that's because (as opposed to even many of todays smartphones) those camcorders, even low budgets as this aiptek, had a decent lens and in some cases an optical 2x zoom
@@ahmedp800 leave the megapixels out of the equation; u cant compare a flat tiny optical (even the carl zeiss lens) with a full size 35mm of a handycam
@@Whfox www.amazon.com/Bell-Howell-Camcorder-Battery-Tripods/dp/B00X40ZL5M/ref=sr_1_3?qid=1553919675&refinements=p_36%3A1253505011&s=photo&sr=1-3 8x optical zoom in the cameta brand camcorder
I agree with you on the "The best camera is the camera that you have with you." It's pretty obvious that this camera meant a lot to you, because the choice back then was mediocre footage or no footage of precious memories.
My thoughts exactly! Next thing we know Nostalgia Nerd will restore a Dell and Modern Vintage Gamer will quit talking about emulation. Or better yet Technology Connections will stop making puns! Like what?
@@whaduzitmatr Agreed, but if I had no choice but the 2, I'd take Flip any day of the week, because eventually it did get HD that did not make ya want to vomit trying to watch it.
I've got one of these! I remember getting it for $89 and having a "massive" 2GB purple/blue SD card in it. I believe our family got it for christmas and we used it for home movies and I used it to record my chemistry experiments which I'd edit with windows movie maker and upload to Metacafe because youtube wasn't a thing/popular yet.
@@thunderhayes You mean that there are grown up people these days that doesn't have memories of the Berlin wall!? Wow time flies... :) (I was 13 when the wall fell down)
Out of all of your content (there's a lot), this is the one i enjoy watching the most. "The reality is, The best camera to use , is the one you have with you." Thank you for sharing that you're an actual living, breathing person.
This brings back memories, in 2009 I saved up and bought an Aiptek Action HD. It was a huge upgrade from from the half broken Sony Cybershot I had. My collection of old videos goes from 144p to 1080p XD
I have the same camera. Loved it. Still do. It was the camera to take on family outtings to the amusement park and beach. Other such trips and activities I didn't want to risk a more expensive camera own. It was small and it too great video (as long as there was decent light.) I have upwards to a terabyte of video and pictures I took with that thing. Still my favorite 'grab in a pinch for family video' camera as it is always ready. Just open it up and press record.
That camera was one of the reasons I majored in cinema! Literally went back to my parents' house and made a little video with it last night, for nostalgic purposes. Good stuff!
Love this! One of my roommates left behind a Aiptek Pocket DV 3100. I found a review from 2003. Recording format? CF cards up to 512MB. This is "crushing up berries and rubbing on the side of your cave' technology.
that one clip of you pushing your daughter on the swing while she laughed made me glad you were able to have footage of thinsg most people wouldnt have been able to capture back then
Wow, I'd thought I'd never see these cameras again on UA-cam! I was actually an early adopter of the Aiptek cameras as well! I still have a bunch of videos on my page of me testing various models. I still have three in my possession. For what they were and their affordable price point. They were pretty decent. Thanks for this video! Always enjoy your work!
I actually had a sister model (DVG) I bought from Radio Shack in the day for around $129.00. It had the record button in the center of a ring of buttons (IIRC) and used 4xAAA batteries. Needless to say, it ate through even lithium cells quickly and was a bit difficult to handle easily for it's small size... but it came with a small pouch with a belt-loop--like many good personal stereos did--and included a few patch cables to allow connection to either a computer with a USB-port, or a television set with composite video input. Watching what I had captured later-on showed that--although it did well when shooting at night, in situations relying upon ambient light, the video was still choppy, and left much to be desired is the camera was moved suddenly. On the upside: It did have multimedia audio, which could be listened to on a set of headphones via the stereo audio jack.
Vertical Videomode should be LOCKED and restricted in a way that people have to go through a LOT of effort to remove it. Since Joe Average hates any form of effort, it should solve the Problem drastically.
Never thought I would see this product again, because this thing has been a scam in mainland China. In 2004, this AIPTEK handheld camera was advertised on CCTV (China Central Television, the national TV station in mainland China), sold by Acorn International (a Chinese company) and rebranded as "Aiputaike Wang E Pai Pocket DV DV-3000" (so the A in AIPTEK would be pronunced as /e/). It was advertised as "having a digital still camera, digital video camera, MP3 player and digital voice recorder at the same time, which would cost tens of thousands of Yuan (CNY) by buying those products seperately", and the initial price was about 1980 CNY (around USD $241 at the time). The spec is about the same as you demostrated, except it came with a 64MB CF card instead of SD card, I don't know if it's the spec changed later or what. In some tests, this CF card could only carry about 10 minutes of video recorded by this machine, not to mention the A/V quality was totally crap. In a word, it is a toy, cannot be compared with a real DV at all, but the price has been too much for a common Chinese family to pay (the average monthly income for a common Chinese family at the time was about USD $67 by today's value). Anyway, nice video and good job, thank you!
@@CK_Tex I remembered for some time what "Acorn International" is, then recalled the brain-washing "橡果国际" as seen on TV advertisement. They had so many craps sold for crazy ripoff prices! Childhood memory XD
Hey 8 Bit guy: Thanks so much, I bought one (the pocket DV4100M) for $5 and enjoy it for what it does (even so it was quite a bit of engineering for the time). Mine uses a 2 gig SanDisk not an SD card. By the way, I enjoyed your presentation so very much, and as a result appreciate this little camera even more. Thanks Rudolph
I love those small SD camcorders, they were not only cheap and good enough for simple video recording, but I could easily upload video to the computer and put it on a CD for recording birthday parties.
Yeah and nowdays you can get them used for next to nothing and still use them for fun. And getting thrown back into a time when flashvideo camcorders were really slowly starting to become a thing. This thing here really was pretty much a portable webcam camcorder running on two AA batteries :] And you could indeed record a whole birthday or any other event and it would fit snuggly on a single CD-R that you can pass to your friends. Unlike 4K 60p videos of today :P
KRAFTWERK2K6 technology has changed that we now just upload and send our videos from our phones. But for the mid 2000s, I loved using it, no need to buy expensive tapes, and it was easier to make copies, especially when VHS was already declining, and people were beginning to move to digital cameras. We didn’t care too much about quality, we just wanted the convenience of recording video with friends and family.
