Hands-on with Disney's Flix Video Cam for Kids

There is no shortage of electronics in Disney's fall lineup of toys as the holiday toy season swings into action. Among the offerings are the Mix Max 2.0, a personal video and music player with a 2.8-inch screen.

Movies can be downloaded from a Disney web site or played via  $20 Disney Max Clips containing individual Disney movies. A 2.0 change to the $130 player is that it plays Java games, too.

There are digital cameras, ranging in size and price from $20, $50, and $80, all PC-compatible for downloading photos, all with several Disney-themed designs. And 15-inch LCD TVs ($249-$299) framed by Disney themes (High School Musical locker, Hannah Montana stage) are new this year.

Also new is the Disney Flix Video Cam, a pint-sized video camera with accompanying editing software for the PC that allows young kids and younger 'tweens to try their hand at filmmaking. We've been playing with it for the past few weeks, and here's our take.

It's a camera definitely made for small hands and sharp eyes. It is simple enough to use—once you get the software loaded on your PC and play around with the features. Young kids will definitely need a parent's help to get going. Not a bad thing, but the navigation and controls could be more intuitive and instructive for first-time video editors.

The big draw of this camera is the High School Musical software that comes with it, allowing kids to recreate scenes with audio direction from the crazy-popular Disney movie, and add and delete scenes and stills from the original movie using a storyboard. Similar software for Pirates of the Caribbean and Cinderella is available for $14.99 each. 

Did I mention it's small? It's 3-x-2-x-1 inches, with a 1.5-inch screen and a 1.3-megapixel camera for still shots. Video quality is okay, not great. It comes with a small, flexible tripod to help kids film themselves. It runs on two AA batteries, and has an internal memory of 128MB, which can be expanded to 1GB with an SD card. It's designed for kids ages 6 to 10, but it seemed too young for my 10-year-old, even though she liked High School Musical.

Depending on the ages and the level of interest in video and editing of your children, the $100 may be better spent on an inexpensive video cam that will allow them to experiment with filmmaking and basic editing. Of course, that means Troy, Gabriella, and the whole High School Musical crew will be nowhere to be found.