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Hack 61 Store Pictures and Movies on an iPod

Yes, iPods make terrific digital music players.
They're also not so bad for storing movies and
pictures from your digicam.

When I hit the pavement for street shooting or the trail for an
afternoon hike, I usually have my digital camera and iPod tucked away
in my backpack. I bring the camera for obvious reasons, but recently,
the iPod has become just as important.

Yes, a little music is sometimes the perfect antidote to the
relentless din of street noise, not to mention the fact that when I
have my ear buds in place, fewer oddballs bother me. The iPod also stores all of
my calendar information, in case I run into a friend who wants to
schedule a lunch. It also holds handy reference notes, such as
important restaurant locations and other vital statistics. Just about
anything I can read on my computer can be transferred to my iPod. In
fact, I recently read an article that reported that the dailies for
the Lord of the Rings trilogy were whisked
around the globe on an iPod.

The 40 GB hard drive in my iPod is as big as the drive in my laptop.
I have quite a bit of music, but that's not why I
bought an iPod with such a big drive. The real reason is that I can
upload movies and photos from my camera's memory
card directly to the iPod. That means that as long as I have
batteries to power my camera and two memory cards with me, I can
shoot until my shutter finger cramps up in lactic-acid misery.

This scenario became particularly appealing when I got hooked on
shooting movies with a Contax SL300R T* pocket digicam (http://www.kyoceraimaging.com), shown in
Figure 5-24. Even though it weighs just a tad more
than four ounces and fits in the palm of my hand, it can record
full-frame (640 480) movies at up to 30 frames per second (fps);
that's the same frame rate as a dedicated digital
camcorder. If you're interested in this amazing
functionality but want to save a few bucks, check out the Kyocera
FineCam SL300R, which uses the same technology but costs less than
the Contax.

Figure 5-24. The Contax SL300R T*

This bit of movie magic is enabled by RTUNE™ technology
that allows the camera to write directly to a high-speed Secure
Digital (SD) memory card until the card is full.

The Contax also shoots still images at three frames per second until the memory card fills up.

Needless to say, at 30 fps, or even 15 fps, it
doesn't take long to fill an SD card. So, I either
had to invest a small fortune in memory cards, or find another
solution if I wanted to continue my obsession with digicam movies.

The other solution turned out to be the Belkin iPod Memory Reader
(http://www.belkin.com), shown in
Figure 5-25. This device plugs into the
iPod's Dock Connector
(but not the iPod mini) and can accommodate five different types of
media:
CompactFlash
(types 1 and 2),
SmartMedia,
Secure
Digital, Memory
Stick, and MultiMediaCard. You take the media out of
the camera and upload its contents to the iPod while you insert your
second memory card into the digicam and keep shooting. When the day
is done, plug the iPod into your computer and upload all those photos
and movies via the fast FireWire connection.

Figure 5-25. The Belkin Memory Reader with CompactFlash card and iPod

At the time of this writing, 256 MB high-speed SD cards cost about
US$90. The Belkin reader runs US$100. So, for about the price of one
memory card, I can add gigabytes of storage to my digital camera.

You might be wondering why I carry two memory cards instead of just
one. Unless you want to hang out and have a cup of coffee during the
upload process, you'll need that second card to keep
shooting. The Belkin might be convenient, but it
isn't fast. I tested its speed by shooting a
full-frame video at 30 fps with the Contax using a SanDisk Ultra II
256 MB SD card. I kept shooting until I got the
"memory card is full" message, then
inserted the card into the Belkin and initiated the upload. I timed
the process with a stopwatch, and it took a whopping 10 minutes to
complete the transfer.

You probably don't want to wait that long before you
start shooting again, so I suggest you carry one, maybe two extra
memory cards so that one can be uploading while
you're shooting with the others. The good news is
that you can put the iPod and media reader in your backpack during
the transfer process and keep moving.

In case you're curious, it took only 16 seconds to
upload that same 256 MB of video from the iPod to the computer via
the FireWire connection. Don't you just love
bandwidth?

It's true; you'd go crazy trying to
shoot a full-length feature movie with this rig. But the
Belkin iPod Memory Reader does provide
you with a reliable backup solution while you're on
the go. And, thanks to the ample hard-disk space in the iPod, you can
shoot many memory cards' worth of video and pictures
before having to retreat to your computer.