I'm trying to figure out what version of this I have as it's got a rechargeable battery I can't remember what megapixel it was maybe 8 or should I say "8" and I think it could take upwards of 8GB cards. If I can find that thing I'm going to take it out and give it a real test,if the rechargeable battery takes a charge anymore.
But nowadays even the good camcorders are that convenient, so just use them instead, especially when your phone or tablet will NOT do the trick because you couldn't optically zoom with it!
She's Sometimes Double Chocolate! Probably most consumers just don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on a camcorder for specialized video recording, people would rather use their smartphones and edit the videos. It’s now mostly made the mid range videographers that record long videos with 4K.
Kind of funny that you mention Mini-DV as 2005. The format came out 10 years earlier, and when I was interning on volunteer independent stuff in 1999 it was the format of choice it seemed amoungst people who wanted to do run and gun style movies.
Nice video, I'm a bit surprised you kept refering to this corder as a 'toy'. It's performance looked pretty good for the day, I would have had no complaints with using it. You're right though, smart phones have destroyed the camcorder market, they can produce the most amazing pictures that can be zoomed in a long way before the resolution lookes pixelated. I have a Huawei P20 Pro with the tripple lense.... Nice Phone
pretty good maybe for the price, in 2005 i bought a mini dv camera with a 20X zoom, stereo microphone, infrared light and a decent stabilizer for around 400 euros. This video (compressed by software) was recorded by me with that camera ua-cam.com/video/XGVbCJ_xqNI/v-deo.html
Just looking at its lens you cannot refer to it other than as a toy. DV camcorders made way better footage compared to this. Back in the day I definitely would have chosen a used DV camera over this.
from memory it was 1.3 megapixels, that was a big deal at the time, they also introduced the pencam some years earlier, but the resolution and storage was crap, i could consider that a "toy" lol
I had a bunch of these low cost DV cameras. They were a ton of fun and, like you said, made recording events really easy since they were so small and cheap. What made them even better was the CDROMs they came with. They all had some sort of DV editing software that, while simple, were good enough to make little movies with. I shot a bunch of short films with these types of cameras and even entered them in local film contests.
@@LouisSubearth If there was a copyright issue preventing him from using the official produced version, he could probably have instead grabbed one of the fan-made versions from Whomix or something.
It's always nice to see video from that era. It all kind of looks alike, no matter what you used to take video with. My grandma had a VHS camcorder to capture me and my brother growing up in the late 80's/early 90s, but it was very heavy and hard to handle. I remember having one or two of these second-tier video cameras. Mine just had internal storage, I believe of something like 128 or possibly 256mb at the most. It was pretty crummy quality, but I used what I had.
@@Prizm44 welp VLC just does it better without messing up the VideoForWindows AV codecs. Most other 3rd party players only rely on the AV codecs that you have installed under windows, If it's not there, it could not be played. VLC and MediaPlayerClassic were some of the first alround players who did it right.
It was super wholesome to see memories of your family. And it kinda made me feel a bit emotional to see you playing and spending time with your kid, the footage is low quality thats for sure but it is a footage I am sure you wouldn't change for anything else. I used to have one of those as a kid (granted, I don't even remember the brand name. It was not the same as yours, but it was a similar package) and I remember taking that to everywhere I go and taking silly pictures or videos of me and friends or family. I wish I (or my parents) kept those footage, it is lost to us but I remember the good times vaguely. Thanks for the memory trip David
Really nice review! Thanks a lot for taking time for making this. Probably, you left out the option for using this camera as a PC Webcam connecting it through the USB port.
"that would really be no different from up-scaling it in a paint program" I beg to differ. The diffrance is that if it upscale can upscale from subpixels. While this does lose some color accuracy, its still a sharp up-scaling. Worth saying that a old DV camera cluster the pixel 4x4 for color information, so its doing pretty much the same thing. Also doing this prior to compression does gain a bit of quality, if nothing less just because the compression handle a larger picture. Still 3 mpixel sensor is relay not that bad for 2005.
There aren't subpixels in these camera sensors used here. It's a Bayer matrix with 3 million elements, and Debayering produces a 3MP image that is already pretty soft and low-detail compared to having 3 individual subpixels for each pixel. The luma component resolution tends to be around 1.5MP and chroma around 0.7MP.
Honestly, the segment where he recorded the usual spot with this camera was the perfect comparsion - something we see every day, just with different hardware on the tripod. Brilliant idea. Plus... it kinda was a trip back to the old days, hehe. I used those Motorola phones and struggled to get the 3GP format to play back on my maschine - which is also how I doscovered VLC. I believe I even still have some of those... But yeah, great video. Thank you for sharing!
I used to own an aiptek device like that. But it was the first iteration of this model. I was attending school back then and it wasn't a toy for me. People around me definitely were impressed by it (adults were curious about it too). This was a conversation starter. If mounted on it's included tiny tripod, it took very decent pictures for the time. Used to always carry it with me, since it also served as my mp3 player. I had to get by with 128mb memory card (lol, today it's a 128gb memory card in my phone). And let's not forget about this thing doubling as a webcam. I fully agree with your point that the best cam is the one you always have on you. I want to take this thought a little further and mention the power source. This thing took 4x AA batteries (I used rechargeable ones). And so, if needed, you could always just swap in new batteries, instead of having to give up on your device for the rest of the day. That aspect of it's usability was far ahead of more expensive competition, with their expensive custom batteries.
wow, I still have a similar model. I always thought I would use it as pc cam and kept it around. Never did. But as it happens with many "no name" brands, they give you so much stuff. Tv and pc connection, mic, cables....it was great at the time. I think the power consumption was rather good and had 4 AAA batteries.
I've never commented on it before, I suppose it's because although I've watched a few of your videos in the past I've only recently subscribed, but, your intro and outro music are the BEST! ;)
He definitely should have checked the original files instead. Who knows what went wrong during the conversion process. It's NEVER a good sign when someone doesn't even put any effort into that. Guess he didn't want to get out of his Mac-Comfort zone…
I actually got one of these cameras for Christmas so I could start making UA-cam videos. I remember when I first used it I was really disappointed with the quality. But I filmed a boatload of stuff with this guy. It came with free video editing software too. If you wanted to make a UA-cam video back then it got the job done.
I had to watch this video if only to see that I'm not the only one who bought one of these. In fact it's still in my desk drawer right now. But then I also own a Diamond Rio, which I suppose this is the video equivalent of.
