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iPod

Testing the iPod nano video capabilities

By Jim DalrympleSeptember 10, 2009, 3:45 pm PT

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.



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Discussion 9 comments so far

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  1. Posted by Peter Cohen September 10, 2009, 6:16 pm

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

  2. Posted by Patrick September 10, 2009, 6:37 pm

    Looks and sounds great.

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

  3. Posted by Frank September 10, 2009, 6:39 pm

    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?

  4. Posted by Jim September 11, 2009, 7:24 am

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

    • Posted by charli September 23, 2009, 12:19 pm

      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

  5. Posted by Jim September 14, 2009, 6:09 pm

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

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