One of the first things I wanted to do when I got webOS 1.4 installed (OK, who am I kidding? It was THE FIRST THING I wanted to do!) was check out the new camcorder function. Any Pre fan can tell you we’ve been waiting wayyyy too long for this feature to show up—and now it’s here!
So the first thing I did was look around for a new icon for the camcorder app, but there was none. Turns out the video option has been added to the existing Camera app; it’s activated by tapping a little icon of a mini-camcorder with a flip-out screen. Tap it and the app switches from a still camera to a video recorder.
A little-known technique to taking great photos or video with the Pre: Use the space bar on the keyboard as a shutter-release button—you don’t have to stab the camera-shake-inducing red “Record” button on the touchscreen. [Also, you can take a fairly rapid series of still photos (about 1 frame every second or two) by holding down that space bar in still-camera mode—but that's a different article.]
The Good Stuff: H.264, Good Video Quality!
Palm Pre video recording screen
The Pre records video in the H.264 format, and saves each video file as an MP4. Simply put, this means small file sizes and good compression quality. Near as I can tell, the format specifications are 640 x 480 pixels (standard definition) at 25 frames per second (fps)—someone correct me if I’m wrong on this.
Anyway, this is more resolution than I was expecting, and the frame rate is (theoretically) just right to give your videos that “filmic” look, instead of the “hyper-real” look of what used to be called “normal” 30 fps video in the time before HDTV.
Bear in mind that the Pre’s own video screen is more of a widescreen format; this means that areas near the top and bottom of your standard-def, 4:3-aspect-ratio video will not be visible as you are filming. Therefore, it’ll be a good idea to do some experimental shooting to see how much extra is visible in the frame compared to the Pre’s video screen. This way, you’ll have a better idea how much of the frame will make it onto your finished video as you shoot in the future.
The Not-So-Good Stuff: Low Audio Levels, No “Pause” function
The first thing you’ll notice when you play back the raw video you shoot on the Pre is that the audio levels are way too low. This shortcoming has already made its presence known via the lack of adequate speakerphone volume ever since the Pre was released. I don’t know if it’s a speakerphone mic preamp problem or what, but it’s way past time for Palm to address it.
The good news, though, is that the mic pickup is a fairly low-noise unit (for a phone). This means that the videos seem to respond well to a dose of audio normalization inside your non-linear video-editing software of choice.
To normalize audio with the included software on the Mac, I know that the last couple of iterations of iMovie have a normalization function. You can access it in iMovie ‘08 by clicking on the little speaker icon at the beginning of each clip. In iMovie ‘09, click on a clip to highlight it, then open the Inspector and click on the “Audio” button. Then click the “Normalize Clip Volume” button.
On a Windows PC, the built-in Windows Movie Maker software does not do audio normalization, so you’ll need an external program to accomplish this. Audacity is a good, free, open-source audio editing application that may serve your needs well. To avoid having to demux the audio from the video, try using Sony’s free ACID XPress, a free audio editor that also does video scoring.
Lastly, there’s a free program called The Levelator 2, available for most flavors of Windows, OS X and Linux. It does a great job of normalizing audio from .wav or .aiff files, which means you’d have to convert back and forth, which is a slight pain.
The next thing I noticed was the lack of a “Pause” function when recording video. I tried every key on the keyboard, to no avail. If someone has figured out that there is a “Pause” button, where it is and how it works, please let us know by leaving a comment below!
Video Editing on the Pre
The first thing I noticed about this was that the accuracy of the sliders for changing the “in” and “out” points of the edit are not very precise when the selected new edit points are executed.
For example: To begin an edit, I carefully repositioned the editing slider for a new “in” point at a certain frame. Then I saved the newly edited clip and played it back. The edit was not made at the “in” point I specified, but was actually made a second or so before my selected point. I tried the same sort of accurate edit a couple more times and got similarly hit-or-miss results. I suppose frame-accurate editing is not part of the functionality offered here. I can only assume this is either a limitation imposed by the compression scheme used in the H.264 format, or else it’s just a limitation of the phone’s editing software.
In summary, it seems that video editing capabilities on the Pre are limited and not very precise. I can complain about this if I want, but the fact is that I’m also impressed and glad there’s ANY kind of capability for this at all on a smartphone. Which other manufacturer has bothered to accomplish this (not counting Apple)?
The Overall Conclusion
The overall impression I get of the video editing functionality of the Pre is based on its limited frame-accuracy and functionality. In light of the new video-editing capabilities of the iPhone 4, the Pre’s abilities are not comparable. However, the new features are a welcome addition to the functionality of my new Palm Pre, and the video quality is pretty good overall. It’s definitely a HUGE improvement over the Palm Centro’s video quality, that’s for sure.
