For the camera in my race car, I'm looking to move up from Hi-8 to something digital, high def, progressive, 60 fps and tapeless. Those constraints narrow the field. If I add one more constraint, "encoded at a bit rate that doesn't suck for high motion video", I don't think there are any consumer units that fit the bill.
The Panasonic AG-HVX200 looks very interesting, although its (entry level) pro-video price tag makes me long for the $700 Sanyo HD1000 consumer unit. Although it's not really full HD (960x720@60p), at a certain point the quality of optics and compression trump pixel count. I like the fact that the media slides out of the camera and right into a Mac (or PC), or even better, it can record to an external disk.
Keep the info coming, I'm interested in a high def for my next camera purchase.
The HVX200 is sweet. From everything I've read, it's a technological tour de force. The storage media is based on SD flash memory in a RAID array, to support screaming fast recording rates. The optics, etc., etc. are at a whole different level than consumer electronics. This camera could be used to make a feature film (well, an indy feature).
When Panasonic goes through their next format change, they'll likely bump up the compression format from DVC PRO HD (100 Mbps 3/4 horizontal resolution MPEG-2 Intra), to AVC-Intra (same data rate, but way, way better compression algorithm --> near transparent compression).
In the meantime, I can get the Sanyo at the price of a single memory card for the HVX200. It's bound to be a huge leap in performance over my old Hi-8. And it does 720p. I reject 1080i as a capture format. In general, interlace is just wrong. It was a necessary evil in the middle of the 20th century, but its time has passed. I also reject 30p. One thing the TV people got right was the picture rate. 30 frames doesn't cut it. 24 frames makes my eyes hurt. I prefer 4:2:2, as found in the pro formats. But I'm willing to live with 4:2:0 (lower resolution chroma), esp. since it's progressive. And there's a $120 wide angle adapter to get to 27 mm (in 35mm equivalent)
Since the Sanyo is AVC-based and uses GOPs ("groups of pictures", an alternative to Intra coding, in which each frame is entirely standalone), the data rate is about 1/8th that of DVC PRO HD. I know a good job can be done with 720p AVC at 12 Mbps. It won't be artifact free, but it could be good. I'll have to look at Sanyo's implementation and see how they did. (Another reason for progressive -- at lower data rates it degrades more gracefully than interface.)
(Sony, Panasonic, JVC and Canon are using a branding called AVCHD(tm), which is a particular of flavor of AVC ... HD. Sanyo is not part of that program, and their AVC profile might be a little different. The tools are increasingly agnostic about those differences.)
I think I have to go to a store and play with one. (Pardon me sir, but could I run around the parking lot making vrooom, vrooom noises while testing your camera?)
Another thing ... work flow. The Sanyo's file format is supported by Quicktime. Step 1 "record" Step 2 "????" Step 3 "upload".
In Canada the price is from $4,999.00 to $7,399.00. Although our dollar is par with yours, I'm betting that the American price is much lower. (since our dollar has started to rise, we have been gouged by retailers, and I'm talking about new stock that has been purchase with the stronger currency)
US$5k is pretty good price. There are some cheaper prices from no-name online retailers. Then add a wide angle adapter, a couple P2 cards or the HD recorder, and you're up to $7-8k real fast.
At the bottom of this page, there's a link to a music video shot with the Sanyo HD1000. With some work mousing around the video page, you can get to the "HD" version. I suspect it's 1280x720p30. The motion is too jerky to be 60p. I'm favorably impressed. With high motion, there's loss of resolution, but it's not hideous. It's fairly natural looking lossiness. I noticed some motion artifacts (video tearing) on playback, but I think it was just my laptop having trouble keeping up. Stepping through frame by frame, they looked fine.
$700 camera/dock + SD card + $120 for wide angle + extra SD cards < $1k.
Not bad for "HD Lite".
Here's a frame from the video, showing the Sanyo HD1000 hitting the wall (assuming it wasn't hammered in post, like the lower res versions *were*). There's a pile on effect with JPEG-ing the screen shot, but most of the loss of detail is in the video.
I'm really baffled by the lack of 720p60 in the consumer market. It must be about specsmanship. 1920 by 1080 is "real HD", never mind that most consumer cameras have no business trying to record video at that resolution. 1440x1080i and 960x720p are a better match for the optics and codecs. (An old trick in video compression is to lower the horizontal resolution to 3/4 or 2/3 unless you have a huge number of bits available.) And as I mentioned above: interlace is teh suck. I wonder if it's part herd mentality (well, Sony doesn't do 720p, so we don't need to either.)
So really, for the 720p60 nut, it's just the Sanyo (and a not fully baked Samsung entry based around the same Ambarella compression chip), and the Panasonic HVX200, with nothing in between -- as far as I can tell. (JVC supports 720p in some pro cameras that make the HVX200 really stand out as a bargain.)
