How to Use the Coby Snapp Mini Digital Camcorders

The Coby Snapp is a handy little mini digital camcorder that is a basic, inexpensive camera and camcorder in one that fits in your shirt pocket. The Snapp is a great little digital, high definition (HD) camcorder disguised as a smartphone. With a rugged body and a rather small 2 inch LCD display, a 5 Mega Pixel (MP) camera, the Snapp comes with 128MB of memory, which is expandable to up to the highest SDHD memory cards' data size, for a longer video capture, or a whole lot more picture storage.

The Coby Snapp is not intended for professional shots or movies, but is a very economical and well made camcorder and camera in one, with stylized controls and easy operation. The newer models of the Coby Snapp, out for early 2010, range in price from $29.99 to $89.99, and have a video resolution of up to 720 pixels (720p). Using the Snapp is as easy as, well, a snap. The Snapp can be connected to your television for playback using the audiovisual connection (AV out), or to a laptop using the USB connection, for downloading pictures and video files to your laptop.

To turn on the Coby Snapp, either turn the power button on or off while the LCD view screen is open, or by opening the LCD screen. Turn it off by closing the view screen. Once open, the Snapp can start recording either still pictures or video with the pressing of the record button. Video is recorded at 640x480 pixels, or at 300x480 pixels to make room for a longer video capture sequence. Once the memory card is full, the Snapp turns itself off. In order to know how much more video can be captured, the memory's remaining time is displayed on the view screen.

There are three basic modes to the Coby Snapp, Video, Photo and Playback modes. The Video mode takes video, and will continue if left unattended to record until the memory card is full. Entering the Photo mode allows you to take still pictures, and both the Video and Photo mode have zoom access, to get in close to the action, or to get a close up shot of that beautiful, exotic flower.

In order to use the zoom on the Coby Snapp, use the joystick while in either Video or Photo mode. Press the joystick upwards to zoom in, and backwards to zoom out. If you want to use the smaller compression size of 320 pixels, then you must make the changes before starting to film, as it can not be changed while filming. That could cause some very important action to be missed, like your son's first goal in his first year of organized hockey.

During Photo mode, you can immerse yourself in the picture using the self timer option. Move the joystick to the right once to activate the 2-second self timer, and twice quickly for the 10-second self timer. Don't forget to smile!

The Coby Snapp uses the Arcsoft upload to YouTube application (app), where you can download your videos, make changes and upload them to YouTube for the world to share. Once you connect your Snapp to a laptop using the supplied USB cable, the supplied software starts up automatically. The Snapp really is a snap to use, and it is nice to see a basic camera in the affordable range.

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