntosh made it across from Edinburgh to educate more people about Channel 4’s Innovation for the Public fund, and share some of the progress on existing commissions (most notably, Audioboo).
  
• David Braziel looked at the top reasons that IT projects failed.
  
• Tracy Dempsey shared some insights into presentational techniques and threw in some NLP magic.
  
• And I left before ex-twitter-now-BT (or is that ex-San-Francisco-now-Whitehead?) Blaine Cook closed the day with a storming session that eschewed Keynote and Powerpoint in favour for the overhead projector (well, the modern lecture theatre equivalent) and hand-written slides.

Even the coffee was geeky with Bean and Gone’s alien brewing kit providing tea and coffee on a scale worthy of an army field kitchen, but at a quality you’d find at the opposite end of the spectrum.

Not having wifi proved quite liberating for the event, encouraging real life conversations and keeping people’s heads up from their laptops! An improvement - and one that can only come from within - would have been to have more talks. A shame that the four rooms weren’t booked solid all day, with talks overflowing into corners of the public spaces. (The bridge would make a great location!) More talks would have shrunk the numbers in some rooms, and perhaps allowed more interaction and conversation and less talk from the front.

Maybe next time we need to encourage all of us amateurs to make sure that we pitch in with alternatives to the less-amateur outfits. I promise to think harder next year and come up with something to talk about.

Davy Sims has already posted a podcast featuring interviews with attendees. And I’ll add a link to Davy McDonald’s video when it’s released over the next day or so.

Not content with running a flourishing web design business of his own, promoting monthly gigs, representing the industry on the Digital Circle steering group and single-handedly keeping Charlies Coffee Shop’s profits healthy, Andy McMillan is organising Build Conference in the autumn: a “proper” conference with invited speakers, to be followed the next day by an unconference where the attendees get a chance to feed back to the speakers. And perhaps that’s where Northern Ireland will get to bring their TLAs out of their closets and talk openly about REST, SOAP, Ruby and arrange a vi-is-better-than-emacs re-enactment!

Between London Blackfriars and London Bridge ...

Playing with a Flip Mino HD pocket-sized video camera.

Between London Blackfriars and London Bridge from Alan in Belfast on Vimeo.

Did you hear the one about the new local newspaper?

We’re in the midst of an economic downturn.

It’s a world where people are predicting the end of printed newspapers within a generation due to advertisers – who pay for, or at least subsidise papers – preferring to take their business online.

So it was a bit of a shock to discover that just as I moved out of East Belfast in January, a new local newspaper was started.

By chance I met Fiona Rutherford on Sunday morning, the editor of the East Belfast Herald. Selling in local newsagents, the paper covers local stories and activities and is very much a community publication.

I remember driving past the Upper Newtownards Road offices of the East Belfast Observer on the way in and out of work until it closed a couple of years ago.

If you’re an East Belfastian, look out for the Herald in your local corner shop. And if you’re planning an event or match in the area, or have something you want to advertise, I’m sure the team would be very grateful to hear what you’re up to. You can contact them on 90732114 or editor@ebherald.com.

Good luck to the Herald.

Titanic Bus Tour

Off work last week, various plans came and went when the weather turned damp. But the Titanic Made in Belfast Festival had put the idea of a bus tour around Belfast into our heads.

The Titanic Bus Tour looked good ... but the “not suitable for under sevens” in the leaflet was discouraging. But not - as it turned out - as discouraging as the pricing of the normal Belfast sightseeing tour prices!

If you’ve every fancied taking one of the bus tours around the city, here’s what you need to know. At least, here’s what we found out on Saturday afternoon.

• Most of the tours will allow you to get off the bus (alight!) at stops of interest and then hop back on the next bus that passes and has room for you.
• There are twice as many red City Sightseeing Belfast buses as Allen’s Open Top tours, so you’ll only wait half an hour for the next bus when you tire of your stop if you buy a ticket for the red bus.
• Allen’s Tours claim four extra stops and exclusive access to Stormont estate.
• If you carry around a leaflet for one company, a sales guy for the other will offer you a discounted ticket!

Anyway, wandering into the Belfast Welcome Centre proved a good move, as although the afternoon Titanic tour was sold out, the folk at the festival desk suggested queuing up outside the City Hall to see if some folk would not use their free tickets and we’d be able to fill the spaces.

And sure enough at a minute past two, we were amongst the seven extra souls to slip onto the bus and set off on the two hour tour.

Basically, it’s a great tour. Assisted by Denis at the wheel of the Ulsterbus, local historian and author Stephen Cameron guided us around Belfast, stopping to look at the Titanic Memorial under the shadow of Belfast’s Big Rickety Wheel, before heading off down towards the harbour Commissioners Office, the Abercorn Basin, the dilapidated Drawing Office, the slipway before finally reaching the Thompson Dry Dock and the Pump House.

I suspect that Stephen could comfortably fill a week-long tour with details about the Harland & Wolff ship yards and stories about the building of the Titanic and her two sister ships, Olympic and Britannic. It was a fascinating insight into the scale of the venture, the world-class expertise that Belfast was able to apply, and the innovation that was dreamt up to overcome the obstacles in the way of building such a large family of ships.

