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The Sony Ericsson Xperia Active can record videos at up to 720p resolution, which it dumps to your SD card in MP4 format. The LED flash can be left on permanently, too, if you're into filming badgers at night.
As with the Xperia Arc S, there's a crazy 16x digital zoom in here that can be used while recording clips, but zoom in any more than two or three times and it makes a right mess of the resulting images.
The video camera app is largely the same as when taking stills, with manual white balance options, Centre Average or Spot metering, a self-timer, the option to not bother recording sound and a digital image stabiliser.
The Sony Ericsson Xperia Active has a good autofocus system when recording clips, usually managing to focus on the subject after a couple of seconds. If you're not a fan of continual focusing you can select fixed Infinity focus, or stick it on constant face detection.
Videos are pretty good. At maximum resolution, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Active produces smooth results, with the desktop VLC Player app telling us the frame rates are a constant 29fps.
It's not the sharpest or clearest footage in the world, though. As with the still camera, some background details get rather overlooked, with trees and grass interpreted as vague smudges.
There's a rudimentary video editing tool hidden away in the Gallery, which enables you to trim the start and end point of your clips. But that's all it does.
