A quick look all over and I spot the on/off switch on one side - flicked that on - on the other side I noticed a similar switch labelled 'Vox' on/off. Yes, I do want sound, so flicked that on too. The view screen came to life and I was smiling.
I saw a large button on the side with a big red spot on it. That has to be the record button, so I pressed it, and voila! The display on the screen confirmed that I was now recording. This is easy.
After half a minute or so recording myself talking to it politely, I pressed the red spot button again and the recording stopped. Easy!
Now to play back my recording.
The next hour and a half of my life was less enjoyable, more like an emotional endurance test that included distressed laughter, anger, disappointment and dismay. During this period I even resorted to reading through the accompanying instruction booklet - which, by the way, could only have been written by a software programmer who, long ago, lost the ability to communicate with anyone who's not plugged into the matrix. In a moment of desperation, I even forlornly loaded the enclosed CD in the hope that it would contain enlightening interactive 'how-to' instructions rather than the 90 megabyte, print-ready[crop marks included] pdf artwork copy of the printed instruction booklet I had already read cover to cover in 15 languages. Damn that CD! - It was my last hope!
The next morning, with renewed vigour, I tried again to find 'playback mode'. This meant that I would have to abandon all logical thoughts and suppress intuitive expectations because tt turns out that to playback a previous recording, you have to select 'record' option from the menu. Record?? what on earth were VEHO thinking? why not playback, or preview, or recordings even?
So now I could select and playback[record] the video I had made last night. I remember recording about 30 seconds but, I could only see about 5 seconds of recording, in fact, further random button pressing revealed that I had 4 very short bits of recording. This is one thing the instructions are clear about though. The 'Vox' button actually means that you want to activate record function with sound and since I was talking to camera while recording, I was turning the thing on and off without realizing. Ok, my bad.
So after an hour or so of faffing around with it, I got the cam mounted on my mountain bike helmet and all the enclosed attachments gave me enough options to strap the remote control to my handlebars. Now I could properly road test this thing. Would the 4GB card be big enough, would the battery last long enough, would the wireless remote always work. These questions and more would soon be answered. So far my experience with this gadget hadn't been good so my expectations were significantly lowered.
All went well out on the trails and I captured quite a lot of video footage without any problems at all. Here's the low down:
What's good?
- It has a view screen[1.5 inch] to playback recordings so you can make sure you have got something good before you go home.
- It has a remote control that works really well (could do with the beep louder so you know you are recording - beeps once when starts recording and twice when you stop it but cant hear if windy)
- Battery life is impressive (so far)
- Video quality as good as you can expect(for this price) - Really not good[grainy] in low light conditions though
- Small and light make it great for slipping in pocket of jacket or shorts.
- Auto sleep mode to save a battery works well but slow coming back to life from the remote
- Lots of really useful brackets and mounts to attach the cam in various ways.
What's bad about it?
- Unintuitive software logic and symbols on buttons are confusing
- Produces .MOV video files only . Pain in the arse for Windows on PC. ::sigh::
- Uploading videos straight to You tube which complains about .MOV format.
- Instruction booklet is rubbish. Product manager at Veho needs to be sacked for signing that off.
- You cant turn the display screen off while recording. I can't see it while mounted on my helmet so a needless battery drain.
This is what I recorded (720p HD) and I think its worth saying that when I upload the original .MOV files straight to youtube, I always get this message "The video that you uploaded may have audio/video sync issues. Please refer to this article for advice on how to correct this issue should it arise.". some of the original HD quality is also lost.
What a flippin faf though!. The last time I had had such an unintuitive experience with a new gadget was with the Go Pro Hero. As with this camera, the actual videos are good quality but straight out the box it drove me to distraction. Hooray for the Flip Ultra, I had that sussed in less than a minute out the box, very intuitive design and sublimely easy to use.
If the VEHO MUVI could just allow me to choose my preferred output file format[AVI or WMV or MP4] rather than forcing .MOV files on me, I could forgive all other bad points, but really, I'm on day 4 now with over 5 gig of video that I want to edit in Windows MovieMaker. I can't though until I find a good free converter, or spend money on new editing software, converter software or just by an Apple computer.
What is it with the MOV files anyway?! - the Kodak playsport was the same arse ache, and even the pricey Drift Inovation X170HD saves in MOV only.
Hooray again for FLIP minicams, AVI, and MP4 formats.
One last thought. We live in a time where the likes of Apple have set new benchmarks for intuitive design, with gadgets that just work straight out of the box, without instructions. This isn't a new concept. An action camera is designed to be used by active people while doing active things like skiing, rock climbing, surfing and mountain biking who don't always have both hands free and don't know when the best bit of action is coming along. These customers need robust simplicity and big red buttons. How hard can it be?
