I'm working on a real estate site that uses video as a marketing tool for a client. They want a simple, cheap camera that we can give everyone to make the videos. Their first proposal was to use Flip Video. It's a great system from a point, shoot, get results standpoint. The downer is that the Flip Video recorders are a freakin tech support nightmare waiting to happen. Simply put, the files are too big and fail to convert too often. And the end users are braindead. Asking them to change a few settings or convert the file on their PC is out of the question. Are there any friendlier alternatives than Flip Video? I'd prefer something that output to a DVIX format or something similar.
Kodak has a couple of new offerings the (Zi8 and the Playsport HD) that are superior to the Flip and so does Samsung, a simple, compact camcorder called the SMX C20. The Playsport is waterproof to 10 feet and a bit more rugged than the other options. All of these record using h.264 compression, so editing should not be unusually difficult. Both companies offer their own basic editing software packaged with the devices for free. Coming from a decade of work in the TV/Film industry (I worked as a 2d/3d CG effects artist and video editor), I cringe at the quality you can expect from these, but objectively, all three devices offer excellent quality for the price. In terms of simplicity, these are designed so the user needs to know virtually nothing. Image stabilization is very poor to absent on all three, but with a small amount of practice and common sense (don't move the camera any faster than necessary, ensure good lighting, etc) any one of these is a better alternative than the Flip.