The

Mattel Mattel, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational toy manufacturing and entertainment company founded in January 1945 and headquartered in El Segundo, California. The company has presence in 35 countries and territories and sells products in more ...

Vidster is a digital tapeless

camcorder A camcorder is a self-contained portable electronic device with video and recording as its primary function. It is typically equipped with an articulating screen mounted on the left side, a belt to facilitate holding on the right side, hot-swa ...

that was marketed as a children's toy and sold around 2005. It features a {{convert, 1.1, in, mm, adj=on LCD display, a 2x digital zoom, and records into

AVI Avi is a given name, usually masculine, often a diminutive of Avram, Avraham, etc. It is sometimes feminine and a diminutive of the Hebrew spelling of Abigail. People with the given name include: * Avi (born 1937), Newbery award-winning Americ ...

320x240 video files encoded with the

M-JPEG Motion JPEG (M-JPEG or MJPEG) is a video compression format in which each video frame or interlaced field of a digital video sequence is compressed separately as a JPEG image. Originally developed for multimedia PC applications, Motion JPE ...

codec at 15 frames per second, with 22 kHz monaural sound. It also takes still photos with 1.3 megapixel resolution. The camera is powered by four AA batteries, and records onto SD

flash memory Flash memory is an electronic non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. The two main types of flash memory, NOR flash and NAND flash, are named for the NOR and NAND logic gates. Both us ...

cards (512MB maximum capacity). The variable-bitrate codec allows a maximum recording time of approximately 45–50 minutes with a 512MB card. Other features include a built-in microphone, a 1/8" jack for an external

microphone A microphone, colloquially called a mic or mike (), is a transducer that converts sound into an electrical signal. Microphones are used in many applications such as telephones, hearing aids, public address systems for concert halls and public ...

, a 1/8" jack that provides NTSC composite video output with audio, a mini-USB connector for accessing the data on the SD memory card, and a

tripod A tripod is a portable three-legged frame or stand, used as a platform for supporting the weight and maintaining the stability of some other object. The three-legged (triangular stance) design provides good stability against gravitational loads ...

mount. The Vidster is appreciated for the unique aesthetic properties of the video footage it records. Since the M-JPEG video created by the Vidster is so highly compressed, the footage exhibits constantly visible

macroblocks The macroblock is a processing unit in image and video compression formats based on linear block transforms, typically the discrete cosine transform (DCT). A macroblock typically consists of 16×16 samples, and is further subdivided into transform ...

, or square blocky artifacts from encoding. The Vidster only has auto-exposure as a method of exposure control, and also is constantly automatically white-balancing itself. This leads to very accentuated alterations in the qualities of the image, even from small changes in a scene. The lens of the Vidster is extremely small, resulting in an image with slight

vignetting In photography and optics, vignetting is a reduction of an image's brightness or saturation toward the periphery compared to the image center. The word ''vignette'', from the same root as ''vine'', originally referred to a decorative border ...

of image sharpness. There is also significant color fringing and video noise, especially for low-light subjects. The Vidster is used in media projects by experimental filmmakers, just as the

Fisher-Price Fisher-Price is an American company that produces educational toys for infants, toddlers and preschoolers, headquartered in East Aurora, New York, East Aurora, New York (state), New York. The company was founded in 1930 during the Great Depressio ...

Pixelvision The PXL2000 is a toy camcorder produced by Fisher-Price in 1987. Designed for maximal economy, it records extremely low-resolution monochrome video and audio, all to compact audio cassette. It was on the market for one year with about 400,0 ...

camera was used to artistic effect by a previous generation of media artists.

Film festivals

The Pixelvision friendly film festival, PXL THIS, inspired a Vidster film festival, calling it VIDSTER THIS.

Influences on the web

* November 14, 2007—A Vidster user on YouTube created a community known as The Vidster Corner where people of all ages can share their Vidster videos on the Internet with the rest of the world.

Notable uses in popular culture

* In 2009 the

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

-based indie rock band

Girls A girl is a young female human, usually a child or an adolescent. When a girl becomes an adult, she is accurately described as a ''woman''. However, the term ''girl'' is also used for other meanings, including ''young woman'',Dictionary ...

released a video for their son
Laura
which was shot in its entirety on four Vidsters. * In 2009

Oakland Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay A ...

based

video art Video art is an art form which relies on using video technology as a visual and audio medium. Video art emerged during the late 1960s as new consumer video technology such as video tape recorders became available outside corporate broadcasting ...

is
Will Erokan
release

Episode 5: TRIPTYCH, o
Peralta TV
The episode consisted of three simultaneous channels of Video (shot on a Vidster) documenting his life in Olympia WA, during the year 2006. The format of the video was inspired by the

Cut Up Cut Up is a Swedish death metal band formed by former members of Vomitory (band), Vomitory in 2014, and is currently signed to Metal Blade Records. Members * Erik Rundqvist – bass guitar, vocals * Andreas Björnson – guitar, vocals * And ...

experiments

William S. Burroughs William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular cultur ...

conducted usin
traditional Newspaper Layout
as a form. Highlights from the piece include Painting

Tract Housing Tract housing is a type of housing development in which multiple similar houses are built on a tract (area) of land that is subdivided into smaller lots. Tract housing developments are found in suburb developments that were modeled on the "Levitt ...

in Lacey, WA
Scrap Yard Swag's
first concert, Saddam Hussein's execution, and Thomas Cooney/Reed Urban performing music around

Olympia, WA Olympia is the capital city, capital of the U.S. state of Washington (state), Washington and the county seat and largest city of Thurston County, Washington, Thurston County. It is southwest of the state's most populous city, Seattle, and is a c ...

Film festivals

Influences on the web

Notable uses in popular culture

See also