We took several video clips and still pictures, then played them back using different settings. There is a definite tradeoff between file size and picture quality. If you want good quality, then a 30 second video will take over 2MB. For medium quality, it would be about 1MB, and for low quality it would be less than 500KB. You can also take a still picture and add sound to it, which makes for a very small file.

The included software has an option for saving your video as a self-playing executable file. It embeds its own video player and the video itself into an EXE file. This is really handy for sending a video-gram to someone, and they don't need any special software to play it on their PC.

We talked a little about using your video camera for 2-way communication over the internet. I haven't actually done this yet, but it is possible using free software such as Microsoft's Netmeeting. Of course, you would need a high-speed internet connection to keep the video running smoothly. We also talked a little about setting up a webcam, which means using your video camera to show yourself to the world over internet. There are free software packages that allow you to do just that. To find them, just do a search for the word webcam on your favorite web search engine. You will get hundreds of sites listed, some of which offer software packages.

The SIG will break for summer and not meet during June, July, and August. Our next meeting will be on Tuesday, September 19, at 7:00 PM at the Harmon Foundation, 2901 S. Harvard. Hope to see you all there.

For more information on the Tulsa Computer Society click here