We love the new camera, the 630 was the right choice for us. We are carrying it just about everywhere and have some amazing pics and video of our daughter. One the issue with the camera is that it captures video in MJPEG (yuck!), which leads to huge file sizes. I did some searching and cobbled up this script to do the conversion for me. It requires mencoder, but who doesn’t have that installed on their Linux box?

Anyways, here is the script:

#!/bin/sh
#
# Set the bitrate
BITRATE=1800
#
# Remove the log if it’s there
#
if [ -e divx2pass.log ]; then
rm -f divx2pass.log
fi

#
# Loop through the mencoder process twice for dual pass
#
for i in 1 2; do
/usr/bin/mencoder $1 -oac mp3lame -lameopts preset=medium -af-adv force=1 \
-mc 0 -channels 1 -srate 11025 -ovc lavc -lavcopts \
vcodec=mpeg4:autoaspect:vbitrate=${BITRATE}:vpass=${i} -o MPEG4-${1}
done

#
# Cleanup
#
rm -f divx2pass.log

On Friday morning I missed capturing my daughter, Madeline, enjoying the intro song to the Backyardigans and that started the quest for a new camera. We have a Canon S300 Digitial Elph which has been a great camera, but it’s getting a bit dated, being CF and all. I went looking to see what was the latest and greatest. I found that the Canon SD line looked pretty much like the best deal these days (much as it was when we got our S300) I was able to narrow it down to the PowerShot SD600 and PowerShot SD630 which seem identical except for the LCD on the back. The SD600 has a 2.5″ LCD and a viewfinder while the SD630 has a 3″ LCD and no viewfinder. One feature we really want to use is the 640×480x30fps video, which is AVI, but MJPEG…but conversion to AVI/MPEG4 isn’t all that difficult.

We took a trip to Best Buy to browse the cameras and played with both a SD450 and a SD630. We (my wife) decided that the viewfinder was of almost no use to use anyways so that made it a go.

I found Beach Camera had the best price and free shipping, so I orded it. Much to my suprise, it shipped about 4 hours later. I also hit Newegg for a 2GB SD and a spare battery.

I’ve started a search for a decent video camera. I’m currently looking at MiniDV devices, but could be talked into a MiniDVD device if I see the right one. We played with a good friends Sony HSC40 and also with my brothers older device. Both were very fun to use and the ability of the Sony HSC40 to use USB to transfer video directly into Microsoft Movie Maker was VERY enticing.

My wife did some tests and let me know we were going to need a DVD writer soon, so I went to NewEgg and picked up a NEC 3500A for 62.99, it does 16x DVD-R and is still fast on DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD-DL, CD-RW, CD-R and just about everything else! It’s gotten very good reviews and I had just been looking for an excuse to pick one up.

Today we went to Best Buy and played with the different devices there. I was already impressed with the Panasonic DV GS200 from reading reviews and it’s still at the top of my list. The Sony HSC40 is also a good option. For a cheap device I was fairly impressed with the Panasonic DV GS9 ($249 from Amazon). It doesn’t do all the fancy SD + Photo things, but does have a USB port for video to PC, which seems like the place everything is going to happen anyways.