I have a aiptek pocket dv 5100m sitting in my closet that no longer works, but it was my first camera, so i keep it anyway because of that. Im actually suprised anyone else even knows about this company.
I had one of these from like a Walgreens or something that I bought on sale cheap it was one of the later ones that had like an 8 megapixel camera and take what I remember being 8gb cards max but I wouldn't be surprised if it was 4 or maybe 2 like this one. Now I've got a good reason to try to find that thing and see if it still works.
I hacked a couple of $20 "disposable" CVS camcorders instead. Was just as capable, less than a fourth the price, (plus a hacked serial sync cable) I was so broke back then, though. I might have bought an Aiptek from a discount bin years later, but never used it because of my cellphone.
My Grandma bought me one as a teeneager from the QVC shopping channel back in the day. It had a different brand name in the UK but I remember at the time it was amazing technology and I was genuinely happy.
Haha me too. Took me till 2009 before i could afford a digital video camera. Before that VHS-C was all i had. Sometimes connected the Video Output to the PC and recorded directly to the Hard drive. Just wish i would have had a SVHS-C camcorder.
1:49 I spy with my green eye, a kyuute little Pug... ♥♥ lol 5:44 Very distinct difference, lots of white noise. Oof. lol 6:44 She's kyuute. 7:05 Nice car. I remember seeing this device in the hands of a few. It was neat to see, sure.
My absolutely first digital camera and video recorder was a Creative web cam that had a built in memory and battery, so you can carry it around. The year was 2001 or 2002, the quality was low, but I'm so happy that today I can watch videos of my family that I took those days. It's like watching a b/w photograph of your parents or grandparents, you don't care about the quality and it's somehow still fascinating.
My first camera was a similar model from Aiptek. I'm now a professional in the film industry and work with RED and Arri Alexa cameras on a daily basis. This brings back memories!
Me and my friend always used one of these in the starting days of UA-cam to make videos, windows movie maker plus one of these and we lived our dreams of getting ten views a video we spent hours making. Nothing special but I somewhat fondly remember going outside and thinking “what next?”.
My how things have changed. I've been a Hollywood Audio/Video engineer for 30 years and at 8:10 or so what you are seeing is called "4th frame repeat." The camera is actually shooting at 24 frames per second and creating 30 fps. Since, in this era NTSC TV's were all 30 fps (29.97fps) you needed some way to get from 24 frames per second to the 30 that was necessary to play on an NTSC TV. Feature films are shot typically at 24 frames per second and when they were transferred for use on TV, VHS, DVD etc they go through a process called "telecine" (before solid state storage that transfer often happened to that big D1 component digital video tape you have in your "Rare Media" video - the SD1 you had was the data version but essentially the same as the D1 tape used for video transfers - I worked for a company that, at the time, did a fair bit of the special effects in the movie "Independence Day" and the D1 tapes that stored all the data for the SFX shots in that movie filled a small warehouse storage space...but I digress). The telecine process takes the 24 fps source and splits each frame into fields, and then repeats those fields in a specific (called 3:2 as it was a sequence of three fields and tw fields) order such that 4 film frames resulted in 5 video frames, or the conversion between 24 frames per second to 30 frames per second. However, this process, especially at that time was difficult to do digitally, so the "down and dirty" solution is to simply repeat every fourth frame resulting in 5 frames at 30 fps for every 4 at 24 fps. The result isn't as smooth motion as you get from a proper telecine process, but it works and is cheap to do. Even edit systems like Final Cut Pro would do the same thing if you just dropped a 24 fps video clip into a 30 fps timeline and Apple used to make a special tool to proprocess all of your 24 fps footage to use at 30 fps with proper 3:2 conversion. These days there are many more options for frame interpolation, etc when you need to change the frame rate.
Interesting Video. However in 2005 I had a Verizon Pocket PC that could record Photo's and Videos onto SD card. (Eat your heart out iPhone.) Fuji also advertised interpolation specs too.
Just FYI you don't have to actually convert the video to use it in FCP. Doing so would result in a loss of quality (such as it is). What you want to do is recontainerize it. As its already mpeg4, this is perfectly doable. Use this command in ffmpeg: ffmpeg -i video.asf -codec copy video.mp4 if you want to do a whole folder, use this bash script: for i in *.asf; do ffmpeg -i "$i" -codec copy "${i%.*}.mp4" done
"Forgotten" haha! These were sold for many years along in Brazil for very high prices (not this exactly model but every similar one. I bet internals are mostly the same).
What's popular in Brazil often isn't as popular in the US. For example, Vaio laptops are now more popular in Brazil than they are in the US now, though local manufacturing has a lot to do with that.
Around that time 1gb card was lesser or more than $100 depending on r/w speed. 2gb likely double. SDHC didnt come about till the latter 2006-2007. Back then I could only afford cards in the megabytes. $20 for 128mb in 2005 compared to today, early 2019 128gb is closing I on that pricepoint. I remember only using Canon point n shoots then. A 2004 model using Compact Flash that can only do 3 minute 480p clips, and a 2005 model that uses regular SD that has no recording limit. Wish I had this during that time, ultimately have to be restricted to the MB sized cards.
In 2005 smart phones like the Motorola A1000 were already out and features front and rear facing camera, sd-card storage, a touch screen, installable apps, it even had the Opera web browser.
Some of the Aiptek camcorders did have an external mic input, but it was only mono and the quality was still poor: ua-cam.com/video/eaPiYCRZvok/v-deo.html
@@vwestlife Yeah they all still recorded the same samplerate and bitdepth and a better microphone really didn't add anything to the soundquality. Unless recorded externally with a different recorder.
definitely not forgotten..I used this camera in my 11th and 12th grade years in highschool for it's mp3 uses and camera capabilities, I still have alot of the images on photobucket still.
I can easily prove you wrong. Check out David's own video on a camera that recorded on cassette (yes, audio cassette). When you can hardly discern what's going on on a piece of footage, it isn't any better than memory, trust me.
@@BilisNegra The Fisher Price camcorder? As long as you got something except a black video feed. People forget, and videos don't change. After 30 years, your memory of a event would have transformed, but however bad the video, it will always remember the same moment.
This was my first video camera, I got a red one for Christmas in 2007. Never thought I’d see someone analyzing its specs. I was pleased with it as a middle schooler, though. Great video!
