Aiptek Action HD GVS 1080P High Definition Camcorder with 5x Optical Zoom (Silver) by Aiptek Inc.
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Digital camera reviews of Aiptek Action HD GVS 1080P High Definition Camcorder with 5x Optical Zoom (Silver)
Digital camera Review: A LOT OF BANG FOR LITTLE BUCKS
Summary: 5 Stars
AT FIRST I WAS SKEPTICAL, HD CAMCORDER FOR $215 ? YOU MUST REALIZE THAT THIS IS 1/4 THE PRICE OF MOST HD CAMCORDERS. DOES IT HAVE ALL THE BELLS AND WHISTLES? NO. IS IT A GREAT CAMERA FOR THE PRICE? ABSOLUTELY !! IT DOES SEEM TO WORK MUCH BETTER IN BRIGHTER LIGHT SITUATIONS. IT WOULD BE GREAT IF THE BUTTONS WERE BIGGER, BUT THEN AGAIN THE CAMERA FITS IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND. IF YOU DON'T EXPECT PERFECTION, YOU WILL BE VERY HAPPY AND SURPRISED AT HOW WELL THIS UNIT PERFORMS FOR THE MONEY SPENT. A GREAT VALUE.Digital camera Review: A disappointing "WOW"!
Summary: 2 Stars
Initially I was very impressed with the sharpeness and clarity of the images recorded in 720 and 1080 formats. The Aiptek specs show "30 Frames per second at 1080P and 60 frames per second at 720P with advanced H.264 technology"
However this camera records in Aiptek's format .mov, which has somehow been modified by Aiptek so it will not play in the standards, mpeg4 or AVI envelopes required to retain the clarity of hi def. The result is that if you wish to edit this .mov format on either a Windows or a Mac computer, you must convert it, resulting in the loss of your Hi-Def video. (What I found somewhat strange was that the .mov files can be played using Apple's Quick Time, but cannot be dragged/imported into IMovie).
Aiptek does allow some minor editing of scenes on the camera itself, but not to the extent you would want to edit a movie, even for a family presentation. Aiptek Tech Support (when you can contact them) was unable to provide a answer as to why the .mov format does not meet the industry standard for H.264 "envelopes", or how to convert their .mov files without loss of resolution.
Bottom Line: This camera records in a clarity and one of the most brilliant hi definition recordings of any camera in this price range. If you are only going to attach this camera to your TV and watch the unedited clips of a day's outing, this camera is for you.
However, if you make your own home videos for your family library or send them to friends and family, this is not the camera you want. Until Aiptek modifies their recording format to accommodate the industry standard, this will remain a beginner/amatuer's gadget.
Digital camera Review: A fun toy.
Summary: 4 Stars
Fun toy. The more I use it, the more I appreciate it. It has some major limitations, such as image noise (speckles in the images), and the image stabilization is not anywhere near what is needed to make a real movie. The .mov files it generates are 10 Mbit/sec whereas higher end cameras with better image quality usually use 24 Mbit/sec.
The manual and supplied software say to use the Quicktime player to watch your videos. That is a bad idea on a PC. Quicktime cannot do this camera justice. Quicktime on any of my PC's makes the videos extremely jumpy, from what I can tell removing frames during playback making everything look like bad stop motion animation.
I just installed Windows 7 RTM bits to a new PC (a gutless celeron box with Nvidia 7100/630i chipset) and it has a Windows media player that knows how to play the .mov files that this camera generates. The videos are actually surprisingly smooth and lifelike. I am guessing Windows media player is using hardware acceleration as part of the playback.
Just talking in front of the camera, on a tiny little desktop tripod, with good lighting.... the image made my jaw drop. It looks spectacular. You could see the hair inside my nose, and everything looked really organic and real. The colors are really vivid.
When looking at each frame of my talking self in the Quicktime video player, there is a lot of noise in the image. Too much noise to use this camera for professional work.
The image stabilization is strange. I aimed the camera at my desk with the image stabilization on at high zoom, and off with high zoom. When it is "on" the image is less twitchy looking, however the bottom part of the image seems to wiggle more than the top, like the whole image is made out of rubber. It is a noticable improvement over having the image stabilization off. Also, it only works in 720p/60hz and WVGA/60hz modes, not in 1080p mode.
There is a really grating audible whine this camera puts on the audio track. The aiptek home page contains instructions on downloading new firmware which gets rid of this horrible squeal. They require you to supply an SD card between 512MB and 4GB (ie: not SDHC or mini cards etc) to put the firmware onto. There were errors in the instructions for triggering your GVS camera to install the firmware: they said to press the "snapshot" button, but there isn't one, there is a "shutter" button according to the manual, and you have to press this shutter button ALL the way in and rather hard for a double-click which isn't mentioned on the instructions.
Someone on amazon had a list (I don't remember who) that included this camera and suggested the Rode VideoMic Directional Shotgun Mic w/Mount with the Rode DeadCat Windshield for VideoMic, NTG-1 and NTG-2 Microphones as a way to generate great audio with this camera. That mike and fuzzy thing costs as much as the camera... and they are really quite large.
I got a Sima SL-20LX Ultra Bright Video Light (Silver) with this that is kind of cool. It shines a very bright light that not quite coming from the same spot as the camera lens, resulting in visible shadows at the edges of everything - shadows that are very distracting. It made me run out and buy books on video lighting techniques because this $30 toy lamp isn't going to cut it.
I got the Transcend 16 GB SDHC Class 6 Flash Memory Card TS16GSDHC6 with this camera. The SD card is a really tight fit for the slot. It took about 30 insert/remove cycles of the SD card to "loosen" something up so that the card slides in and out. You have to push hard to get it to go in, and then you have to push hard to get the camera to eject the card....
UPDATE: I got the Rode Videomic to use with this. The sound is better, but the problem is that the recording sound quality ability of the camera is about as bad as any could be. It records a lot of hiss, and it sounds like a tin can - as if all the sound is being routed through an op-amp that cost them less than a penny and they are probably not using a very optimal sound compression algorithm (I haven't been able to tell if they are compressing the sound or not) or analog to digital converter chip in this camera. I have to redo the audio tracks completely in my (makeshift) home studio to use it for anything because the sound quality is way below amateurish - I dub in audio recorded with another box (USB mike like the Blue Yeti for close up indoor videos) and use the camera recorded audio for reference to sync the new track in. A low budget way to get sound that is not an embarrassment.
Digital camera Review: Aipteck Action is great
Summary: 5 Stars
I love video camera with 1080p HD Great and can work upload for youtube or facebook has policy limit under 1GB and 10 minute use 720p is best if you can use 1080p is waste mb be limit less minute. Aiptek Action come with SD memory is not incloude and you have to buy up to 32 GB max and picture 5 Mp with flash incloude. battery charge has both wall plug or usb also download movie and picture on your computer. CD software is only have windows xp and vista driver too letest do not have windows 7 but i was try to software with windows 7 will work well.Digital camera Review: Aiptek Action HD GVS 1080p
Summary: 5 Stars
The picture quality is great for the price and sound is good also. If you are looking for a good family video camera. The only thing I didn't like about this camera is that there was hardly any internal memory. I purchased a 4gb SDHC card after buying this camera, I liked this because it is easy to edit your videos on a computer with the software it comes with. Just put it in a SDHC card reader and import to a file.