I would definitely use again.
Rating: 5 / 5

The Muvi is undeniably a fantastic bit of kit but is almost useless in any real application without the ability to Mount the camera. If you want to ride, climb, ski, skate, walk, hop skip or jump…then none of this is possible without mounting the camera someplace on your body (or clothing).

The Extreme sports pack contains a selection of Velcro bands (double sided), straps head belts clips, standard and magnetic mounts and cases that will allow the camera to fit securely in just about any situation. Whether you want to mount the camera to a cycle helmet, a motorcycle helmet, your forehead, your ski jacket or just set it up in the corner of your room (ahem) then this pack contains all the required bits and bobs

Good points

* Fantastic addition to the camera

* All mounts are simple to use

* All mounts are really secure with solid clicking of the camera into place

* All mounts are light weight and add no real weight to helmets etc so you will forget you are wearing a camera at all.

* All straps are really well thought out and designed to work to their best (with double sided bits and thin ends etc)…trust me, it all makes sense when you get the box open…honest!

Bad points

* A bit pricey…but then the camera is pretty cheap.

* Rubber weather proof skin is useless…sorry, its just a bad design…it does not “weather-proof” the camera at all, at best it just protects it from scratches and when fitted, the camera does not fit into ANY of the mounts supplied, so its just a gator for wrapping around the camera when you want to leave it on your dining room table…”Gnarly dude, lets go do some extreme dining room stuff”….. you get my point

Summary

Don’t buy the Muvi without this pack, its an absolute must (the clue was in the title)

Rating: 4 / 5

So what’s it like? In short it’s great! It’s very light and can be easily held in one hand. I don’t have big hands so most women should be fine too. It’s very easy to use. Open up the LCD screen. Press the `on’ button. Point it at what you want to film. Press the record button below the screen and you’re away filming. Press record again and you stop (although the firm press that’s need can cause a jerk or two!). It’s that easy. You can then move the switch at the back of the camcorder from movie mode to playback mode and watch your footage. HD video playback is stunning on the LCD screen. And what’s more the screen is touch sensitive so you can instinctively select menus, open files and move them around. I’m an iPhone user and found the touchscreen great to use, unlike a lot of phones I could mention!

The camcorder has a ton of clever default settings such as image stabiliser and intelligent auto which are designed to help even the greenest cameraman/woman get the most out of the camcorder with the minimum of fuss. I also liked the way the auto light kicked in when it was getting dark. The most dramatic feature is probably the face detection system which picks out the face of someone moving towards you and focuses in on it. Although sometimes I didn’t want it picking out the faces of strangers who walked into view! I’m sure most people aren’t even going to bother with the manual settings which are very comprehensive. It can film in four settings from 1920 by 1080 resolution down to 1440 by 1080. I know some people are already using 1440 res with HD camcorders because of the smaller file sizes it produces but more on that later!

I found the camcorder very vulnerable to shake when on max 16 times zoom. I’ve read stuff about the image stabiliser trying to over compensate and that causes issues. May be? Who knows?!. The battery that comes with it lasts less than two hours. That’s ok if you’re just taking small clips but if you’re trying to film a long party or out all day at a site of great visual interest, you will have to be sparing or buy a bigger/ spare battery. There were concerns that the camcorder’s small video sensor used in others might be bad in low light conditions. I know I’m no filmmaker but it was good enough for me.

You can use SD/SDHC memory cards in the camcorder. Go for class 4/6 SDHC cards if you can. Don’t get smaller than 8Gb and get them online. The cards aren’t cheap on the high street at the time of writing. You get a Mini HDMI-component cable to link up to an HD TV. On my 1080P Panasonic Viera TV the HD footage looked spectacular even if the subject material was boring!

Word of warning! Current PC power, as fantastic as it is, is only just catching up with dealing with HD video editing. Don’t expect your beaten up 6 years old PC to deal easily with the huge AVCHD format files that will be generated by your footage. A ten minute video at the highest settings could be 1Gb in size and your poor old processor has to deal with converting it to other formats or cut it up for your custom movie. Also expect to be hunting down file converters as you try and change the format to something more usable for editing or uploading to YouTube such as mpeg or avi. My single core AMD system was taking well over 10 minutes to convert one minute of AVCHD footage to mpeg with some converters. This is quad core territory! Adobe Premiere Elements 7 (PC) Zoostorm Core I7-920 2.66ghz Hyperthreading Quad Core Vista Premium Gaming Pc,1tb Hdd,6gb Ddr 3 Ram,896mb GTX260 Graphics Card,blu Ray

Anyway I’ve got some HD footage on the nitebot channel of YouTube. Remember it’s much, much better on your TV.
Rating: 5 / 5

Each Gb of memory gives 15 mins of recording time, so carry a couple of 16Gb SD cards and you could record all day. And there’s the 8Gb onboard which, as it equates to about 2 hours of footage, is more than just a reserve memory.

The .MTS files which AVCHD creates are finicky swines which won’t work unless they’ve got the right metadata files and folders with them. This means you can’t just drag/copy them about like mp4s or movs, especially if, like me, you’re uploading your films to a Mac. The only way iMovie will allow you to do it is by connecting to the camcorder via USB and importing directly. And that’s iMovie from iLife 09 and with Snow Leopard. This is one thing Apple haven’t made easy. I had the fond notion that I could just plug the SD card into a reader and do it that way, but, although you apparently can, or you can buy third party software, it’s fiddly and expensive to the point of not worth the bother.

There’s only one thing the TM10 doesn’t do brilliantly – sound. It’s not bad, but the single mic is on the top which means that the wind seems to rush across it when you’re outdoors (and it’s windy) and also if you’re holding the thing in front and below you, your voice will be loud, but others sometimes not quite loud enough. If you’re Whispering Bob Harris and you’re making a documentary about Brian Blessed indoors, ignore this point.

Final thing – without moving parts (tape motors and eject mechanisms and so on) this thing is seriously light and totally silent. And without moving parts, the battery lasts a long time (hours and hours). And also, as it’s flash memory, it can start recording as soon as you open the viewing screen. It does this automatically, saving everything from microseconds after you get that screen open, if you want it to. So if you’re there at a momentous yet fleeting moment (eg a face-planting politico or England sporting victory) you’ll get the lot in HD-quality in less than a second after you remember you’ve got a camcorder with you. I’ve tried this (substituting a face-planting child instead of a cabinet minister) and it really works. The thing is focused and filming accurately before you could could switch on and take a picture on ANY digital still camera I’ve ever used. Oh and it takes not-too-bad still photos too.

So as not to end on too gushing a note, I have one other negative. It’s so small it looks a tad silly mounted on a big, professional tripod. I’m happy to live with that, though.
Rating: 5 / 5