I enjoy seeing these types of videos. I find it amazing to see how far we have come in imaging tech. I would add that even big name camera companies have deceived people on video capture of the actual resolving resolutions. Both Nikon and Canon early video DSLRs did not actually have HD 1080p resolution. Some could only resolve 480p and wrap that in a 720p or 1080p file. I think thats a crime considering how much people pay for DSLRs cameras and the lenses to get the best image quality. Thankfully today they are a lot better especially with the mirrorless cameras options.
And was selled by tecnomania, that company inflated the price so high, because of the poor technology knowledge of brazilians at the time... They never knew it was a affordable camera
Great video, love the time period comparison in retrospect to what was avaliable on the market at that time. Also love the Talon! Amazing condition! The PXL is my go too. Had one in the 80s and have 3 in the 2020s.
I’m actually incredibly impressed by the pictures it could take, wow
that's because (as opposed to even many of todays smartphones) those camcorders, even low budgets as this aiptek, had a decent lens and in some cases an optical 2x zoom
Well, in 2007 we had the Nokia N95 with Carl Zeiss optics, 5 MP and AF.
@@ahmedp800 leave the megapixels out of the equation; u cant compare a flat tiny optical (even the carl zeiss lens) with a full size 35mm of a handycam
For what I remember none of these camcorders had optical zoom, it was always digital. And the macro was activated with a slide button.
@@Whfox www.amazon.com/Bell-Howell-Camcorder-Battery-Tripods/dp/B00X40ZL5M/ref=sr_1_3?qid=1553919675&refinements=p_36%3A1253505011&s=photo&sr=1-3 8x optical zoom in the cameta brand camcorder
I agree with you on the "The best camera is the camera that you have with you."
It's pretty obvious that this camera meant a lot to you, because the choice back then was mediocre footage or no footage of precious memories.
Is it opposite day today heh? LGR is restoring a PC and The 8 Bit Guy is reviewing an old camcorder, now what, Techmoan will go to a Goodwill?
And what does VWestlife do then? Showing off a Commodore 64 game? :O
We can only hope!
My thoughts exactly! Next thing we know Nostalgia Nerd will restore a Dell and Modern Vintage Gamer will quit talking about emulation. Or better yet Technology Connections will stop making puns! Like what?
I'd watch that.
He'd better not forget the lucky rock.
I can't help but smile seeing the wholesome memories you captured with that old camera.
I didn't expect the still image quality after watching the video quality.
Oh these aren't forgotten - these were the source of many a nauseating video in the early days of UA-cam.
i think the king of annoying early youtube videos goes to the "Flip Video" and 'Bloggie" cameras
@@whaduzitmatr Agreed, but if I had no choice but the 2, I'd take Flip any day of the week, because eventually it did get HD that did not make ya want to vomit trying to watch it.
The 8-Bit Guy and a 1995 Eagle Talon: name a more iconic duo.
8 bit guy should have the 1985 Camaro IROC and the 16 bit guy the 1995 Talon.
Batman and Robin
You win the internets 😂🤣😆
@@gavincurtis 1986 Monte Carlo SS.
Scotty Kilmer and his Celica ^^
I've got one of these! I remember getting it for $89 and having a "massive" 2GB purple/blue SD card in it. I believe our family got it for christmas and we used it for home movies and I used it to record my chemistry experiments which I'd edit with windows movie maker and upload to Metacafe because youtube wasn't a thing/popular yet.
snowdaysrule2 Aiptek gang 👌
How cool
I’ve had this camcorder for 13 years now
Since about 2006
WHAT? When did time flew past me so fast?
don't feel bad, I wasn't aware of the Iphone back in 2007.
@@thunderhayes You mean that there are grown up people these days that doesn't have memories of the Berlin wall!? Wow time flies... :) (I was 13 when the wall fell down)
@ yeah same goes for me as well
Nice profile pic I love miatas
We're old neegus already. Sad neegus hours
Out of all of your content (there's a lot), this is the one i enjoy watching the most. "The reality is, The best camera to use , is the one you have with you." Thank you for sharing that you're an actual living, breathing person.
This brings back memories, in 2009 I saved up and bought an Aiptek Action HD. It was a huge upgrade from from the half broken Sony Cybershot I had. My collection of old videos goes from 144p to 1080p XD
I have the same camera. Loved it. Still do. It was the camera to take on family outtings to the amusement park and beach. Other such trips and activities I didn't want to risk a more expensive camera own. It was small and it too great video (as long as there was decent light.)
I have upwards to a terabyte of video and pictures I took with that thing.
Still my favorite 'grab in a pinch for family video' camera as it is always ready. Just open it up and press record.
6:11 you threw me back into my childhood with that video quiality
That camera was one of the reasons I majored in cinema! Literally went back to my parents' house and made a little video with it last night, for nostalgic purposes. Good stuff!
Love this! One of my roommates left behind a Aiptek Pocket DV 3100. I found a review from 2003. Recording format? CF cards up to 512MB. This is "crushing up berries and rubbing on the side of your cave' technology.
For the time, that footage looks surprisingly good.
that one clip of you pushing your daughter on the swing while she laughed made me glad you were able to have footage of thinsg most people wouldnt have been able to capture back then
Wow, I'd thought I'd never see these cameras again on UA-cam!
I was actually an early adopter of the Aiptek cameras as well! I still have a bunch of videos on my page of me testing various models. I still have three in my possession. For what they were and their affordable price point. They were pretty decent. Thanks for this video! Always enjoy your work!
Here's my earliest demo of their HD line. Before UA-cam was even HD. ua-cam.com/video/r7Fwonzg_Ic/v-deo.html
I actually had a sister model (DVG) I bought from Radio Shack in the day for around $129.00. It had the record button in the center of a ring of buttons (IIRC) and used 4xAAA batteries. Needless to say, it ate through even lithium cells quickly and was a bit difficult to handle easily for it's small size... but it came with a small pouch with a belt-loop--like many good personal stereos did--and included a few patch cables to allow connection to either a computer with a USB-port, or a television set with composite video input.
Watching what I had captured later-on showed that--although it did well when shooting at night, in situations relying upon ambient light, the video was still choppy, and left much to be desired is the camera was moved suddenly. On the upside: It did have multimedia audio, which could be listened to on a set of headphones via the stereo audio jack.
Always a joyous moment when I see a new 8-Bit Guy video in my subscriptions.
It's so awesome to see what we've been through, and where we are now.
Another awesome look back!
Now if we could only get smartphone users to STOP shooting video in portrait mode!
Vertical Videomode should be LOCKED and restricted in a way that people have to go through a LOT of effort to remove it. Since Joe Average hates any form of effort, it should solve the Problem drastically.
you cant shoot video in portrait mode and take picture in portriat mode
If sites hosting video like youtube simply refuse to process such videos users will learn quickly.
@@Vednier Or instantly rotates the video
Kartiq
why you need wide????
Unable to flip it weirdo?
@6:31... I thought that was from a better camera for a second. That takes surprisingly good pictures!
Never thought I would see this product again, because this thing has been a scam in mainland China.
In 2004, this AIPTEK handheld camera was advertised on CCTV (China Central Television, the national TV station in mainland China), sold by Acorn International (a Chinese company) and rebranded as "Aiputaike Wang E Pai Pocket DV DV-3000" (so the A in AIPTEK would be pronunced as /e/).
It was advertised as "having a digital still camera, digital video camera, MP3 player and digital voice recorder at the same time, which would cost tens of thousands of Yuan (CNY) by buying those products seperately", and the initial price was about 1980 CNY (around USD $241 at the time).
The spec is about the same as you demostrated, except it came with a 64MB CF card instead of SD card, I don't know if it's the spec changed later or what. In some tests, this CF card could only carry about 10 minutes of video recorded by this machine, not to mention the A/V quality was totally crap.
In a word, it is a toy, cannot be compared with a real DV at all, but the price has been too much for a common Chinese family to pay (the average monthly income for a common Chinese family at the time was about USD $67 by today's value).
Anyway, nice video and good job, thank you!
this was a scam here in brazil too, to the point it became a meme , here it was advertised as "tekpix"
@@zeandarilho7839 I just comment about that, this is a peace of meme history! lol
Being a Chinese myself, I never trusted Acorn International back to that time.
@@CK_Tex I remembered for some time what "Acorn International" is, then recalled the brain-washing "橡果国际" as seen on TV advertisement. They had so many craps sold for crazy ripoff prices! Childhood memory XD
@@CK_Tex Good for you!
Hey 8 Bit guy: Thanks so much, I bought one (the pocket DV4100M) for $5 and enjoy it
for what it does (even so it was quite a bit of engineering for the time). Mine uses a 2 gig SanDisk not an SD card. By the way, I enjoyed your presentation so very much, and as a result appreciate this little camera even more. Thanks Rudolph
I love those small SD camcorders, they were not only cheap and good enough for simple video recording, but I could easily upload video to the computer and put it on a CD for recording birthday parties.
Yeah and nowdays you can get them used for next to nothing and still use them for fun. And getting thrown back into a time when flashvideo camcorders were really slowly starting to become a thing. This thing here really was pretty much a portable webcam camcorder running on two AA batteries :] And you could indeed record a whole birthday or any other event and it would fit snuggly on a single CD-R that you can pass to your friends. Unlike 4K 60p videos of today :P
KRAFTWERK2K6 technology has changed that we now just upload and send our videos from our phones. But for the mid 2000s, I loved using it, no need to buy expensive tapes, and it was easier to make copies, especially when VHS was already declining, and people were beginning to move to digital cameras. We didn’t care too much about quality, we just wanted the convenience of recording video with friends and family.
I'm trying to figure out what version of this I have as it's got a rechargeable battery I can't remember what megapixel it was maybe 8 or should I say "8" and I think it could take upwards of 8GB cards. If I can find that thing I'm going to take it out and give it a real test,if the rechargeable battery takes a charge anymore.
But nowadays even the good camcorders are that convenient, so just use them instead, especially when your phone or tablet will NOT do the trick because you couldn't optically zoom with it!
She's Sometimes Double Chocolate! Probably most consumers just don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on a camcorder for specialized video recording, people would rather use their smartphones and edit the videos. It’s now mostly made the mid range videographers that record long videos with 4K.
Kind of funny that you mention Mini-DV as 2005. The format came out 10 years earlier, and when I was interning on volunteer independent stuff in 1999 it was the format of choice it seemed amoungst people who wanted to do run and gun style movies.
Nice video,
I'm a bit surprised you kept refering to this corder as a 'toy'. It's performance looked pretty good for the day, I would have had no complaints with using it. You're right though, smart phones have destroyed the camcorder market, they can produce the most amazing pictures that can be zoomed in a long way before the resolution lookes pixelated.
I have a Huawei P20 Pro with the tripple lense.... Nice Phone
pretty good maybe for the price, in 2005 i bought a mini dv camera with a 20X zoom, stereo microphone, infrared light and a decent stabilizer for around 400 euros. This video (compressed by software) was recorded by me with that camera ua-cam.com/video/XGVbCJ_xqNI/v-deo.html
Nokia 6 is better
Michael Hawthorne Huawei spy satellite technology was mistakenly installed in to your phone, they want it back. :)
Just looking at its lens you cannot refer to it other than as a toy. DV camcorders made way better footage compared to this. Back in the day I definitely would have chosen a used DV camera over this.
from memory it was 1.3 megapixels, that was a big deal at the time, they also introduced the pencam some years earlier, but the resolution and storage was crap, i could consider that a "toy" lol
I had a bunch of these low cost DV cameras. They were a ton of fun and, like you said, made recording events really easy since they were so small and cheap. What made them even better was the CDROMs they came with. They all had some sort of DV editing software that, while simple, were good enough to make little movies with. I shot a bunch of short films with these types of cameras and even entered them in local film contests.
Dude, you didn’t point the camera at the tv for feedback and play the classic Doctor Who theme?
I’m sad. 😢
Maybe it's a copyright issue
@@LouisSubearth
Ok, but he could at least have reproduced the effect and said, "Now imagine the classic Doctor Who theme playing here." ;)
@@LouisSubearth If there was a copyright issue preventing him from using the official produced version, he could probably have instead grabbed one of the fan-made versions from Whomix or something.
@@NomadOfNorad UA-cam content ID still would've picked it up.
4:17 oh my gosh, my dad uses used to use that and my mom had a pink one that is my favorite cell phone out of all of them
What a coincidence. AVGN did a video about cameras just two days ago.
I just watched James' video, went off to grab food, returned, and saw this upload.
John Hess from Filmmaker!Q often does videos about cameras.
Who?
