iConvert Video Converter....anyone?

[David W. Richardson]

In this Brookstone sales ad, I see the iConvert Video Converter. It claims you can connect it to a VCR, DVD player or camcorder and transfer video to SD cards. The picture shows it connected to a camcorder. Oddly, it looks a lot like a standard telephone plug stuck on the side of the camcorder. Never seen that before.

There is virtually no specific info on the web about this thing. Nothing about inputs and outputs -- like, does it do firewire? Nothing about file format on the SD card.

So I was just wondering -- has anyone here used one of these things? Or does anyone know more about it?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Richard Crowley]

From reading the manual (in PDF, online), it appears that the gadget will record in NTSC or PAL to SD or SDHC cards up to 32GB. It appears to have analog video/audio input and output (via the standard 4-pole mini-phone plugs). It also appears to have Firewire input. The plug shown in the photo is the standard 4-pin Firewire connector. It claims to record in "ASF" which means nothing as it is merely a container format for whatever (undisclosed) codec they used.

I didn't see any mention of how big the files are (which would imply the compression rate). Dunno how many minutes an 8GB or 16GB or 32GB card would hold? It says that it breaks off the file and starts a new one every 4 hours. To me that implies a pretty severe compression rate (500MB/hour) if we assume that it is doing this because of the common 2GB limit for FAT32.

It does not appear to do Firewire out. Worst, it says that it requires their software to retrieve the video which might imply that it uses some sort of proprietary codec.

The technology to implement a product like this are certainly cheap enough that they're not losing any money selling it for $100. Perhaps someone technical will get one of these and publish a report with some actual technical information in it.

The product appears to be available from other vendors (Amazon, etc.) for the same price.