The new Pure Digital Mino Swims With the Big Fish
by Mark Shapiro

 Maybe the best Internet Video Camcorder Ever

The new Mino mini camcorder from Pure Digital is here - delivering sharp lookingy portable video to everyone’s pocket or purse, This is the third generation of mini camcorders from Pure Digital, following the introduction of their very success Flip Video and FlipVideo camcorders.

 With a list price of $180, the new version adds cool new features like touch sensitive controls, improved video quality, internal re-chargeable battery and an overall improved look which includes making this small camcorder even more compact. 

Just 4 inches long by 2 inches wide by 0.6 inches deep, it can easily slip into a pocket.  it weighs just a hair over 3 ounces. Like the Ultra, it ships with 2 gig flash drive that allows you to capture about an hour of video. 

It comes with Pure Digital's new video engine that produces sharp looking SVGA-resolution (640 by 480) MPEG4 AVI videos that are perfect for playback over the net or on a mobile video device. However, this is not a professional camcorder. When the video is blown up, it does not match the quality you get from “real” camcorder” which cost a lot more and are a lot larger. However, for a tiny mobile device, the video is darn good. The Pure Digital Mino includes a 2x digital zoom - which essentially digitally enlarges the image. It is not a true optical zoom.  

As you would expect, it also captures sound. But as you would expect from an inexpensive, diminutive mike embedded in a tiny device, capturing good sound is not this device’s primary focus. The omni directional mike does an acceptable job of capturing sound from the front as well as overall ambient noise. With a device this compact, there is no space to attach an external mike to get high quality, clean sound.

Its all about the video.

The Mino is very simple to operate. You power it up and its ready to go. Press the red button to activate the recording mode. Press it and the Mino starts recording. Press it again and it stops recording. To review the recorded videos, you use play/pause icon on the top left. You use the two arrows on either side of the red button to fast forward through the recorded videos. And, the trashcan button on the top right is for erasing recordings. The plus and minus buttons enable you to zoom in during record mode and to change audio levels during playback. That’s it for controls. If you hold the record button down while powering up the Mino, it enters the settings mode where you can set the date and time as well as the tones.

Like the previous Flip camcorders, the Mino also uses a “flip out” USB plug to connect to a computer for transferring video and audio. They have moved the USB plug from the side of the device to the top. Also as Pure Digitalis now using a built-in lithium battery to power the device, you can re-charge it via the USB plug. This is good and bad. If you do have access to a computer while traveling, recharging is simple. If not, you might be stuck once the battery charge runs out. Also, as the batteries are not easily replaceable, when they go bad, and batteries always go bad, you will have to replace the entire unit, not just the battery.  

The new Mino ships with a few accessories - a protective pouch, a set of RCA audio and video cables for watching your video on a TV or recording to an analog video device, a wrist strap, the simple instructions and the very cool software which works with both Macs and Windows machines (XP and Vista).

During the Short Film Corner event participants were challenged to make three-minute movies on Flip Video Cameras. An esteemed jury of festival programmers and directors from around the world met in Cannes to determine the best submissions. Check out the grand prize winning film and the runners-up here.

Pure Digital Software 

Not only does the software for video editing work with both Macs and Windows, but it is embedded inside the device’s hard drive. When you plug it in, you have the option of launching the software and installing it on your computer. There is no CD to carry around and try not to loose. This is especially useful when you are traveling and want to use your Mino on someone else’s computer. By the way, you don’t have to use the Mino software. 

When you plug in the Mino, your compute should be able to recognize it as a standard USB storage device. Simply navigate to the DCIM folder where the videos are stored and view and/or transfer the video from there using your computer’s video playback and file management software.

 You can use the Pure Digital software to trim the beginning and ending of each clip as well as to capture individual frames as still images. If you want to do something a little fancier, you can use the Make Movie application. Based on the very popular “muvee” automated movie making software, this application enables you to enhance your video clips with music and effects. Once the Make Movie software is launched, you select the video clip or clips you want to enhance and then one of the six bundled “style” options. If you want to replace the existing sound with music, you will need to select the appropriate MP3 audio file. Press Make Mix and the magic starts. 

You can also use the software to compress and save a version for emailing. The share button makes it easy to upload your finished video to one of several online video-hosting sites including MySpaceTV, YouTube and AOL video or any other web-hosting site. 

However, editing the Pure Digital video files by using a different third party application can be a challenge even if that program claims to support MPEG4 editing. Even the standalone muvee AutoProducer video-editing program won’t open the Mino video files.  

Pure Digital uses a MPEG 4 codec called 3ivx. If you want to edit the Mino’s video clips, your editing program needs support that flavor of MPEG4. Go here for more info - http://www.3ivx.com/.

 The Mino is a great little camcorder for travel and for fun. My kids love it. The quality might not be good enough for prosumer or pro video editing and production, but it is plenty good enough for most web uses. And with its automated web compression and upload features, this positions the Mino as a truly exceptional and affordable web video camcorder.  The only negative is the audio, If you want to make videos for the web that your audience will be able to hear and understand, be very careful to how the mike is positioned and get it as close as possible.

The Mac iLife8 Problem

Even though the bundled software is “Mac” compliant, there are issues. According to Pure Digital, they are aware of the iLife 8 (iMovie, iDVD, etc.), issues and are working with Apple to resolve them. “With the release of iLife 8, Apple introduced a new "video engine". This new engine has a number of benefits, but, unfortunately, it prevented many video formats from working with Apple's iLife suite of applications. Apple is aware of the issues and is working to solve it. In parallel, Pure Digital is working with Apple to better understand the issue and see if we can expedite a solution from our side. “

According to pure Digital, you can use QuickTimePro to export the capture videos into iMovie '08.  If you have QuickTime Pro, you can simply open the video in this application and then export the video as an MPEG-4. Then, open iMovie and import the MPEG4 file. If you have iMovie '06, your Flip videos can be easily imported into iMovie '06 after downloading the DivX codec (www.divx.com).