Recent Posts

hello EC, i am in need of some help,
my camera was smashed by some skateboarders around a month ago and i am looking for a new one.
anyone got a half decent camera they want to sell cheep???
thanks Rio
www.earollers.webs.com

Macabre Parade

Mum & Dad Italy

My Mother and Father on holiday in Italy years ago. I thought the footage was beautiful so I figured I had to do something with it.

Kite Flying - July 2009

A little something I made in July with a couple of village friends flying a kite (you may recognize one of them if you are familiar with Dan Ives).

Enjoy

I am currently having computer problems and I believe I may have lost a bunch of game dev work and a days footage already.

Let us know exactly the kinda thing you want and when I get time ill bang somthing together, right now ive had to buy another 500GB HDD to back up by F: drive, a 500GB external jobbie for the D: drive and clearing up C: before I run some MOD recovery software to try and get the data back from F: during my lunch hour at work on Monday.

Pain the the bloody backside that is should fail right after I have cut the footage across tot he drive and before I had chance to copy it over to backup, sods law I suppose 

Awesome, Thanks for taking the time out Lewis.  An interesting little read.

As you know consumer automatics like this toshiba shoot HDV, not HD. As you said, it's a cheeky gimmick targeted at consumers loving the HD term.  There is much speculation over true HD, 24p Cine Progressive etc.  It usually comes down to you get what you pay for but with technology moving on, it's definately worth reading reviews like yours to help people realise this.   

Whilst the prices stay high for cards, espeacially if you're shooting EX XDCAM on P cards I am very much a fan of tape rushes and tape master backups still.

Lewis, If you were able to turn the article into a little more of a toshiba review, with perhaps a video to show some video examples we'll get it posted up on the main site!

Well Ill admit it that I am not too rich when it comes to having the cash flow to spend on camera's and such. I am somewhat a point and shoot person, with my only training being a few years at art college and a degree in the history of art + design that concentrated on analysing things as opposed to actually producing the things, although being taught by professionals no doubt rubbed of a little on me. So with the budget in mind and the somewhat point and shoot quantity over quality attitude I recently set to work looking at a few products as the Birthday was fast approaching and the Mrs had mentioned she would buy me and new camcorder.

I needed to quickly lay down some of the things I wanted which admittedly wasn't much. I didn't want to mess around with tapes for a start, that technology is going out and being an IT tech who works with minDV on a day to day basis I know how time consuming capturing can be. So we have HDD or SD and then the mixed types to choose from which offer both.

Now for the ultra budget I am working with the both option was pretty much out due to price and the HDD was also so this left me with SDHC types. Camcorders that record to a 'SD card of High capacity'. OK now there are quite a few out there and a few quite cheapo however whilst surfing the net a certain model kept on leaping out. Tesco, Play and other mainstream markets had been throwing these things away for next to nothing, at least that what it seemed like.

So in stepped the Toshiba Camileo H20. A sub £200 camcorder that offered 1080p HD recording. Now like you right now I am thinking how can they do HD for under 2 ton. Well its easy, they don't,.. well they do but they don't at the same time. confused? well yes so was I and no matter how many review and 'samples shots' I looked up on-line I knew the only way to know this camera would be to take a chance and get it.

So here I am with the H20 sat on the desk and its nice almost gift wrapped box sat next to it. Its a nice little camcorder, black plastic looks the part although ive seen some people call it a bit too plastic gloss but for such a low budget I wasn't expecting too much. The packing is really nice, as mentioned. A cool box with all the cables you need + a bit of software for the camera however at least for pc use you can just plug it in USB wise and use it much like you would a memory stick. The video files are saved as .mov files so native quick time format, I am not really sure if this is good or not but for Adobe editing these import fine,... I am not sure if that's of any use to windows movie-maker types though as I must admit the Adobe pack is the expensive bit of editing kit that I own thanks to a free license through work.

There are a good few options with the camera a few on-board effects, b/w, sepia tone and a few others but I wont mess with these as I believe such effects are better done whilst using editing software. You can change the exposure a little, white balance etc, too which does come in handy when your skate park is surrounded by trees maybe creating shady areas. The focus is automatic and unfortunately can get a little confused in complex scenes but for what I want the camera for so far its been OK filming some skating.

I only really want to film outdoors as I like skating outdoors which is lucky as the low light performance of this camera is shockingly bad. The image can be too dark without a good light source and the image gets quite 'grainy' but from what I have seen this happens to many cameras and unless you have a decent budget it is to be expected. Out doors on a nice day however the performance is good and the colours can be quite vibrant making the video really come alive.

The camera does indeed film in 1080p however in such a mode there is no stabilisation so unless you got a real steady hand (I mean rock solid) then it gets a bit shaky. 720p HD however does include stabilisation and doesn't look too bad for uploading to vimeo and such. There are many other options, DVD quality and below but 720p for myself seems the best option, and maybe 1080p when using a tripod and static shots.

The battery that comes with the camera is only a little thing that has quite a short life of a couple hours max so I am going to invest in a few backups.

I have not used the static image function yet but it does come with the camera function inc flash and the manual states 5MP images so not too bad for holiday snaps and the such like really.

Here's a quick test I shot in 720p down the local park, there's a some compression here to get it on vimeo so I still need to play with export settings but you should be able to get the idea.

Toshiba H20 Test

I got mine from pixmania;
http://www.pixmania.co.uk/uk/uk/home.html

I went for a bundle and got a bag, 16GB SDHC card + card reader, but as I said being able to plug this in direct USB means the card reader isn't really needed.


A few other reviews;
http://stuff.tv/review/Toshiba-Camileo-H20-review/

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/camcorders/0,39029423,49301601,00.htm



Its still a new bit of kit so ill keep you informed on how it pans out.

Thanks Mr Crunch I think ive got it... I used your settings mixed with the deafults + some bits and bobs I read on vimeo forum.

Wow that looks the don. Gawd knows how long it will be before it turns up as a tool in an editing proggie we mere mortals use though. I also wonder on the rendering time to apply such an effect, warping each frame for a decent length bit of footage would be time to turn the kettle on the watch TV I would think. But then Ive rendered a 3d scene on my home PC for 48hrs before, the only bad thing was that whilst rendering I couldn't surf the net.

Still very exciting to think such things will be able to come down to the budget user.

http://videopia.org/

just came across this. thought it maybe of intrest.

Jav

Good stuff, ill pass this along to some of my colleagues at work.  

working in education normally means we get our own special license to do what we want with but its nice to have some stuff for personal projects too, esp with youtube and copyright etc being such a hot issue in the technological world right now.