@@Tio-Nino look up filmmaker IQ on UA-cam
Does this make him The Angry Commodore Guy?
It's always nice to see video from that era. It all kind of looks alike, no matter what you used to take video with. My grandma had a VHS camcorder to capture me and my brother growing up in the late 80's/early 90s, but it was very heavy and hard to handle. I remember having one or two of these second-tier video cameras. Mine just had internal storage, I believe of something like 128 or possibly 256mb at the most. It was pretty crummy quality, but I used what I had.
7:11 VLC always coming through. It plays it all.
The swiss army knife of the Mediaplayers.
Almost every 3rd party video player “plays it all”. VLC was never the only one.
@@Prizm44 welp VLC just does it better without messing up the VideoForWindows AV codecs. Most other 3rd party players only rely on the AV codecs that you have installed under windows, If it's not there, it could not be played. VLC and MediaPlayerClassic were some of the first alround players who did it right.
Except VLC doesn't play MIDIs now. Though, WMP and MPC-HC does.
It was super wholesome to see memories of your family. And it kinda made me feel a bit emotional to see you playing and spending time with your kid, the footage is low quality thats for sure but it is a footage I am sure you wouldn't change for anything else. I used to have one of those as a kid (granted, I don't even remember the brand name. It was not the same as yours, but it was a similar package) and I remember taking that to everywhere I go and taking silly pictures or videos of me and friends or family. I wish I (or my parents) kept those footage, it is lost to us but I remember the good times vaguely.
Thanks for the memory trip David
Well color me impressed. I wish I had known about that camera back in the day.
My first 2 uploads were recorded with this little camcorder. You've just taken me back 17 years
24 FPS? John from FilmmakerIQ would argue that that is ideal. He even sells T-shirts because that is how confident he is.
Really nice review! Thanks a lot for taking time for making this. Probably, you left out the option for using this camera as a PC Webcam connecting it through the USB port.
"that would really be no different from up-scaling it in a paint program"
I beg to differ. The diffrance is that if it upscale can upscale from subpixels. While this does lose some color accuracy, its still a sharp up-scaling. Worth saying that a old DV camera cluster the pixel 4x4 for color information, so its doing pretty much the same thing.
Also doing this prior to compression does gain a bit of quality, if nothing less just because the compression handle a larger picture.
Still 3 mpixel sensor is relay not that bad for 2005.
"Diffrance"? What's that supposed to mean?
@Hello Kitty - It must be similar to how the sensor is "relay" not that bad.
There aren't subpixels in these camera sensors used here. It's a Bayer matrix with 3 million elements, and Debayering produces a 3MP image that is already pretty soft and low-detail compared to having 3 individual subpixels for each pixel. The luma component resolution tends to be around 1.5MP and chroma around 0.7MP.
I LOVED this video. It's like a perfect mesh of your personality and the LGR camera review style and that's like a match made in heaven. Great video!
Save the clock tower! * rustling the collection jar * 🤪
There's that word again; "heavy." Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there a problem with the earth's gravitational pull?
A bolt of lightning! Unfortunately, you never know when or where it's ever going to strike!
*tosses in a quarter* Now let me kiss Jennifer, ok?
Anders! Stop hogging the Yamaha Reface DX! :P
FinalBaton Yeah, I guess I have to get David one for himself now... ;)
Honestly, the segment where he recorded the usual spot with this camera was the perfect comparsion - something we see every day, just with different hardware on the tripod. Brilliant idea. Plus... it kinda was a trip back to the old days, hehe. I used those Motorola phones and struggled to get the 3GP format to play back on my maschine - which is also how I doscovered VLC. I believe I even still have some of those... But yeah, great video. Thank you for sharing!
I had the exact same model. It was worth the money for me at the time.
Agreed. I got mine for $50 used.
I used to own an aiptek device like that. But it was the first iteration of this model. I was attending school back then and it wasn't a toy for me. People around me definitely were impressed by it (adults were curious about it too). This was a conversation starter. If mounted on it's included tiny tripod, it took very decent pictures for the time. Used to always carry it with me, since it also served as my mp3 player. I had to get by with 128mb memory card (lol, today it's a 128gb memory card in my phone). And let's not forget about this thing doubling as a webcam. I fully agree with your point that the best cam is the one you always have on you. I want to take this thought a little further and mention the power source. This thing took 4x AA batteries (I used rechargeable ones). And so, if needed, you could always just swap in new batteries, instead of having to give up on your device for the rest of the day. That aspect of it's usability was far ahead of more expensive competition, with their expensive custom batteries.
wow, I still have a similar model. I always thought I would use it as pc cam and kept it around. Never did. But as it happens with many "no name" brands, they give you so much stuff. Tv and pc connection, mic, cables....it was great at the time. I think the power consumption was rather good and had 4 AAA batteries.
I loves how the old camcorder can produce retro looking video without filters.
2:36 i still use that webcam ill edit when i find the model
its a logitech ...
《 snipe X 》 But your comment isn’t edited
@@benjaminmckittrick8905 they probably already know the brand but not the model, idk.
Nice to see some clips from your past. Good that you recored this to keep past alive :)
My first UA-cam video was shot on an Aiptek MPVR camera.
EFormance Engineering yeah, launching this around when UA-cam was starting to take off also probably helped.
I've never commented on it before, I suppose it's because although I've watched a few of your videos in the past I've only recently subscribed, but, your intro and outro music are the BEST! ;)
Looks like it used 23.976 drop frame (24p) for frame rate.
It probably is 25 FPS, since PAL is 50 hz
@@DangerousPictures true
He definitely should have checked the original files instead. Who knows what went wrong during the conversion process. It's NEVER a good sign when someone doesn't even put any effort into that. Guess he didn't want to get out of his Mac-Comfort zone…
@@KRAFTWERK2K6 or he could have used frame advance im VLC at least
@@KRAFTWERK2K6 Uh he did check the FR of the original video. The camera outputted asf files and he checked that in VLC.
I actually got one of these cameras for Christmas so I could start making UA-cam videos. I remember when I first used it I was really disappointed with the quality. But I filmed a boatload of stuff with this guy. It came with free video editing software too. If you wanted to make a UA-cam video back then it got the job done.
I had to watch this video if only to see that I'm not the only one who bought one of these. In fact it's still in my desk drawer right now.
But then I also own a Diamond Rio, which I suppose this is the video equivalent of.