Sitting in church on Sunday morning, there was another reminder of the impact. Westbourne Presbyterian Church in East Belfast is sometimes known as the Shipyard Church, with the twin yellow cranes clearly visible from the door of the church. It was community Sunday, and a wide invitation had gone out to local residents as well as community representatives. Some of the church’s history and involvement in the local area was regaled, including the effect of the Belfast Blitz.

But having only been on the titanic tour the previous afternoon, perhaps the hardest hitting moment was to consider the atmosphere that there must have been amongst the congregation on the first Sunday after the Titanic has sunk. Packed with men from the ship yard and their families. Knowing that three years of hard labour (and over three million rivets) between the keel laying on 22 March 1909 and the departure from Belfast on 2 April 1912 had been for nothing. The effect on the community is hard to comprehend.

The once prestigious Drawing Office and Directors Board Room are now decayed. The once industrious slipway is waste ground. The dry dock still holds out the water, but is unused.

Yet there is construction in the area. Just over the fence from the Drawing Office, Titanic Quarter is being built at a phenomenal rate. The first phase of the office blocks and apartments will be ready for occupation later on this year. The Science Park is a hive of activity.

If you get a chance next April to hop on one of the bus tours, I’d recommend it. The itinerary may change slightly, as the building work will have started to excavate the old slipway and there may even be renovation work to the Drawing Office if any of the development plans come to fruition.

Although I’ve been in Northern Ireland all my life, I either paid too little attention during history lessons (and gave up after third year anyway) or we didn’t cover a lot of local events. So it’s interesting to place some of these key influencing events in an NI context. Oh, and did I mention that the H&W on the yellow cranes stands for Hello and Welcome!

More photos over on Flickr, and a review of the tour over on the Ravings From The Bog Dweller's blog.

Water: Symbol, Element, Utility?

Remember Twestival? Well, another watery exhibition and fund raising about to spring up in Belfast.

Launching on Monday night (20 April) at 6pm in the Art College Belfast campus of the University of Ulster is an exhibition of over 60 pieces of art all based around the theme of water.

Water: Symbol, Element, Utility? is a collaboration between chaplaincy, students, staff and alumni. From architects to artists, exhibits range from textiles to photography, sculpture to fine art ... and even one piece of performance art.

The time and energy poured into this exhibition is being used to raise money for Tear Fund’s water and sanitation campaign. All of the works on sale, and the artists donating either 50% or 100% of the value to Tear Fund. Miriam Todd, a graduate from the School of Art and now working for Tear Fund, first suggested the idea for the exhibition:

“Water is something we take for granted but it’s still a big issue in many developing countries where 1.1 billion people live without clean water.”

So why not pop along and explore the exhibition and see if you can spot any future Turner Prize winners! Prices for exhibits start at £30.

Speaking at the launch will be David Haley FRSA whose own art explores ecology and social justice.

The exhibition is free, and will be running in the open ground floor area of the York Street building until the 30 April.

Organising the exhibition, Presbyterian Chaplain Cheryl Meban explained

“The diversity of the submissions to the exhibition is amazing, and the generosity of the artists and of the staff who’ve been working on it. Tear Fund inspired the original idea. But caring for the poor and social justice can touch a much wider audience than just Christian students, so we threw it open to everybody.”

Later in the week, local blogger Glenn Jordan is giving an open lecture on the Spirituality of Water as part of the exhibition. Friday 24 April at 12.30pm in Room 82A02 (on the ground floor next to the exhibition).

Update - BBC news covered the exhibition online!

Titanic Made in Belfast Festival

I’ve tripped over yet another festival happening in Belfast. The Lord Mayor Tom Hartley was right when he commented that there are over 80 festivals in Belfast each year, and that as soon as one ends, another starts.

As the building work in Titanic Quarter progresses, and we head towards the 14 April 2012 anniversary of the Titanic hitting an iceberg and sinking, more and more energy is being pumped into raising public awareness about the history of the shipyards and its skilled workforce.

The Titanic Made in Belfast festival runs from Saturday 11 to Sunday 19 April.

Unfortunately, the main festival exhibition and many of the talks are being held inside W5 (at the Odyssey), so while the events are free, you must first pay the W5 admission charges to gain entry.

There are also free bus tours around Queens Island, leaving Belfast City Hall daily at 11am and 2pm from 11-19 April. You need to pick up your free ticket from the Belfast Welcome Centre in advance. The two hour tour takes in the Harland & Wolff site, including the main offices where the Titanic was designed, as well as the Thompson Dry Dock and Pump House.

If you want to see it from the water, 75 minutes boat tours leave Donegall Quay up to five times a day during the festival. £7 per person.

And there’s more! Tours around the dock and Pump House, extended walking tours, and even a GPS-based audio/video interactive trail unit by that can be picked up for £5 from the Belfast Welcome Centre all year round.

Beats the Belfast Shopping Festival with its "month long extravaganza celebrating the city’s exceptional retail offering" ...