∞ Testing the iPod nano video capabilities

Written by

There have been a lot of questions about the quality of the iPod nano’s video camera, so I thought I’d enlist the help of a friend and test it out.

I grabbed a good friend of mine, Bill Lonero, to play guitar in the video, just to see how it would come out. We did it in his living room about mid-afternoon, with just natural light from the sun.

The iPod records the video at 640 x 480 with millions of colors in the .mp4 H.264 format. There are two channels of 44.1 audio and a standard 29.97 frames per second.

What you see here is a 20-second video that is a total of 6.8MB.


  • Peter Cohen

    Sweet. Nice clarity and the sound recording quality off the mic is remarkable.

  • Patrick

    Looks and sounds great.

    But it was the afternoon – shouldn’t you both have been at your jobs?

    • Jim Dalrymple

      This is my job :)

    • http://www.LoNero.net Bill

      Yeah what Jim said ;)

  • Frank

    I think i just heard a “Holy F***!!!” coming from Pure Digital’s headquarters.
    20 secs takes only 6,8 MBs, 1 hour at approx 1.2 GBs; this is mighty impressive given the above quality and the low-end 8 GB Nano offers plenty spac.

    Jim, in your previous article you mentioned the position of the camera. Did it throw you off initially when you started recording?

    • Jim Dalrymple

      The camera didn’t throw me off at all. I used it portrait and landscape with no problems.

  • Jim

    I downloaded the video and opened it in VLC, even full screen it looks pretty good. Nice.
    Jim

    • charli

      i’ve seen one down under typical office lighting that was tossed up on a 24″ imac at full screen and it was no worse than watching a standard def tv, maybe even a tad better. for a newbie feature I’d call that a win

  • http://www.thegraphicmac.com Jim

    I’m curious, can you just record a half-hour of video at a time, or does it cut off after a specified period?