In my pre-review, the Sanyo lack a few things (besides really nice optics and 3 CCD chips). The bit rate and resolution should be decoupled. Why can't I do 480p60 at 12 Mbps? That would produce some really clean video at medium resolution. And why is 16:9 available only at 1080i and 720p resolutions? That choice should also be decoupled. The underlying chips can do these things. Also, why is 12 Mbps the top bit rate? The chip can easily go to 18 Mbps.
Some product marketing guy made the wrong choices in spec'ing the system, IMHO. If they had a 16:9 720x480@60p 12 Mbps mode, and a 16:9 960x720p@60p 18 Mbps mode, I would use those most of the time, with some occasional 240p stuff.
One thing they did nail was the "YouTube mode" -- 320x240@30p. That's what the vast majority of web video is going to be for a while. And you can go straight from the camera files to YouTube upload. The other modes are "straight to Quicktime", which is also pretty slick. AVCHD(tm) adopted by the major Japanese players isn't a straight to Quicktime format. I'm not sure what they're using that Apple doesn't like.
Later today I'm likely to hit the "buy" button on the Sanyo. While I teach myself to be an HD videographer, I'll save up for the AVC-Intra successor to the HVX200.
New HD tapeless camcorder from Sony. It's in the price range of the Panasonic HVX200. It has full horizontal resolution, and monster 1/2" sensors. It uses high bit rate (and variable bit rate) long GOP MPEG-2, vs. intra coded MPEG-2. Why no AVC? It supports 1080p -- not at 60 fps, but 30 or 24. Detailed review.
I got the Sanyo yesterday, and tried it out today.
On a 50" plasma, with my nose to the screen, it reeks "consumer". The sensor is noisy, which gives fits to compression algorithms. They have the "i-frame beating" problem that is an issue for many 264 implementations. Interior shots can be darn noisy. I haven't played with it outdoors much, but I expect much less noise in a bright environment.
With the right version of Quicktime (7.1.6 on Windows), I can take the SD card right out of the camera, pop it into the computer and play video.
On my 20" computer display, it actually looks pretty decent -- downright HD-ish.
- click image for full size screen shot
- some detail lost to JPEG, but not a huge amount
- screen capture from 1280 x 720 at 60p stream, stationary camera, minimal movement in scene
For the camera in my race car, I'm looking to move up from Hi-8 to something digital, high def, progressive, 60 fps and tapeless. Those constraints narrow the field. If I add one more constraint, "encoded at a bit rate that doesn't suck for high motion video", I don't think there are any consumer units that fit the bill.
The Panasonic AG-HVX200 looks very interesting, although its (entry level) pro-video price tag makes me long for the $700 Sanyo HD1000 consumer unit. Although it's not really full HD (960x720@60p), at a certain point the quality of optics and compression trump pixel count. I like the fact that the media slides out of the camera and right into a Mac (or PC), or even better, it can record to an external disk.
- mark 12-01-2007 4:30 am
Keep the info coming, I'm interested in a high def for my next camera purchase.
- L.M. 12-01-2007 5:39 am [add a comment]
The HVX200 is sweet. From everything I've read, it's a technological tour de force. The storage media is based on SD flash memory in a RAID array, to support screaming fast recording rates. The optics, etc., etc. are at a whole different level than consumer electronics. This camera could be used to make a feature film (well, an indy feature).
When Panasonic goes through their next format change, they'll likely bump up the compression format from DVC PRO HD (100 Mbps 3/4 horizontal resolution MPEG-2 Intra), to AVC-Intra (same data rate, but way, way better compression algorithm --> near transparent compression).
In the meantime, I can get the Sanyo at the price of a single memory card for the HVX200. It's bound to be a huge leap in performance over my old Hi-8. And it does 720p. I reject 1080i as a capture format. In general, interlace is just wrong. It was a necessary evil in the middle of the 20th century, but its time has passed. I also reject 30p. One thing the TV people got right was the picture rate. 30 frames doesn't cut it. 24 frames makes my eyes hurt. I prefer 4:2:2, as found in the pro formats. But I'm willing to live with 4:2:0 (lower resolution chroma), esp. since it's progressive. And there's a $120 wide angle adapter to get to 27 mm (in 35mm equivalent)
Since the Sanyo is AVC-based and uses GOPs ("groups of pictures", an alternative to Intra coding, in which each frame is entirely standalone), the data rate is about 1/8th that of DVC PRO HD. I know a good job can be done with 720p AVC at 12 Mbps. It won't be artifact free, but it could be good. I'll have to look at Sanyo's implementation and see how they did. (Another reason for progressive -- at lower data rates it degrades more gracefully than interface.)
(Sony, Panasonic, JVC and Canon are using a branding called AVCHD(tm), which is a particular of flavor of AVC ... HD. Sanyo is not part of that program, and their AVC profile might be a little different. The tools are increasingly agnostic about those differences.)
I think I have to go to a store and play with one. (Pardon me sir, but could I run around the parking lot making vrooom, vrooom noises while testing your camera?)
