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The blogged wandering of Robert W. Anderson

Vado HD Impressions

February 25, 2009 at 5:16 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous

imageHere are my initial impressions on my new Vado HD:

Pro:

  1. Quality of picture and sound are pretty good (haven’t tested it much).
  2. Fast startup.
  3. It mounts as a drive.
  4. Movies can be viewed and the drive managed without running the Vado Central software.
  5. The software / codec are installed on the drive making it easy to plug it into any computer and use it without going through a painful installation step.

Con:

  1. The battery door is pretty flimsy. One of the benefits of this device is supposed to be its replaceable battery, but I wouldn’t trust this door to last for a long with frequent battery changes.
  2. The battery door doesn’t actually close fully with the battery inside. This problem is solved by putting on the included skin.
  3. Like the Flip, this has an extendable full-sized USB adapter. While I understand the benefits of this approach, I would much rather they used a mini USB port instead.  This would allow for either a smaller device – or my preference – room for a stereo microphone input and output.
  4. Documentation is bad.  Normally I don’t care about that, but there is no information about the different quality settings.  This can be easily found online, but it should be in the manual.

Bonus Con:

  1. I bought the Creative branded waterproof pouch assuming it would be sized for the Vado.  While it will work, it could be much smaller.  The Vado swims in it. With the skin on the Vado it keeps stationary inside of the pouch.

So far I’m happy with it.

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7 Comments »

    Nico Tranquilli wrote @ February 27th, 2009 at 1:19 am

Hi!
I don’t seem to find the waterproof pouch anywere, did you buy it online ? Wherere ?
Thanks
Nico.

    Robert W. Anderson wrote @ March 2nd, 2009 at 2:25 pm

I bought it from the Creative site — I couldn’t find it elsewhere. I think it is the Aquapac 400, though. They sell that on Amazon.

    Dave P. wrote @ March 24th, 2009 at 9:27 am

What do you use to edit the video clips. Vado Central is real limited. On a Mac, Perian or QT Pro lets you see the clips, but you can’t import them into iMovie. On the PC, Sony Vegas, won’t let you import the clips either. Seems like in both cases the avi h.264 format is not native to either Mac or PC video editing s/w.

Do you use a particular converter? If so, what settings leave you without degradation? Or, what s/w lets you do basic editing that is a bit more verbose then Vado Central? Thanks

    Robert W. Anderson wrote @ March 24th, 2009 at 9:36 am

You are ahead of me on this — I haven’t done anything but “clip” the clips in the Vado software. I glanced at Microsoft Movie Maker, but really haven’t tried it yet.

    Crocodile wrote @ May 24th, 2009 at 3:19 pm

Were is a manual on line? I only got my Quick Start guide with the camera and it just said “Connect your Vado HD to your computer’s USB port as show” and nothing happens went I do it…
“In the window that appears, select to launch Vado Central solftware” , the instructions read…
Whay I need to do or not to do to get the “window that never appears”?

Help !!!

Thanks

    Robert W. Anderson wrote @ May 25th, 2009 at 10:06 am

There is a manual online at their support site, but it is the same as what came in the box. My guess is that either the drivers are not installed for the device as a USB drive or that “AutoPlay” is turned off. If you open the drive you will find software there and you should be able to run it manually.

Hope this helps,
Robert

    David Henrich wrote @ June 10th, 2009 at 12:25 pm

Regarding editing clips: I use Sony Vegas and it works great. It took me forever to figure out what the problem was, so I thought I would try and save you the headache.

You need to install a h.264 avi codec and then it will work perfectly from then on. I think this is the site that I got it from:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/x264vfw/
but I’m sure if you just Google it you will be able to find one.

Good Luck! =)

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