CVS Videocamera Hack Update

Here’s an update to what has proved to be one of the most popular items on the blog: my CVS Camera Hack post. I posted that almost exactly one year ago and I thought I’d do a quick update after actually using the camera in real life for a while.

First of all, the landscape of cheap video cameras has changed dramatically. The Flip Video Ultra is available at around $125 and has more storage in the same basic form factor. The original one appears to be widely available on eBay for under $100, and there are a bunch of inexpensive, small, flash-based camcorders in the $100 – $175 range available with similar features.

So here’s the update on my experience with the hacked CVS camcorder:

Pros

1. It worked; pretty well in fact. I actually bought a second one a couple of weeks later and hacked it too.
2. It turned out to be a fun thing to play with since I wasn’t afraid of destroying an expensive camera. The kids and I rigged up a cardboard and fishing-line harness for it and sent the camera skyward on a parafoil kite. The video could give you motion sickness in about 10 seconds but it was a really fun little project, and one we would not have done with an expensive (and heavier) camcorder.
3. The project itself was a lot of fun from a sheer DIY / geeky / hardware hacking perspective. Sometimes it’s just fun to take things apart, solder stuff together, play around with hacked firmware, etc. (if you’re into that sort of thing…)

Cons:

1. The software end of things left a lot to be desired, at least as of a few months ago. I have to hand it to the folks who made it all work – their kung fu is much stronger than mine. I wouldn’t have a clue how to decompile the firmware on one of those cameras and reverse engineer the security, encryption, etc. So kudos on making it work. However, documentation pretty much consisted of inconsistent forum posts scattered across two or three websites. Matching software versions to camera to forum-post-how-to, etc. was a much bigger pain than most people would put up with.
2. I already had the USB cable, the old Palm III cradle, the soldering gear, etc. If you didn’t, and had to purchase that stuff, you’d be halfway to buying the “real” Flip (or Aiptek, Vivitar, Canon, etc .) by the time you bought what you needed.
3. The video doesn’t easily lend itself to editing in your usual editing software. Since it was going to take a bit of research, transcoding, etc. I never even went down that path. I just grabbed stuff off the cam and whatever was there was fine.
4. I built a new PC and went to Vista. I thought this would be the death of the interface software, and while I did manage to get it working it just turned out to be more of a pain than it was worth.

So at the end of the day it was a fun project but in all honesty I haven’t even had the cameras out of the junk drawer in at least six months. However, it did make me think about shooting video in a different light, and I have ended up shooting a lot more of it in the last 12 months as a result of the project. Occassionally I’ll bring the camcorder along and shoot some “real” video, but more often than not I’ve just shot stuff using a point-and-shoot still camera. I’ve got a Canon G9 that does a surprisingly good job, and while I wouldn’t use it to shoot a feature film it’s just fine for little family movies. Plus it’s small, it’s usually with me whenever I’d want to shoot something, and it takes really great still photos (which almost no video cameras, especially the cheap ones, can claim).

So if you want a fun DIY weekend project the CVS camera hack is worth a shot, but if you’re actually wanting to get a reliable, functional video camera that you can depend on I would steer you towards spending a bit more and buying the real thing, or giving your point-and-shoot a try.