| 24 Apr 2006 10:25 am |
Olivier Guest |
Thanks to Sean for sending me the .ini file for 3GP converter. I thought I’d put something back into the forum by describing my Mobi.
Mine is a MobiDV H18 of unspecified brand. I bought it on ebay: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=7603602640&rd=1&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWN%3AIT&rd=1
Yes, I paid only £41 (US$73) but it was used and I didn’t get earphones with it.
It cost me exactly the same to buy a 2 Gig SanDisk Ultra II memory card and about the same again (it was before, I wouldn’t have otherwise) to get a 1Gig SanDisk card.
It doesn’t seem right to pay the same price for a whole device and for a memory card that looks quite dumb in comparison :-).
Although the box says H18, the manual says H10 but I can see there are some differences between the manual and the unit. For instance the manual states there are 3 shooting modes for DV but the unit shows 5.
My MobiDV is an 8-in-one. When I power it on it displays the logo 'Pocket Studio'. The headings below, for the 8 functions, are taken from the box
MPEG4 DV camcorder
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Under the Advanced | Special menu are 5 shooting modes: Normal, Sport, High Speed, Dusk and Night Shot. These modes change the EV compensation and the shutter speed. Also you can change the ISO value from 100 to 200, 400 or 800.
There are the following video effects: Normal, Text (?), Sepia, Invert, Dec. Color (this decreases the numbers of colours - posterisation), R filter, G filter and B filter (a red a green and a blue filter). The neat feature there is that you can see the effect applied on a little window as you scroll through the choices.
In the basic settings for the DV mode you can change the exposure (from +1.8 to -1.8 in 0.3 decrements), choose between 3 Light Meter modes (Average, Central and Center - not quite sure what the intended difference between Central and Center is), change the Shutter Speed - Auto or from 1/2000 to 1/2 in 12 steps, choose a White Balance mode - again with preview window - (Auto, Sunny, Cloudy, Tungsten, Sun Lamp and F-Light), switch the audio quality between 16 kHz and 48 kHz, choose a Video quality mode (Best, Fine, Normal, Basic and Economic) and finally change the size between 640x480 (VGA) and 320x240 (Quarter VGA).
I was disappointed by the sound level, which is supposed to be automatic and for which there is no adjustment. I recorded live jazz with drums, electric bass, guitar, and saxophone in a venue where the sound level was pleasant: the recorded sound was saturated and unpleasant to listen to. In the evening I went to another place where there was just a guitar and a saxophone - no amplification for the sax: the sound was fine.
I think the lights are next to useless. Their main purpose must be to empty the battery quicker.
6MP Digital Camera
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OK, not 6 mega-pixels, really. Basic menu choices are:
Exposure - same exposure compensation as DV
Light Meter - ditto
Shutter T - ditto
WB - White Balance - ditto
Size: from 2816x2112 (the 6 megapixels) to 640x480 (0.3 megapixels) in 8 steps.
Quality: Fine, Normal or Basic
The Advanced menu offers:
Effects (same as DV)
ISO: 100, 200 or 400. Note: no 800 contrarily to the DV
Burst: this allows you to take several pictures in one go (with one press of the button, like an automatic weapon), but don’t wet your pants... the several in question is 2!
Timer: 10 second self timer, on or off
Date Stamp: date stamp on picture, on or off.
Stereo MP3 Music Player
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Hmmm, not too much to say about the sound, but it seems mine is different from Sean’s. I cannot put files in subfolders but I don’t see the filenames: I see the ID3 tag, painfully scrolling from the right of the screen even from the beginning. Why? There is no playlist, no 'By Artist' or 'By Album' etc... mode. The only navigation is Next and Previous file. I did put some WMA files there and they played but their tags came up as Unknown Song - Unknown Artist (and, remember, you don’t get to see the file name). Mmmm... navigate through a Gig of MP3 where each press of the button gives you the first letter of the next/previous song? Unpleasant. The menu key in MP3 mode brings a menu with a single choice: Play Mode. You can choose between Normal, Shuffle, Repeat One and Repeat All.
[to be continued...]
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| 24 Apr 2006 10:32 am |
Olivier Guest | [Continued from my previous post]
By the way, I don’t have to rename the files to put them on the MobiDV and they don’t have to be in the 8.3 format either.
Voice Recorder
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I tried the voice recorder at one venue where there was quiet enough jazz and the sound was too loud and saturated. I know it says ‘Voice’ but at the same venue the DV recording was fine.
The menu allows you to change the audio quality between 16 and 48 kHz and to delete, lock and copy files. I think voice recorder is the only place where you actually see the filename (FILE0001 for instance).
128MB USB Disk
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My MobiDV came with 128MB of internal memory. This is what this refers to.