- mark 12-01-2007 10:16 am [add a comment]
Another thing ... work flow. The Sanyo's file format is supported by Quicktime. Step 1 "record" Step 2 "????" Step 3 "upload".
- mark 12-01-2007 10:26 am [add a comment]
In Canada the price is from $4,999.00 to $7,399.00. Although our dollar is par with yours, I'm betting that the American price is much lower. (since our dollar has started to rise, we have been gouged by retailers, and I'm talking about new stock that has been purchase with the stronger currency)
- L.M. 12-01-2007 10:31 am [add a comment]
US$5k is pretty good price. There are some cheaper prices from no-name online retailers. Then add a wide angle adapter, a couple P2 cards or the HD recorder, and you're up to $7-8k real fast.
At the bottom of this page, there's a link to a music video shot with the Sanyo HD1000. With some work mousing around the video page, you can get to the "HD" version. I suspect it's 1280x720p30. The motion is too jerky to be 60p. I'm favorably impressed. With high motion, there's loss of resolution, but it's not hideous. It's fairly natural looking lossiness. I noticed some motion artifacts (video tearing) on playback, but I think it was just my laptop having trouble keeping up. Stepping through frame by frame, they looked fine.
$700 camera/dock + SD card + $120 for wide angle + extra SD cards < $1k.
Not bad for "HD Lite".
- mark 12-01-2007 11:55 am [add a comment]
Here's a frame from the video, showing the Sanyo HD1000 hitting the wall (assuming it wasn't hammered in post, like the lower res versions *were*). There's a pile on effect with JPEG-ing the screen shot, but most of the loss of detail is in the video.
- mark 12-01-2007 12:12 pm [add a comment]
I'm really baffled by the lack of 720p60 in the consumer market. It must be about specsmanship. 1920 by 1080 is "real HD", never mind that most consumer cameras have no business trying to record video at that resolution. 1440x1080i and 960x720p are a better match for the optics and codecs. (An old trick in video compression is to lower the horizontal resolution to 3/4 or 2/3 unless you have a huge number of bits available.) And as I mentioned above: interlace is teh suck. I wonder if it's part herd mentality (well, Sony doesn't do 720p, so we don't need to either.)
So really, for the 720p60 nut, it's just the Sanyo (and a not fully baked Samsung entry based around the same Ambarella compression chip), and the Panasonic HVX200, with nothing in between -- as far as I can tell. (JVC supports 720p in some pro cameras that make the HVX200 really stand out as a bargain.)
In my pre-review, the Sanyo lack a few things (besides really nice optics and 3 CCD chips). The bit rate and resolution should be decoupled. Why can't I do 480p60 at 12 Mbps? That would produce some really clean video at medium resolution. And why is 16:9 available only at 1080i and 720p resolutions? That choice should also be decoupled. The underlying chips can do these things. Also, why is 12 Mbps the top bit rate? The chip can easily go to 18 Mbps.
Some product marketing guy made the wrong choices in spec'ing the system, IMHO. If they had a 16:9 720x480@60p 12 Mbps mode, and a 16:9 960x720p@60p 18 Mbps mode, I would use those most of the time, with some occasional 240p stuff.
One thing they did nail was the "YouTube mode" -- 320x240@30p. That's what the vast majority of web video is going to be for a while. And you can go straight from the camera files to YouTube upload. The other modes are "straight to Quicktime", which is also pretty slick. AVCHD(tm) adopted by the major Japanese players isn't a straight to Quicktime format. I'm not sure what they're using that Apple doesn't like.
Later today I'm likely to hit the "buy" button on the Sanyo. While I teach myself to be an HD videographer, I'll save up for the AVC-Intra successor to the HVX200.
- mark 12-02-2007 11:32 pm [add a comment]
New HD tapeless camcorder from Sony. It's in the price range of the Panasonic HVX200. It has full horizontal resolution, and monster 1/2" sensors. It uses high bit rate (and variable bit rate) long GOP MPEG-2, vs. intra coded MPEG-2. Why no AVC? It supports 1080p -- not at 60 fps, but 30 or 24. Detailed review.
- mark 12-11-2007 11:44 am [add a comment]
I got the Sanyo yesterday, and tried it out today.
On a 50" plasma, with my nose to the screen, it reeks "consumer". The sensor is noisy, which gives fits to compression algorithms. They have the "i-frame beating" problem that is an issue for many 264 implementations. Interior shots can be darn noisy. I haven't played with it outdoors much, but I expect much less noise in a bright environment.
With the right version of Quicktime (7.1.6 on Windows), I can take the SD card right out of the camera, pop it into the computer and play video.
On my 20" computer display, it actually looks pretty decent -- downright HD-ish.
- mark 12-13-2007 1:38 am [add a comment]
- click image for full size screen shot
- some detail lost to JPEG, but not a huge amount
- screen capture from 1280 x 720 at 60p stream, stationary camera, minimal movement in scene
- mark 12-13-2007 1:51 am [add a comment]