With my somewhat recent purchase of a Canon HV10 digital video camera. I have been getting real excited by internet video, of course the recent AppleTV helps that excitement. Now, I have no plans to launch any sort of video podcast or anything like that. Even though I did register areyouageek.tv, it just forwards this blog. I am however having a lot of fun messing with some home family video’s. I have an account on Blip.tv and also upload some to my .mac account to share with family and some friends. My main for reason not fully enjoying video is the time it takes to encode video. I am working on my Powerbook and its sometimes slow, of course I have been shooting in HD, so that adds to that time factor.

I have been taking some video’s and I have been learning to edit using iMovie HD. Nothing fancy for me yet, at least let me learn the basics first. I am excited about this new device that has been announced, the Elgato Turbo.264. This Turbo.264 should be available in the US by the end of April for $99. I can only hope this is true, because I will run out and get one ASAP. The only downfall for me is that although it will encode my HD video clips to H.264 the maximum output is limited to 800×600.

But that would work well for me because my main concern is that I can upload these to web to share and for that I would downgrade the quality anyway.

Via: engadgetHD

So I finally got a camcorder over the weekend. I drove down to Circuit City on Friday night to pick it up. I am sure its not the best out there, but for me it is most likely more than I need. I decided to go with the Canon HV10. I went with Canon partly because I have a (approx) 4 year old Canon Powershot S400 camera that has always worked great and has lasted a long time and also partly because the price seemed good compared to other HD/DV camcorders. Hopefully this will be just as good in the future.

I bought a few accessories to go with the camera, I got a second battery, a nice 4 hour Energizer because the one it comes with only gives you about a 1 hour run time. I felt that the battery was a must have. I also picked up a miniSD card to go with it, I got of course the biggest they had at 1gb. That way I can take digital stills with it, and man this takes some nice pictures.

I had not thought I would want to use it much for stills but after taking a few I changed my mind, this takes much better pics than my current 4mp camera. I am still learning about camera’s so I am not really sure why it takes better pictures although I am sure there is a logical reason.

A few things that I have noticed since I got this on Friday. Granted I have not played to much yet, but give me some time.

• I am glad to be a Mac user.
  When on photo mode iPhoto launches when the camera is hooked up via USB, and when on video mode it works very well with iMovieHD. Its nice to be a Mac user and not have to worry about drivers and programs to install before use.
• You really need a powerful computer, my G4 Powerbook 1.67 with 2gb ram is running hard to get this video pulled on to the laptop.
• When using HD video (1080i) you really need alot of space. This video takes up a huge amount of space. I am sure an external hard drive just for video will come in the not to distant future.

This is the first time I have had a video camera of mine. So I am pretty excited.