Flip Video™ For Dummies®

Chapter 5. Transferring Video to Your Computer

In This Chapter

• Properly connecting and ejecting your Flip

• Choosing your computer's automatic action when you plug in your Flip

• Copying, moving, and deleting files to and from your Flip

• Using your Flip as a portable backup drive

Your Flip camera makes it easy to shoot video on the fly, pretty much whenever and wherever you want. Your Flip's display also makes it easy to play your recorded videos for anyone who wants to watch them, thanks to easy playback controls like Play and Pause, Fast Forward, and Rewind — and for those really awful videos you'd rather not show others, Delete. But crowding your friends and family around the Flip's teensy tiny screen isn't nearly as enjoyable as watching your videos on a bigger screen, whether a computer screen or a TV screen that plays your movies from a DVD you burn.

For the greatest viewing pleasure, you want to edit your videos to cull the parts you don't want and then mix and match the other parts you do want to tell some kind of story. And you start by first copying video files you record and save on your Flip to your Windows or Mac computer.

That's what this chapter is all about: copying your video files to your computer so you can edit those files into movies. (I show you how to edit in other chapters.) In this chapter, you can also read about a few simple but important do's and don'ts keep in mind ...