More Video Gadgets


The latest in my acquisitions has been an Aiptek A-HD camcorder.  This is my second HD camcorder from Aiptek.  The first was their GO HD and this one is a little bit of a stripped down version priced at $179 MSRP.  I suspect the price  in intended to get it on the shelves of stores for the Christmas season.  The GO HD which I bought back in May had a $280 MSRP and was available only online.  However, I was able to pick up the A-HD at my local Circuit City store.   The GO HD recorded 720p video at 30 fps but the A-HD records at the NTSC rate of 29.97 fps.  The GO HD files weren't very compatible with a lot of video players whereas the A-HD files are.  Both cameras are based on the Ambarella A1 chipset and encode video with the AVC1 codec and audio AAC in a QuickTime MOV wrapper.  This means they are basically AVCHD files. 

The files are stored on SD memory cards and the cameras accept up to 8 GB cards though Aiptek is now claiming up to 32 GB cards.  Since the video is only recorded at 4 mbps the faster SDHC cards aren't necessary though the larger cards only come in that format.

However only very recent versions (September 2007) of the QuickTime player seemed to be able to play these files properly.  Editing files was another problem.  Only Nero Vision seemed to be able to import the files and render them to other formats properly.   One GO HD user mentioned he had some success editing by changing the GO HD files extension to MP4.  Since QuickTime is the wrapper for MPEG-4 there is very little difference but some NLE programs appear to deal with the file differently if has the MP4 extension.  The rename didn't work for me with my GO HD files but it did with my A-HD files.  Sony's Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 8 imported most of the files though a few crashed with a Quicktime DLL error, however Ulead's VideoStudio 11 Plus and Pinnacle Studio Plus 11 both imported the files that crashed in Movie Studio.   Though Sony and Ulead products can import QuickTime MOV files the Sony import left out the audio and Ulead had problems rendering from the MOV file.  No such problems occurred when the files were renamed to MP4.

Here's an MP4 podcast of a clip made with A-HD files and edited with Nero Vision 4  which may or may not work on your computer.  If not you can just download the file which may work in a standalone player such as VLC, MPlayer or QuickTime player.  With the QuickTime plug-in on my Windows XP machine it didn't get the aspect ratio right and had problems decoding.  I will probably replace this will a  link to a WMV and this file shortly.


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