RipRoar - Creation Station

My son loves this toy. While the camera and tripod are plastic and toy-like, the green screen material is high quality and large. For the $20 price I got it for it was well worth it - especially for how excited he was to get it. I read the reviews about the difficulty with the software, but my 11 year old was able to get everything working without problems. He was making movies with his friends the day after Christmas. I would highly recommend it for less than $30 - it's a great start to making movies.

When I first saw this about a year ago it was the thing that I really wanted for christmas. When I got it, I opened it immedietly. My first problem was that the tripod is pretty must as useful as a broken twig. I mean that it is flimsy. I ended up almost completly covering it in tape to make it stand up. And when I finally got the camera to stay on, I realized it was only a foot off the ground. So I decided to carry the camera instead.

Then came the software. First of all, the CD is only a link to a file on their website. And when you finally get it to install, the chroma key tool is useless. Your screen has to be the color that they want it to be and you can't have slight differences in color. A.K.A. you need a studio, which is exactly what they advertise against needing. And it is only a two track editing program, but windows movie make is still better. After getting fed up with the software, I bought Sony Vegas. That was one of the best replacements I have ever made. Buy that instead.

The green screen is the only good part of this purchase; but that no reason for you to buy this. The screen is larger than I expected. It got me interested in chroma key video, and now I still use this screen for Vegas. But there are other good screens out there.

I gave this 2 stars instead of one because it got me interested in filming, and now I have made many home films.

I bought this for my grandson and he really loves it. Someone complicated, but still fun.

I bought this on clearance at Kmart, thinking it sounded interesting, and in the worst case at least I got a green screen. That's about all I got. And since the green screen comes in two pieces, I imagine the seams will cause issues.

I actually got it installed and the software running. But the video stream flickers between what's actually in front of the camera and some previously recorded image. Then it eventually crashes the software. I downloaded an open source webcam program to see if it will work with that, and it had the same problem, and crashed that too.

You can't even use the software with another webcam. It won't start unless the RipRoar camera is plugged in.

This product, as a package, is really very bad and not worth the retail price. Here is what you get and my comments:

1)Camera - Very bad image quality, but the built in LED lighting is fairly good. NOT standalone, must be connected to a PC.
2)Tripod - Just awful, seriously useless flimsy piece of plastic.
3)Door Clips - OK for what they are (plastic clips to hang the included Green Scree material)
4)Sticky Tape - OK for what it is (tape to hang the included Green Screen material to a wall, etc)
5)Instruction Manual - Not very good, poorly written
6)Quick Start Guide - Just useless
7)Installation Disk - This is a mixed bag. A) the software installation is problematic (see comments below), B) the editing software is somewhat unstable, C) the included "Bonus" material is actually fairly good and useful (include Sound FX, Music Clips, Video Clips, and Backgrounds)
8)Green Screen - Surprisingly good! This material comes in two sections with Velcro fasteners so you can use a small or large area. This fabric was worth the price I paid (see below).
9)USB Cable - A good quality cable, but a little short if connecting to a desktop/tower PC.

Installing the included software was a rough experience on my XP laptop and it ultimately failed due to, I suspect, my 1.0 USB ports (MUST HAVE USB 2.0). It was a much better experience on my son's Vista laptop, which installed it without much problem at all. As noted above, the camera quality was not very good and the editing software is hard to use.

My recommendation: If you are interested in Chromakey (Green/Blue Screening) buy the Creation Station at one of the auction sites (I found a lot of 5 for the retail price of 1 here), keep the included "Bonus" material and Green Screen fabric, use the Camera & Tripod as "props", buy a cheap web cam or Flip Video (just love that product!), and Sony Vegas 8 Studio (really good inexpensive editing software with Chromakey).