Same. Mine has been sitting in the back of my computer desk drawer for years now. As soon as I saw the thumbnail I was surprised
I have a aiptek pocket dv 5100m sitting in my closet that no longer works, but it was my first camera, so i keep it anyway because of that. Im actually suprised anyone else even knows about this company.
I had one of these from like a Walgreens or something that I bought on sale cheap it was one of the later ones that had like an 8 megapixel camera and take what I remember being 8gb cards max but I wouldn't be surprised if it was
4 or maybe 2 like this one. Now I've got a good reason to try to find that thing and see if it still works.
I hacked a couple of $20 "disposable" CVS camcorders instead. Was just as capable, less than a fourth the price, (plus a hacked serial sync cable) I was so broke back then, though. I might have bought an Aiptek from a discount bin years later, but never used it because of my cellphone.
My Grandma bought me one as a teeneager from the QVC shopping channel back in the day. It had a different brand name in the UK but I remember at the time it was amazing technology and I was genuinely happy.
In 2006 I was still using one of those VHS-C cameras. I had no idea these types of cameras existed.
Haha me too. Took me till 2009 before i could afford a digital video camera. Before that VHS-C was all i had. Sometimes connected the Video Output to the PC and recorded directly to the Hard drive. Just wish i would have had a SVHS-C camcorder.
You guys never had video8?
@@desepticon4 no. I didn't have money for one of those cameras.
@@desepticon4 Only my best buddy had video8. Using his grandfathers camera. Most people i know who had a videocamera always had Video8.
In 2006 I was recording 1080i high definition videos (with its accompanying stereo audio at 16 bit 48 kHz sampling rate) on MiniDV tapes at 25 Mbps.
It's the video content that really matters, picture quality is bonus.
1:49 I spy with my green eye, a kyuute little Pug... ♥♥ lol
5:44 Very distinct difference, lots of white noise. Oof. lol
6:44 She's kyuute.
7:05 Nice car.
I remember seeing this device in the hands of a few. It was neat to see, sure.
My absolutely first digital camera and video recorder was a Creative web cam that had a built in memory and battery, so you can carry it around. The year was 2001 or 2002, the quality was low, but I'm so happy that today I can watch videos of my family that I took those days. It's like watching a b/w photograph of your parents or grandparents, you don't care about the quality and it's somehow still fascinating.
"fortunately VLC will play these" VLC plays everything! That's why it's so great. I haven't run into some format VLC won't play.
Yeah like for real....
VLC is the swiss army knife of media players.
My first camera was a similar model from Aiptek.
I'm now a professional in the film industry and work with RED and Arri Alexa cameras on a daily basis.
This brings back memories!
Me and my friend always used one of these in the starting days of UA-cam to make videos, windows movie maker plus one of these and we lived our dreams of getting ten views a video we spent hours making.
Nothing special but I somewhat fondly remember going outside and thinking “what next?”.
My how things have changed. I've been a Hollywood Audio/Video engineer for 30 years and at 8:10 or so what you are seeing is called "4th frame repeat." The camera is actually shooting at 24 frames per second and creating 30 fps. Since, in this era NTSC TV's were all 30 fps (29.97fps) you needed some way to get from 24 frames per second to the 30 that was necessary to play on an NTSC TV. Feature films are shot typically at 24 frames per second and when they were transferred for use on TV, VHS, DVD etc they go through a process called "telecine" (before solid state storage that transfer often happened to that big D1 component digital video tape you have in your "Rare Media" video - the SD1 you had was the data version but essentially the same as the D1 tape used for video transfers - I worked for a company that, at the time, did a fair bit of the special effects in the movie "Independence Day" and the D1 tapes that stored all the data for the SFX shots in that movie filled a small warehouse storage space...but I digress). The telecine process takes the 24 fps source and splits each frame into fields, and then repeats those fields in a specific (called 3:2 as it was a sequence of three fields and tw fields) order such that 4 film frames resulted in 5 video frames, or the conversion between 24 frames per second to 30 frames per second. However, this process, especially at that time was difficult to do digitally, so the "down and dirty" solution is to simply repeat every fourth frame resulting in 5 frames at 30 fps for every 4 at 24 fps. The result isn't as smooth motion as you get from a proper telecine process, but it works and is cheap to do. Even edit systems like Final Cut Pro would do the same thing if you just dropped a 24 fps video clip into a 30 fps timeline and Apple used to make a special tool to proprocess all of your 24 fps footage to use at 30 fps with proper 3:2 conversion. These days there are many more options for frame interpolation, etc when you need to change the frame rate.
Interesting Video. However in 2005 I had a Verizon Pocket PC that could record Photo's and Videos onto SD card. (Eat your heart out iPhone.) Fuji also advertised interpolation specs too.
These test videos bring back memories of the old UA-cam.
Just FYI you don't have to actually convert the video to use it in FCP. Doing so would result in a loss of quality (such as it is). What you want to do is recontainerize it. As its already mpeg4, this is perfectly doable. Use this command in ffmpeg:
ffmpeg -i video.asf -codec copy video.mp4
if you want to do a whole folder, use this bash script:
for i in *.asf; do
ffmpeg -i "$i" -codec copy "${i%.*}.mp4"
done
desepticon4
You need skills, you need convert it to better then the original!
Forget containers, the streams in the container you need to understand!
@@lucasrem ?
@@desepticon4 YOU NEED SKILLS!
understand it now?
@@lucasrem no
@@desepticon4 Mad people here, you all cry bullshit!
Remove this content!!!!!!
I used to carry one of these around as a kid back in '06 - '07. It was pretty neat to use. Thanks for reminding me of times I nearly forgot about.
"Forgotten" haha! These were sold for many years along in Brazil for very high prices (not this exactly model but every similar one. I bet internals are mostly the same).
achei um brrr
João M. houveram várias TekPix. A i-DV12 é da época dessa daí e é levemente superior. O modelo anterior (DV-3100) que era pior que esta.
João M. de novo, o modelo i-DV12 tinha specs bem similares (também é um sensor 3Mpx interpolado) ua-cam.com/video/TatDnqv2XK0/v-deo.html
What's popular in Brazil often isn't as popular in the US. For example, Vaio laptops are now more popular in Brazil than they are in the US now, though local manufacturing has a lot to do with that.
2:18 is that the ice rink at parks mall? Oh man, I had so many good memories there as a kid.