Of course what it omits to say is that it’s USB 1.0. There is such a difference between the speed of USB 1.0 and USB 2 (one order of magnitude). Transfers to the internal or external memory using MobiDV are painfully slow. Moving 1 Gig of data is a task that takes hours, not minutes. I have stopped experimenting with the 2 Gig card until I get a card adapter and can exchange data with the card at USB 2 or PCMCIA speeds. For instance I wanted to see if the problems I was having on the card were due to a video file that was too big (202M or because, although there were still less than one GB on the card, defrag showed that some files were positioned after the middle of the card (hence had block addresses above 1G. On way to do that would have been to move all the files out of the card and then copy them back again. I gave up.
Also on my laptop (I haven’t tried it on a desktop yet), when the MobiDV is connected to the computer and is on for data transfer, the battery doesn’t get recharged. It actually gets down. After hours of transfer the battery’s flat!
High Brightness LED Spotlight
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Well, it’s certainly bright as far as LEDs go but spotlight it isn’t. It’s brighter than my phone’s screen to find my way in the dark, indoors, but its effect on movies and pictures is insignificant except in the darkest and closest situations.
Special Effect Web Cam
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Some people in this forum have wondered how it would be possible to have a webcam function. The way this is implemented on my model is that when you plug in the USB from the computer and power on a menu appears giving you the choice between Webcam and USB disk. The special effects refer to a tasty selection of effects or frames (not both at the same time) you can apply to your webcam. Some of the effects look like your cam’s not working properly. I suppose they are designed for people who buy new jeans that look like old tattered ones :-).
SD/MMC Card Reader
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Well, yes. This is really the same function as 128MB USB Disk, isn’t it? Except it shows as a different disk, which is fine. What is not fine – see above – is the speed, limited by the antiquated USB 1.0 specification. Once I get a card adapter I’ll never ever plug Mobi on the USB again for transfers!
One function they missed on the box – but that appears as a mode option – is the movie and picture player: not only can you play pictures and movies taken with the MobiDV but you can also play pictures and movies that you put on the card.
I had an initial problem with JPEGs: some wouldn’t display and I couldn’t figure why until it clicked. My most recent real camera has a sensor that detects when the camera takes a portrait picture and marks it as such so that software can rotate it automatically. But I’ve rotated some manually and saved them (with original EXIF data) because my viewer didn’t rotate. These are the ones that don’t play. Mobi rotates the pics that say they were taken in portrait mode.
BTW, I have recently decided to avoid taking pictures in portrait orientation. The reason is that it wastes so many pixels on a computer or TV screen, especially on wide screens. You look at your pictures and a portrait one comes up. It seems to use only about half the screen!
You can start a slide show but this is on the second page of the menu and you have no choice of speed. You can also select to go through all files types (Video, Picture or Voice – but not MP3 which is handled separately and differently) or only through files of one type – so selecting Pictures allows you to do a manual slide show, where you can go to next and previous picture by pressing right or left.
Videos can be downloaded and will play provided they are the right format: MPEG4 inside an ASF wrapper. Not the most common format. Fortunately the 3GP converter with the ini file sent by Sean does the trick. I have managed to convert some DVD .VOB files but not all DVDs convert. Sean, where did you find the ini file?
There is one big problem with playing videos: the complete lack of navigation inside one file. You cannot skip, fast forward, backwards, frame advance… you name it, you can’t do it. And I think that if you pause it then if it auto switches off when you switch back on it’s back at the beginning of the file. Frustrating? No. FRUSTRATING! At least.
OK, maybe Mobi’s not intended to be used to play videos. Maybe the day won’t come when I have that train journey where I can’t take my laptop but still have enough eyesight, my faithful Mobi, a few freshly charged spare batteries and the contents of a DVD I really want to watch on one memory card.
The other thing is that DVDs come in several .VOB files so they end up as several video files on the memory card. But, remember? Mobi doesn’t show file names and chooses the order it presents the files to you. Bad news. How do you tell (apart from the obvious first one - the titles are a give-away) in which order to play the segments when all you have is the first frame being displayed?
Psst… Anyone want to buy a second hand MobiDV H18 and a 1GB SanDisk SD card?
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| 24 Apr 2006 10:41 am |
Olivier Guest | FOXCREATIONS, did you write the converter yourself? Were can we get it?
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| 04 May 2006 08:04 pm |
rafa Guest | how would I convert .avi files into .asf files??
