Comments on: Bee Short! Testing the Zi6 [2nd & 3rd Versions]

By: robbo

robbo — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 05:42:27 +0000

My hardware is hardly anemic; a G5 Dual running at 2 GHZ with 4 Gigs of RAM. Video card: ATI Radeon 9600. Cable Downstream throughput 17.6 Gbps

UPDATE: After updating Flash Player from Version 9 to Version 10 point something, the HD version of the embedded video still appears on my end as a series of 5 still images. HOWEVER: when I bypass the embedded video and view it directly from the YouTube page, everything worked fine. Eureka!

By: Number 6

Number 6 — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 03:50:36 +0000

btw i didn’t notice until just now (gettin’ slow in my old age) but your comment refers to your imac as having 4 MEG ram instead of 4 GB (i doubt it could function at all with 4 MB ^_^ )

By: JHF

JHF — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 01:18:15 +0000

You’re right. I didn’t necessarily mean that it took what I have to view the videos, only that this was my baseline.

“Only” two gigs of RAM is right.

By: Number 6

Number 6 — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 23:46:57 +0000

extreme hardware horsepower isn’t all that necessary – my airbook is only 1.8 GHz & 2G ram and both vids loaded in a couple seconds and played perfectly fine – the only issue was the first HD one was ever so slightly jittery in fullscreen mode (barely noticeable), but that’s an issue i’ve encountered before with other online videos, and has to do with the modest Intel GMA video processor the airbook uses.

[side note - how time flies: we're now at a point where we talk in terms of "only" a 1.8GHz processor and "only" 2G ram! ]

By: JHF

JHF — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 20:51:07 +0000

Thanks for your input, Rebecca!

All very interesting… the HD 30fps mode I recorded the first video in is obviously a much larger file and gives some people trouble. For YouTube purposes, I will keep recording in that mode but not choose it for uploading to YouTube. iMovie 08 allows for YouTube publishing as HD (1080 x 720) for highest quality and 940 x 540 (“large”) as the next best setting. That’s how Bee Short II was produced.

I see no reason (other than memory limits on the Zi6) for recording at anything less than HD 30fps. Uploading to YouTube via iMovie 08 at the 940 x 540 setting seems to produce a decent video. I don’t completely understand the automatic settings in iMovie — I used to do all this through QuickTime Pro, getting very esoteric with the manual settings — and it never seemed to work very well. The present combination is pretty decent.

As for the HD video not playing well on your laptop (MacBook? MacBook Pro?), I’d say that’s related to processor speed and RAM. More the latter, probably. My iMac runs at 3.06 GHz and has 4 MB GB of RAM. It exhibits absolutely no playback difficulties with the HD videos, either online or locally on my hard drive.

Finally, YouTube’s Flash conversion always degrades what ends up on their servers. One of the other video hosting outfits (Vimeo?) might deliver better results, although I haven’t tried them yet.

By: Rebecca

Rebecca — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:33:48 +0000

FYI update- I downloaded all the videos onto my laptop, on which I have quicktime for a player and the videos I recorded in HD mode do not play, (at least not well) the ones that I recorded in VGA played perfectly. Have not tried downloading directly onto youtube yet.

By: Rebecca

Rebecca — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 18:48:09 +0000

I have the same toy…I have not downloaded a video yet, but they do say that recording in one mode as opposed to the other affects the quality on the internet. The first bee video did not play well on my Mac laptop with Verizon FIOS. It takes a bit to download then the audio track comes on then the video plays herky jerky. The second one plays perfectly. when I have a free moment I am interested to see how the videos I have recorded download onto youtube….fun.

By: JHF

JHF — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:36:42 +0000

I have another problem at the moment, getting the DHCP settings right on my Qwest DSL modem and the wireless router. Should have just one with DHCP “on,” right? But which one? For years I had BOTH! Shouldn’t have worked, but did. Now that I’ve done it “right,” I have problems.

Set the DHCP at the router, turn it off at the modem, and everything is fine for about a day or two, then it craps out. Set it at the modem, turn in OFF at the router, and everything works, sort of. Turned on the computer this a.m. and found everything offline. While I was puzzling this over, it all came back, miraculously.

Problem is, I can’t find the proper documentation for my gear, and each supplier (Buffalo AirStation, Qwest DSL modem) has instructions that call certain functions by different names. Quite the puzzle.

By: John Lay

John Lay — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:18:13 +0000

Another geeky comment.

dslreports.com has a great set of tests for checking line speed and whether your OS is optimized.

For those of us tied to the hive by Qwest, the following might be the best test available. http://denver.speedtest.qwest.net/