Put the You in YouTube

We test five kinds of video-capture devices to find out which ones are best for posting online.

I'm still on the waiting list for my 15 minutes of fame. To hurry things along, I started posting videos to YouTube, the video sharing site that claims 65,000 new videos are posted every day (and none of mine are pirated TV shows -- honest).

I use a MiniDV camcorder to capture footage, and video editing software to fine-tune the resulting videos, but often the process takes more time than I'm at liberty to spend. So I decided to look for a combination of hardware and software that would make the process easier and faster while retaining the high quality my prospective fans would no doubt expect.

Our Test Center analysts, unconcerned with my lack of a fan base but intrigued by the prospect of comparing dissimilar devices, agreed to test five products: the Canon Elura 100, an inexpensive MiniDV camcorder; the Creative Live Cam Optia Webcam; the Digital Blue American Idol Digital Camcorder, which is aimed at kids; the Palm Treo 750 camera phone; and the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX2, a digital camera that captures video.

Even a low-end camcorder captures better video than a camera phone can. After all, the primary function of a camcorder is video, not telephony. But uploading video to YouTube requires that you either compress it or start out with already-compressed footage, since the site limits files to 100MB -- and anyway, most home broadband connections have pitiful upload speeds. So the end product won't look nearly as good as the original did, and that can level the playing field substantially.

For our tests, we captured footage of the same scene, using each device's best quality settings. We then compressed and converted each clip with AVS Media Video Tools 5.5, a video-conversion utility, using YouTube's recommended settings: 320 by 240 resolution and MPEG-4 format for the video track and MP3 as the audio format. (YouTube accepts several different formats, including those generated by most digital cameras, camcorders, and cellular phones). We then loaded the original footage onto five identical systems we'd connected to identical, color-calibrated 19-inch ViewSonic VG1930WM wide-screen LCD monitors, and uploaded the compressed footage to YouTube. A panel of editors and Test Center analysts then judged both the original and the compressed movies for color, detail, motion, and overall quality. You can watch our test videos.

Our chart doesn't report the PCW Rating for each product, because we judged only their video features for this review. It wouldn't have been fair to try to compare all of the features of a camera phone to all of the features of a camcorder, for example. You can read a full review of each product by clicking on the review links in our chart.

You can get a pretty good-looking movie out of a couple of these devices. Four of the models we tested shoot video at 30 frames per second, and three of them capture VGA (640 by 480) resolution or higher. But our tests suggest that data rate is a better indicator of video quality. In general, the higher the data rate, the better the color, the smoother the motion, and the sharper the details. The Canon Elura 100, for instance, takes uncompressed, 720-by-4800-resolution video at 30 fps, with a data rate of 3.6 MBps. For our 2-minute test, this resulted in a 434MB file. The Treo 750 compresses on the fly to only 0.05 MBps; the same 2-minute shoot produced a file size of just 6MB.

A mere 6MB over 2 minutes doesn't translate into a lot of visual information, as the end results of our tests showed. Judges rated the Treo 750's as-captured video Poor for color accuracy, detail, and overall quality, and Fair for motion. The camera phone's color accuracy score improved to Fair on its optimized footage, but only because optimized video from the better performers degraded more noticeably.

Even the $50 American Idol camcorder beat the Treo 750, with a score of Fair for overall quality of both as-captured and optimized video. Nevertheless, the Idol fared much worse than any of the other devices did under low lighting.

As you'd expect, the Canon Elura MiniDV camcorder won the competition, with Good overall ratings for both as-captured and optimized footage. It excelled at maintaining motion quality in optimized movies.

Surprisingly, however, the Creative Webcam came pretty close to the Elura. It, too, received Good overall ratings for as-captured and optimized footage. Finally, the Panasonic digital camera scored average or above on most criteria, though its overall scores were only Fair for both the original and the optimized footage.

But while our lab-based video tests provide a good indication of how the different devices will perform under the same conditions, this isn't entirely an apples-to-apples test: They are all different enough that you must take their features into account to understand how they'll work in different settings.

For example, the Elura 100 has a 20X zoom lens -- above average for a camcorder, and considerably more powerful than anything else we looked at for this review. It also has two weak LED lights that help the exposure in dim settings, if your subject is within a few feet of the camcorder. It has a 2.7-inch wide-screen display, and it shoots in wide-screen mode, too -- great for viewing output on a wide-screen TV (though it's still a standard-definition camcorder). It does not capture video in low light as well as other camcorders do, but it's far and away the best here in dim settings. You'll have to use a video editing app or a conversion utility to compress your footage.

Unlike some digital cameras, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX2 will adjust the exposure as you shoot a movie, but the focus remains fixed, and you can't zoom while you're in movie mode. If you limit your movie's duration, or if you reduce the quality setting, you may not have to recompress it; otherwise, you must start up the video editing software.

The Creative Live Cam Optia has a spring-loaded clip for attaching it to an LCD screen. The Webcam rotates 270 degrees, so you can take videos of yourself or of someone in front of you, and you can adjust exposure settings manually with an on-screen utility. However, you must twist the lens to adjust the focus, and hard light caused flaring. The Webcam works only when it's attached to a computer. But YouTube allows you to upload video directly to its servers if you are using a Webcam, with no software required; that is about as easy as it gets.

The Palm Treo 750 camera phone has few mobility constraints, but it has a fixed lens with no focusing capabilities and only digital zooming. You can upload to YouTube directly via MMS (Multimedia Message Service), but we found that we couldn't upload videos longer than 5 seconds at the phone's best resolution, or longer than 10 seconds at 176 by 144 resolution, because the Cingular service it was using limits files sent via MMS to 300KB. (Verizon limits MMS video transmissions to 350KB, and Sprint limits them to 15 seconds). For our tests, we chose the higher resolution, transferred video to a miniSD card, and then copied our movie to a computer before uploading it to YouTube.

I had a difficult time finding the Digital Blue American Idol Digital Camcorder at my local Best Buy store -- but I was too embarrassed to ask staffers where they kept it. It comes with fun, kid-focused software and an external microphone (though you can connect it to your PC only, not to the actual camcorder). When you're capturing video, you must keep the capture button pressed down -- up to a limit of 4 minutes at its best-quality setting, or about 6 minutes at its worst setting, unless you connect it to a PC via USB, as we did. You can also use the Idol to upload directly to YouTube, if the device is connected via USB, though the quality isn't nearly as good as the Optia's.

Using a MiniDV camcorder requires the most effort if you want to post videos online, but most other devices don't make things much easier, unless you accept compromises. But I'm willing to sacrifice if the price is low (in the case of a Webcam) or if the device excels at other tasks (as in the case of a digital camera).

Meanwhile, the blogosphere has yet to notice my videos. Fame is fleeting and fickle.

No surprise: A MiniDV camcorder will give you the best-quality video. But if convenience is a priority, use a Webcam and skip the camera phone, because cellular services limit file sizes. (Click on the icon below to see our chart of video hardware.)

Chart notes: Prices are as of 2/14/07; fps = frames per second; MBps = megabytes per second. For the Treo 750, the Fair rating for uploading ease applies to videos longer than 10 seconds; rating for uploading shorter videos directly through cellular network is Very Good.

Alan Stafford