Flip UltraHD Camcorder, 120 Minutes (Black) Order Now

I'm real happy with the Flip UltraHD. My first had a dead pixel which appeared on all videos. Amazon promptly replaced it. Both units exhibit the overheating issue after charging for a long time. This big flaw can be worked around by either letting it cool down for a while before continuing to charge or by simply forgoing the Flip battery back and using your own rechargeable batteries.

The FlipShare software is basically useless. I selected "Make a DVD" and it basically had me copy the files I needed to work with and then said, "ok you'll need to either use your software now or pay (I think it was $20) for a Premium Flip DVD. Ha. As for editing, you seem to only be able to trim the start or end of videos so its very limited.

I've already plugged TMPGEnc Xpress in the forums here as an excellent editor and an encoder which works great with these files. You need to encode to mpeg-2 DVD compliant (720x480p) if you want to make standard DVDs. TMPGEnc DVD Author did a great job on authoring some DVDs. I think the software is now called TMPGEnc DVD Authoring Works which is inclusive of the other mentioned apps. I got A/V synch errors using the free DVD Flick. Here's another great (and free) tool: MP4CAM2AVI- This tool can quickly join your .mp4 files with no quality loss to .avi format.

I ordered the Gorillapod Tripod which I'm sure can have great applications but of course as a standard tripod it is very short. I got another 53 inch tripod and the Flip UltraHD easily mounts to it.

It's just amazing considering the price of this unit what it can do (2 hours of 720p HD) compared to the $599 Sony MiniDV Camcorder I bought 5 years ago. (60 minute tapes at HQ)

I have uploaded about 9 HD videos to youtube so far and it's incredible. Remember if you use Flipshare to upload it won't be HD. You won't even the see the HD icons on your videos as an option. It's strange but you have to manually browse to your files from youtube and upload them. You won't have any transcoding or at least any noticeable quality loss this way.

Of course I wish that you could swap out memory cards but so far the 2 hours has been sufficient.

I also which that I could rename the videos which the Flip names as VID00001, etc. If anything, Flipshare can be a good catalog tool but while you can title your videos in the program, it's more of a 'tag' and the file name can never change. (if you want to maintain this catalog). So you're left VID00001-VID0078. I hope you have clear thumbnails so you can identify the videos if you browse to them in Windows Explorer.

Edit to add: I'm using Windows Vista Home Premium (64-bit) without the issues described in the review below mine.

In summary, I'm very much enjoying the camcorder.Get more detail about Flip UltraHD Camcorder, 120 Minutes (Black).