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.
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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