Canon SD900 Video Sizes & YouTube

I've started doing a lot of YouTube video blogging and I've been working on finding the best video camera for the job.Since I post mostly to YouTube, I don't need a super high resolution camera.   I've been using a Canon SD900 for several years now and it's an excellent camera.  But when I take videos longer than 10 minutes or so, I've found it freezes my MacBook Pro up when i connect my camera to the laptop via USB cable, and I have to force-quit iPhoto.  So, I went in search for another camera.  I tried the Flip (Mino series) and the DXG 567V HD cameras.  They're both in the $100 - $150 range.

I would rate the DXG above the Flip Mino any day of the week.  It has a macro lens setting and is higher quality.  It uses rechargable AA batteries.  While both the DXG and Flip feel cheap compared to the Canon, they are good camcorders.  But after testing their video qualities, I decided they weren't any better than the Canon.  So, how to keep it from freezing up?

I ended up bying a $2 SD Micro USB flash card reader off eBay.  It just allows me to plug my flash card directly into my laptop via a USB port.  For whatever reason, I'm able to sync long movies using the flash card reader just fine when the cable fails & locks iPhoto up.

But I also wanted to test different camera resolutions to see if I could get away with using a lower resolution video setting on the Canon camera, since the movies are really large files on the 640x480 30 FPS (FPS = "Frames Per Second") setting.  For example, a 5 minute video is 325MB!

I've started doing a lot of YouTube video blogging and I've been working on finding the best video camera for the job.Since I post mostly to YouTube, I don't need a super high resolution camera.   I've been using a Canon SD900 for several years now and it's an excellent camera.  But when I take videos longer than 10 minutes or so, I've found it freezes my MacBook Pro up when i connect my camera to the laptop via USB cable, and I have to force-quit iPhoto.  So, I went in search for another camera.  I tried the Flip (Mino series) and the DXG 567V HD cameras.  They're both in the $100 - $150 range. I would rate the DXG above the Flip Mino any day of the week.  It has a macro lens setting and is higher quality.  It uses rechargable AA batteries.  While both the DXG and Flip feel cheap compared to the Canon, they are good camcorders.  But after testing their video qualities, I decided they weren't any better than the Canon.  So, how to keep it from freezing up? I ended up bying a $2 SD Micro USB flash card reader off eBay.  It just allows me to plug my flash card directly into my laptop via a USB port.  For whatever reason, I'm able to sync long movies using the flash card reader just fine when the cable fails & locks iPhoto up. But I also wanted to test different camera resolutions to see if I could get away with using a lower resolution video setting on the Canon camera, since the movies are really large files on the 640x480 30 FPS (FPS = "Frames Per Second") setting.  For example, a 5 minute video is 325MB! So I ran some tests, and you can judge the results for yourself.   What I found was that there was very little difference between the highest and lowest settings except for the "video via email" setting on the camera, which was too low.  So if you're just planning on doing YouTube videos, you might as well do the 320x240 at 15 FPS.  However I think I'll use the 640x480 at 15 FPS (the 2nd highest setting) just so I have the larger video size for repurposing the video later.  Doing 15 FPS instead of 30 FPS cuts the video size in half. The file size decreases by 50% for each setting.  They are ordered below from largest (highest quality on the camera) to smallest: Canon SD900 Testing Video Quality 640x480 + 30fps Canon SD900 Testing Video Quality 640x480 + 15fps Canon SD900 Testing Video Quality 320x240 + 30fps Canon SD900 Testing Video Quality 320x240 + 15fps Canon SD900 Testing Video Quality - Email setting

Let's Juice: Comparison of 3 juicers to replace two meals per day

My wife and I have been making an effort to eat unprocessed foods as a part of a healthier lifestyle.  Simply told, that means if there's a label on the food (or if it's in a box), we try not to eat it.  I'll write a more comprehensive blog soon about the thinking behind this approach.

Part of this initiative is to buy organic fruits and vegetables (Rainbow grocery in San Francisco is just amazing) and consume them over other foods as often as possible.  We try to  juice every morning and most evenings, replacing evening meals with juice as often as scheduling permits.

We've gone through three juicers looking for the exact right one, and finally we've found it.  Here's a review of the ones we tried, so you don't have to.

The Jack Lalanne high-speed juicer: This was our first juicer.  (The link at left is for Amazon, although you can also purchase it at Costco for $89).  It actually worked quite well.  It has a large opening and consumed all types of fruits and vegetables we could throw at it.  Cleanup was simple enough, although there were a number of large parts to be cleaned.  But there were two things about this juicer that made it a non-starter for us: