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.

Watch:

Heiko Thies is the fellow behind this video spot, which is interesting to watch (I looked at it frame by frame as a matter of fact—but that’s just me) and (as the Wired.com story said) it also totally makes me want to buy a Pre. Except I already have one, so I don’t need to.

But I would have bought one a lot sooner if I’d known it was this cool.

webOS 1.4 upgrade notification

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been hitting the “Upgrade” button on my Pre several times a day ever since February 17th, when the rumors started flying about the imminent drop of the webOS 1.4 upgrade. Now, all of the anticipation is over—if you’re on Sprint or Verizon in the U.S., or on O2 U.K., O2 Germany, O2 Ireland, or Movistar in Europe.

Installing webOS 1.4

webOS update installed - whew!

The download to the Pre is about 39MB, so it takes awhile (especially now, with many Pre owners trying to download at once, I suppose). The download, unpacking and validating procedure took about a half hour or so for me on Saturday afternoon. Now, to hit the “Install Now” button—it’s 12:45 p.m. Let’s see how long the install takes. So now the screen says, “Installing Update—Do not remove battery.”

At 1:04 p.m., the phone begins rebooting itself. At 1:10 p.m., it finally finishes. It boots up fine. Whew!

So, what’s new in this release, and how well does it work? Here’s the link for Palm’s detailed explanation of the changes in webOS 1.4. We’ll go over a few aspects of the new upgrade in this article, and save some others for the next post.

Snappier Response

The Pre startup card for the Email app.

That was the first thing that struck me when I began navigating through the menus in search of the camcorder app (which we’ll discuss next time). The webOS just seems more responsive than before. No matter whether I was opening up an app, or flipping from card to card through the open apps in Card View, or erasing emails in the Mail app—everything just seemed to respond faster to my touches, swipes and flips.

Also, this release features a new system of “startup cards” that appear when you tap an icon, while you are waiting for an app to load. I think this new feature may contribute to the perception that the wait time to load an app has decreased, simply because your attention is diverted by the startup card in the meantime. Or maybe that’s just me—I’m easily entertained.

In any case, the snappier response of 1.4 makes the OS a much greater pleasure to use.

Video Capture and Editing

There is so much to cover with the new video capabilities of webOS 1.4 that I’m going to give it special attention with its own separate article, probably in the next day or two. Meanwhile, here’s what Palm says about the new feature, just to whet your appetite for next time:

Camera

You can record video whenever and wherever inspiration strikes with the new camcorder feature in Camera. After recording a video, you can edit the clip in Videos, upload the video directly to YouTube or Facebook, or send the video by email or multimedia message.

Videos

• You can upload a recorded video to YouTube or Facebook on the web.
• Videos you record appear in the Video roll folder.
• You can edit recorded video. You can also delete recorded video, video copied from a computer, or video received as an attachment to an email message.
• You can attach a video to an outgoing multimedia message.
• If you tap the option to share an uploaded video, you have the option to send the link via email, text message, or Facebook.

A Note About Flash

Palm says that it has made webOS “flash-ready” with the 1.4 update. Now we wait for Adobe to finalize Flash 10.1 for webOS and release it for availability in the App Catalog, where you’ll be able to download and install it at your leisure. And when will that be?

“Soon.” That’s as close as I can get. Sorry.

Email

Wow, where to start in here?

If I had to choose the coolest update to the Email app, I guess it would have to be the new ability to tap and hold a phone number in a message body until a menu appears displaying options to either “call”, “text” or “add to contacts” (if the number is not already in your Contacts database). If the message body contains an email address and you tap and hold the address, a menu appears displaying options to “email” or “add to contacts” (if the email address is not already saved in a contact).

The same type of functionality is available from the subject line of an email message: Tap a phone number in the subject line of an email message to dial it, or tap a URL in the subject line to open the web browser to that page.

What a timesaver this will be!

That’s all I have time for today. Here’s a listing from Palm’s change log page of all the new features in the Email app:

You can customize calendar notification sounds in Preferences & Accounts. The options include Mute, System Sound, Ringtone, and Vibrate. The Ringtone option includes new notification sounds to give you more customization choices.



New Email sorting options

A new Sort application menu item allows you to sort the message list in any email folder. The sort options are By Date, By Sender, and By Subject. Tapping the currently selected sort option changes the sort from ascending to descending or descending to ascending. Tapping another sort option sorts by that option in ascending order.

When you receive a message with one or more attached files, the first file to be fully downloaded opens automatically.

You can tap a phone number in the subject line of an email message to dial it, or tap a URL in the subject line to open the web browser to that page.

If the message body contains a phone number and you tap and hold the number, a menu appears displaying options to Call, Text, or Add To Contacts (if the number is not already saved in a contact).