Around that time 1gb card was lesser or more than $100 depending on r/w speed. 2gb likely double. SDHC didnt come about till the latter 2006-2007. Back then I could only afford cards in the megabytes. $20 for 128mb in 2005 compared to today, early 2019 128gb is closing I on that pricepoint. I remember only using Canon point n shoots then. A 2004 model using Compact Flash that can only do 3 minute 480p clips, and a 2005 model that uses regular SD that has no recording limit. Wish I had this during that time, ultimately have to be restricted to the MB sized cards.
In 2005 smart phones like the Motorola A1000 were already out and features front and rear facing camera, sd-card storage, a touch screen, installable apps, it even had the Opera web browser.
I remember making phone purchases based on phone plans back then, rather than the hardware. I took what I could get. I don't think I was the only one.
Does it have mic input?
In fact few days ago i found my old Sony Video8 camera and now im playing with it. Last used 2003, still working.
Some of the Aiptek camcorders did have an external mic input, but it was only mono and the quality was still poor: ua-cam.com/video/eaPiYCRZvok/v-deo.html
@@vwestlife Yeah they all still recorded the same samplerate and bitdepth and a better microphone really didn't add anything to the soundquality. Unless recorded externally with a different recorder.
good video:) i love your channel.. you put so much effort in, thanks:)
a trip back in time
0:15 And how the video kept playing whilst one of the signal leads had fallen off :D
definitely not forgotten..I used this camera in my 11th and 12th grade years in highschool for it's mp3 uses and camera capabilities, I still have alot of the images on photobucket still.
What were your conversion settings from the ASF file? Couldn't the identical frames have been created during conversion?
Yep.
I remember getting a Sony Digital 8 camera around 2005/2006. Good times skating around with friends filming.
7:11 *Dr who* wants to know your location
12:04 No video quality is bad if compared to your memory. This camera preserves great memories
I can easily prove you wrong. Check out David's own video on a camera that recorded on cassette (yes, audio cassette). When you can hardly discern what's going on on a piece of footage, it isn't any better than memory, trust me.
@@BilisNegra The Fisher Price camcorder? As long as you got something except a black video feed.
People forget, and videos don't change. After 30 years, your memory of a event would have transformed, but however bad the video, it will always remember the same moment.
Anyone else kinda bugged by the way he says "Interpolation"? :P
Glad it wasn't just me
Yeah it's not "interpolation", it's "interpolation" x'D
/s
Inter-POLE-ation? Have I been pronouncing it wrong all of these years?
@@hmbpnz more like inter-polation or interp-olation
Yep. DSP engineer here. It's INTERP-olation.
This was my first video camera, I got a red one for Christmas in 2007. Never thought I’d see someone analyzing its specs. I was pleased with it as a middle schooler, though. Great video!
also known in Brazil as Tekpix , the worst and most expensive camera ever sold 😂😂
Eu conheço um cara que a vo dele comprou
Carai quanto br perdido que curte coisa velha tbm
I want to cry in Spanish
Minha avó tem uma... ganhou do namorado em 2008...
Pedro Paulo Amorim same
Wow those videos you took 13 years ago brought back memories of my childhood.
I refuse to believe that it has been 13 years since 2006.
Well, you'd be wrong, then.
@@HelloKittyFanMan. No, Colonel Sanders, you're wrong.
Did you know that The Matrix came out 20 years ago? I bet it felt like mere 10 years to you.
@@SianaGearz Not even that many. I still have the ticket stub from when I saw it.
After all, 13 is such a lucky number... :-/
6:49 he had the heart of a youtuber even back then :')
BTW, David, it's pronounced "INTERP-o-lated" and "INTERP-o-lation." DSP engineer here. Interpolation is my stock in trade :-)
I enjoy seeing these types of videos. I find it amazing to see how far we have come in imaging tech. I would add that even big name camera companies have deceived people on video capture of the actual resolving resolutions. Both Nikon and Canon early video DSLRs did not actually have HD 1080p resolution. Some could only resolve 480p and wrap that in a 720p or 1080p file. I think thats a crime considering how much people pay for DSLRs cameras and the lenses to get the best image quality. Thankfully today they are a lot better especially with the mirrorless cameras options.
You say "Interpolation" different than I've ever heard it.
Thank God. As a non-native speaker I thought I had it all wrong for decades.
Glad I'm not the only one who caught that. I've only ever heard it pronounced one way, and this is quite different.
Must be a "Texas thing" :)
I've only ever heard it pronounced correctly until now. : P
That's because it's wrong :) eg youglish.com/search/interpolation?
I had an Aiptec pen cam as my first “digital” camera. It didn’t shoot video, but it had a burst photo mode and software to turn it into video.
ESSA É A TEKPIX ORIGINAL!!!
Sério!? Oh meu Deus.
Aqui vemos onde nasceu a Tekpix
A diferença fica só no preço mesmo... aqui no Brasil roubavam o povo vendendo a Tekpix.
Tekpix e original na mesma frase não combinam
A tekpix é um modelo meia boca fudido da china que imita essa câmera pior ainda.
I had similar to this branded Toshiba back in the days and it was really handy. Seeing this brings memories back.
You leaving out 8mm video and VHS-C?
in TER polated
My brother and I used 8mm all the time.
Ha i still use video 8 xr for my Sony ccd-trv48
Oh awesome had no idea we The 8-Bit Guy living so close by! Greetings from Alvarado
Can someone help me out? There's some comments that were posted hours ago, bit this video was uploaded 10 minutes ago???
Yeah if u support him on patreon you get early access to his videos
So the upload date means when the video became public?
"Best camera to use is the one you have with you" and really, great words! =)
Thank you for the video!
Ohhh in Brazil they are named as Tekpix , awful câmera
And was selled by tecnomania, that company inflated the price so high, because of the poor technology knowledge of brazilians at the time... They never knew it was a affordable camera
achando altos brs
@ chega a ser engraçado
Great video, love the time period comparison in retrospect to what was avaliable on the market at that time. Also love the Talon! Amazing condition! The PXL is my go too. Had one in the 80s and have 3 in the 2020s.
Hey The 8 Bit guy where is the my dream Computer Part 2
That Eagle Talon is the least surprising thing ever haha. Perfect!
DSM Represent 👍 Mitsubishi Eclipse Owner still!
@@magnus4g63 4g64 turbo 👌
I had one of these back in 2007. This was my first camera and what I used for UA-cam back in the day.