(to watch some movie downloads-it never shows up on any of the modes-)
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| 17 May 2006 07:53 pm |
whoever may be Guest | Hey, i’ve been looking for help about downloading mp3s and stumbled across this page. I downloaded 2 mp3s and when i do the process to download another, it sais that my drive e: is full. What’s up with that? How can i make room or whatever? Thx
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| 18 May 2006 03:59 pm |
intelectual junkie Guest | Speaking of the h-18, I read somewhere that it might be possible to upgrade the h-12 to a h-18 by simply rewriting the firmware. If so, this would mean that the mp3 player would recognize id3 tags. If this is indeed the case, does anyone have the h-18 firmware for download?
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| 20 May 2006 08:45 pm |
naha Guest | i have an ijoy, and understand how to put the mp3’s on i through copy and paste, but what are ijoys compatable with? I tried itunes and windows media player, and neither worked. Windows media player had an error occer every time i tried to paste onto the file, and itunes has write protection on all of their songs. PLease help!!! I have been trying to figure this out for months now.
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| 06 Jul 2006 04:52 pm |
Entree Rep: 0 Joined: 06 Jul 2006 Posts: 1 OFFLINE | No one has posted in forever. Is anyone still there? We are having problems transferring mp3 files. I have read all the post here and will try all the new ideas I got when I get home. Just wodering if anyone was still there incase I still have problems?
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| 15 Jul 2006 08:42 pm |
jbizol Guest | Please email me with any or all info for i-joy camera. i can’t put mp3’s on it. i can’t save video files. last but not least i lost the software cd that came with it so i’m really screwed....HLP?????
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| 16 Jul 2006 05:51 am |
jbizol Guest | Nirmal wrote:
Hi,
The 3GP file link is dead.
Could someone please re-upload the 3GP file on megaupload or yousendit?
Also if possible please email the file to my email: nirmal1978@indiatimes.com
One more thing, is there any firmware available for i-Joy? with features like using iJoy as a webcam and mp3 info display in MP3 playback mode and maybe also to support directory mode in MP3 playback.
(It is very annoying to put all the mp3 files in a single folder on a 1GB SD card!)
Thanks & Regards
Nirmal
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| 19 Jul 2006 10:39 pm |
Entree Rep: 0Joined: 07 Jan 2006 Posts: 3 OFFLINE | can u name the mp3 files when their on the ijoy?
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| 17 Aug 2006 06:37 am |
mbatastan Guest | hey please can some one send me d settings for 3gp on my mobi dv h12. pppppppplllllleaseeeee. ma email is dopoyen@yahoo.com
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| 17 Aug 2006 06:53 am |
mbatastan Guest | sean u are really doing a great job out there. my h12 is cool, i just wanna play back movies on it and i need the 3GP converter with settings. ma email add is dopoyen@yahoo.com
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| 21 Aug 2006 11:53 am |
dollinuface Guest | Does anyone know how to restore this thing to factory default settings? I messed with the settings now my pictures don’t come out right. Also does anyone know how to make the lights stay on will making a movie at night.
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| 20 Sep 2006 05:35 am |
Entree Rep: 0 Joined: 05 Apr 2006 Posts: 7 OFFLINE | Yeah, dollinuface, turn on your camera, and navigate over to 'SETTINGS.' Scroll down to page 2, and there you should see an option to restore the defaults. It’s a handy feature, really.
If you want to use the spotlight while recording a video, just push the right arrow button to toggle it on/off.
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"No, this is not a sandwich." | |
| 16 Oct 2006 12:30 am |
scott goss Guest | kozmo wrote:
i can do this perfectly i’ll show you how
if someone replys
I cant figure this thing out. I got the usb cord for unit. I do not have the software drivers or user manual. I transfered some music on to it and now all the memory is full on it. Dont know how to delete any files either. Can u help?
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| 19 Oct 2006 10:44 pm |
Entree Rep: 0Joined: 19 Oct 2006 Posts: 1 OFFLINE | Hello everyone,
We had an auspicious beginning with an Ijoy we purchased for our daughter who adored the thing. We were sold until all of a sudden it will not recognize the memory card and buttons lock up. We have tried other memory cards and also tried them in different cameras and it is definitely the Ijoy camera that has a problem. The worst part is that there is a warranty card but nowhere in our manual or on warranty card is there an address of where to mail the camera. We have had it less than a year and we are really bummed out. And as mentioned here by several people, it is virtually impossible to find a website for “company”. Any ideas? Thanks, bookingitgirl
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| 24 Nov 2006 04:15 pm |
retardboy Guest | ok guys, i have an ijoy and i keep synchronizing music to it and but i cannot find the music! it says its on here but i cant find it! please help me out!
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| 24 Nov 2006 04:18 pm |
retardboy Guest | that is so dang annoying. i wish they had like an online help line or a like phone number. try a new sd card by the way, my sd was bad. these are cheap sd cards that come with them. a max value of about $15.
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| 24 Nov 2006 04:19 pm |
retardboy Guest | you can watch movies on your Ijoy???
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