If the message body contains an email address and you tap and hold the address, a menu appears displaying options to Email or Add To Contacts (if the email address is not already saved in a contact).

You can sign in to an email account with a domain of up to six letters (such as .museum or .travel).

For POP email accounts, a new preference lets you choose to delete a message on the phone when it is deleted on the server. The default is that messages deleted on the server are not deleted on the phone.

If you forward a message that contains attachments, and the attachments are not downloaded, the Email app first downloads the attachments and then forwards the message with the files attached.

In an Exchange account, if you delete one or more attachments to a received message and then forward the message, the Email app no longer includes the deleted attachments with the forwarded message.

You can successfully move a message from the Trash folder to the Inbox in a Yahoo! account.

If you send a message with an attachment from a Hotmail account to another Hotmail account, the message is sent correctly with the attachment.

If you send an email that contains periods from an SMTP account, the periods display correctly in the recipient’s email application.

If you reply to an email message with a large number of recipients, the reply screen opens scrolled to the message body so you can begin typing the reply text right away.

If you search a Global Address List for a contact in the Email app, the app returns the same set of search results as if you were searching in Contacts.

Special characters display correctly in the subject line of a received message.

If you are working in one application and perform an action that opens the Email application—for example, by tapping an email address in Contacts to compose an email message—when you complete the action, the Email application displays full-screen (not as a card).

This release offers improved account setup for Yahoo and Gmail hosted domains.

You can select and edit text from a message that you are forwarding.

This release includes multiple performance improvements in Email, including improved handling of message replies and forwarded messages and quicker response times to gestures.

Well, Palm has promised that the new Palm Pixi will be ready for market in time for the holidays, so it looks like I’ve got something to look forward to. What’s even more promising, however, is that there appear to be a buncha new webOS apps in the App Catalog just dying to be downloaded to your Pre. Of course, this would be just idle speculation on the part of someone who didn’t actually OWN a Pre, because the only way to see the apps available on the App Catalog is via the Pre.

Until now:

App Catalog on Palm's website

Palm has created a section on their website that lays out some of the details of all the apps in their App Catalog. Even though it’s on their USA site, Canadian apps are still included in the list. Each of the apps are broken down into categories, which is how it’s arranged when you’re browsing through the apps on your Pre. However, there is only a short description of the app and the capability to see a bigger picture. User ratings of each app and their opinions are not shown.

Looks like Palm’s finally got one up on Apple, who still doesn’t list their apps on their website. You have to view them through iTunes.

No iTunes, no lookee.

WebOS hangs: Why?

Also, if one is running a few Homebrew apps and tries to install another one from the App Catalog, a “hang” of the OS will often occur, lasting 30 seconds or more sometimes.

Rod Whitby of rwhitby.net and WebOS-Internals.org found that the OS hang is due to a bad function call that makes the Pre find “the *complete* list of all *available* applications when determining whether there is room to install one known new application.” This unnecessary query is what takes all the time. So the OS isn’t actually hung, it’s just unnecessarily busy!

Meanwhile, back at the arbitrary app limit: What is the real limit of app install memory if the bad function call is bypassed? Whitby analyzed the OS and found the following:

…I’ve now webOS Doctored my Pre in the name of science, and have tested the limits of installing applications.

If you run “du -s /var/usr/palm/applications/*”, and add up all the numbers in the first column, then as soon as you hit the 62367 1K blocks limit of the addition of the sizes reported by that “du” command and the size of the app you with to install, you will get the dreaded “Sorry, Not Enough Memory” error from the Palm App Catalog application (and any other installer, like fileCoaster or PreLoad, which uses the palm appInstaller API). It doesn’t matter whether you have 192MB free in your /var partition, it will max out at just under 64MB of application usage.

Update #2: I have now created a Linux Application called “Fair Dinkum App Limit” (org.webosinternals.fairdinkum), which removes both the “hang” and the arbitrary application limit. You can find it in Preware. Just install it (no need to even run anything – if it is installed, it’s working), and you’re ready to install more applications than you can poke a stick at …

Fair Dinkum App Limit works by simply putting a couple of wrapper scripts in /usr/local/bin, which returns a size of zero when du is called, and returns the output of “ipkg -o /var list_installed” when “ipkg -o /var list” is called. In the future, the wrappers will be made much more sophisticated than they are right now to prevent operation outside of the specific cases where they need to fool LunaSysMgr, and to also include a safety buffer so that users do not fill the /var partition. This is a tactical response to a problem that people using homebrew applications are experiencing. Hopefully, Palm will provide the long term solution for limits on application installation in a release in the near future. …

Further information can be had on his blog:
http://www.rwhitby.net/blog/webos-internals/palm-pre-app-install-limits.html

(through the Tamsblog website)