Flip UltraHD Video Camera – White, 8 GB, 2 Hours (3rd Generation) NEWEST MODEL

This review is really similar to the critique that I gave for the Flip Slid HD when it initial came out. (Please see that evaluation also…)

I have been a Flip camera consumer because they released the first gen. Flip Mino HD (not the new metallic model). I loved the camera. For what I necessary it for it was almost everything I wanted. I soon grew to become addicted to the Flip cameras and required to purchase the newest one particular every time they came out.

I currently very own the Flip Mino HD (1st gen) Flip Ultra HD (2nd Gen) Flip Slide HD, and now the Flip Ultra HD (3rd Gen with Flip Port). I also very own a Canon GL2 and Vixia 30 video cameras and a Canon Xi digital SLR.


I got residence from college on Tuesday and located my brand new Flip Ultra HD waiting for me. I had about 20 minutes to open the package, search and set up the features (time, date, etc.) ahead of I had to leave for marching band rehearsal. For the duration of rehearsal I did some test shooting and I was extremely impressed with the high quality of this camera, but I was worried about a number of functions.

I was reluctant at first to obtain this camera due to the fact of the 60fps feature. I did personal a Kodak Zi8 and the 720p 60fps setting did not not import into Last Cut Pro. I had to take it into compressor or some other software and alter the file extension in order for Last Cut Pro to import it. Of course this causes a lower in high quality.

I was also reluctant because of the image stabilization characteristic. When image stabilization is extra to a camera (of this dimension) video quality generally suffers. I know flips can be very shaky if you do not have a nicely trained hand. Right after a couple of hours a playing you will figure out the proper movements that the camera can incorporate so your video will not come out shaky.

I do not use my Flip Slide HD since of the omni directional microphone. I can not record loud conditions since the microphone distorts. This is my most significant fault with the Slide HD. I was a tiny concerned with the new Flip Ultra HD that it would have the identical dilemma even even though it employs a diverse microphone, but what actually sold me on this new Flip was the accessories and the FLIP PORT.

Appropriate off the bat I observed all of the new accessories that they are pushing for the Flips, the aquapacks, the igo chargers, and my favorite is the magnetic Bower Wide Angel Lens. Flip and Cisco have ultimately started listening to its consumers, but what put it more than the top for me was Blue Microphones. Blue Microphones makes vintage and out of this planet recording, studio, usb microphones. I personal 1 of their USB Microphones referred to as the Snow Ball and the top quality of that microphone is remarkable. When I discovered out that Blue Microphones was producing a microphone (mikey) for the new Flip to be utilised with the new Flip Port, I purchased mine proper away.

So the Assessment…

The Ultra HD has often been my favorite because of its dimension. I feel the greater it is the far better manage you will have and the much less shaky video you will create. The new Ultra HD is smaller, but not that considerably. It feels great in your hands. The controls and the screen are in the exact same spot. It is a great match in your hand.

I was quite shocked at how well the image stabilization worked. If you have utilized a flip just before this one particular you know that the slightest motion will create shaky video. You can tell that this 1 has image stabilization. It nonetheless can create shaky video but it may take a large jolt to do it.

The 60 fps was great. It was much clearer video and with the image stabilization it created every thing a lot smoother and clearer in the view finder, even in low light scenarios. I did examine when I got property and the 60fps does import proper into Final Cut Pro for editing with no any compression. (Most likely lead to the videos are in MP4 format)

Overall I think this is the very best Flip Camera out on the marketplace. I like this one better than the Mino due to the fact of the touch display controls. At times pressing the touch screen controls on the Mino will lead to the camera to shake.

I hope this evaluation was helpful. Please feel cost-free to leave comments or queries.

See my comparison of my Flip Cameras under.


Flip Mino HD – Good Microphone (2nd out of all of them), does not have as wide as a shooting angle as the Ultra’s. Extremely little in the hand, at times hard to handle.

Flip Ultra HD (2nd Gen) – Very good Microphone (3rd out of all of them) Wide Angle for shooting, Feels great in the hand, sturdy, wont break if dropped. Double A batteries only last a couple of hours, rechargeable battery pack has brief life span. Unit can get hot when charging – might even shut down.

