This is not really a marketing topic but I know some of you are using some of the new mini-HD camcorders like the Flip and the Creative Vado in your business so I thought I would share my experiences. I have a Creative Vado HD minicam and the quality is really quite good. Unfortunately most videos need a little editing but few video editing programs seem to like the highly compressed h.264 codec. That is a problem since the editing programs that come with the these minicams are pretty basic to say the least.

I had great expectations when I bought an upgrade to my copy of Pinnacle Studio recently. Supposedly it was compatible with the h.264 codec but when I loaded in my Vado footage, there was something wrong. The preview showed a mass of green lines and the image was doubled and overlaid. Disappointing.

I wondered what it would be like if I rendered it and saved to another file type and to my surprise it did it fine. The output file had no problems that I could see. Even more surprising was the the file in the project now played correctly also! All I can assume is that the preview viewer of Pinnacle Studio has problems with the Vado HD file but when rendered all seems well. I shall keep exploring.

UPDATE: Pinnacle Studio 14 has a background rendering function. I have discovered if I add my Vado HD footage to the time line and leave it for a while it will eventually play properly without the artifacts.