Flip Slide HD – Poor Microphone (in loud circumstances) – its omni directional so it picks up all close to the Flip not just in the front like the other individuals. (4th out of all of them) Touch controls…

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Customer Video Review Length:: 1:42 Mins

This is a potent, simple-to-use, relatively inexpensive video camera it records @ 1280 x 720, 60 FPS, and can hold about two complete hours of video at that capability. It fits neatly in a shirt pocket and is quite a lot excellent for recording something that does not require to be professionally produced film, from residence motion pictures to recording interviews. It comes packaged with a basic editing system that’s intended to make it as simple as feasible to make standard house motion pictures and post them to the internet.

So far as that goes, it really is a excellent camera, particularly at the cost. The only real difficulty with it is that the all round interface is fairly dumbed down — for the sake of ease of use, they’ve traded away a *lot* of functionality. For example, it is simple to view the clips you have just recorded in the viewfinder, but you cannot “rapidly forward” or “rewind” to a certain frame when you are not actively playing back videos, due to the fact there is only 1 set of “forward” and “reverse” buttons, and they also fill the “skip to subsequent/prior clip” functions.

Similarly, the editing software is clean and easy to use, but lacks a great deal of options. It really is relatively simple to take a chunk of video, yank out a selection of favored clips, and string them with each other into a movie, and maybe even put a title on the front and credits at the finish, but something more difficult than that ain’t taking place with out third-celebration editing computer software. Probably most critical is the lack of a “resize” function — because this camera records at this kind of a higher resolution, even pretty short videos taken with it can quickly reach prohibitively large file sizes (two minutes of video from this camera took me approximately two hours to upload to YouTube, more than a DSL connection).

All that is an situation simply because it seems, to me at least, that the only explanation to purchase a dedicated video camera, in an era when absolutely everyone and their brother’s cellphone currently has video recording capability, is if you’re at minimum a devoted hobbyist. And if you happen to be this kind of a dedicated hobbyist, I would suspect that you’d want a lot more bells and whistles (like focus and exposure controls, or far better bundled editing software package) than this issue has. What it does, it does fantastic, I am just getting a tough time figuring out who the expected market is for this — it records in larger resolution and far better FPS than any individual who desires a casual camera for posting internet videos really needs, and it lacks the advanced attributes that would make it appealing to devoted hobbyists. The two-hour recording time and simple portability might make it really beneficial for people who want to record interviews or meetings, but archiving these recordings would be prohibitively difficult with no, yet again, 3rd-celebration editing tools, due to the massive file dimension of the recordings this factor generates. The camera’s greatest function is probably the image stabilization, which functions really well — certainly, so nicely that I forgot about it, and just waved the camera around without even worrying about image shake at all. Due to the fact of that, this camera may well be excellent for hobbyists who currently have a complete suite of editing computer software and are searching to shoot in uncontrolled problems without a tripod.

The video to the left is an example of the sort of thing it is fairly effortless to turn out with this camera — you can see how it offers fairly effectively with indoor lighting situations, has great colour, etc., and you can see the “image stabilization” at work. I ought to note, even so, that I did make two modifications to this video using third-celebration software — I diminished its resolution from 1280 x 720 to 640 x 360 and converted it to a .wmv file so that it would fit within Amazon’s file size &amp format requirements for video reviews.

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EDIT: It is unfortunate that CISCO is terminating the Flip line, as I just finally found what this camera *is* excellent for: taking on vacations in foreign countries. I just returned from a trip to New Zealand, and this camera’s large FPS recording rate created it ideal for capturing footage of wilderness, animals and birds that move rapidly and are otherwise tough to photograph, and the like it was effortless to just take a half-second or so of video whenever I desired a still photograph, and pull these frames out later with the Flip’s software package it was effortless and practical to carry wherever I went, even along full-day hiking trails and the camera’s two-hour recording time was sufficient to hold all the video I took over the two weeks of the vacation. The lack of concentrate &amp exposure controls was nevertheless a minor concern — often it had trouble with varied lighting in panorama shots and so forth — but the camera’s automated adjustments had been fairly good if not perfect, and I was able to grab a fantastic deal of good quality footage of my trip.

There was one minor issue with charging the camera’s battery — the battery life, at about a…

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