How about the Sound?
 

The video that people have uploaded has been great, thanks for doing that. It looks like this will be my first HD camera. Before I begin my question let me preface it with I am a total amateur not really looking at the camera to make money, more of a home video type of guy right now.

But with most of the negative comments regarding the lack of an audio input, how is the sound with what you have recorded. Is it possible for people to upload just regular shots with no editing, basically to show what it sounds like. Sounds that would be nice to hear is the surrounding noise and then with somebody speaking around the camera. Some of the shots I have downloaded from people have some audio, if this includes your video and it has the audio from this camera then if you could let me know I would appreciate it.

Thank you for your time, I appreciate all of the videos that have been uploaded that have helped me come closer to buying this camera.

Hello Randy, others,

yes, understandibly, people 'focus' on picture quality very much. It seems there's a limited group of people who are very critical about sound, but who are at the same time willing to enter it in the trade off equasion along with camera size, PC, and other things. I, for one, would not consider a separate recording device, although I might consider a mic-on-a-shoe (yes I know, not supported on HV10).

So we are looking for good examples, and in this forum I found two:
- One is by Michael Fereira:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=82477
It is intended to sample low light performance, but there is a very interesting sound track: silent surroundigs, Michael talking clearly and closely, and at 35 seconds from the start, someone else quietly saying "can't see" (talk about low light :)).
- The other is by David Jones, at
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=83579
Now this is a clip of a slow zoom in (almost?) complete silence. Nice!

I put both of these to the test.

Uncorrected noise level comes in at around -37dB. Which is unnoticable in loud surroundings. But when you realize that voice recordings as the one from Michael may come in at around -10 db, leaving a lot of pauses in between, the noise is actualy a quarter of the perceived signal volume. And more if the speaker is further away from the cam as might usually be the case. TO ME this is 'acceptable' at best. I think.

Very important is that there is no noticeable motor noise from either tape transport or zoom. My current cam (Canon Optura 100MC (or as they call it here, the MVX1i), has far better S/N ratio (with much lower noise levels), but you can clearly hear the tape transport and even the iris ajusting constantly, so I prefer the HV10 in this respect.

If you want to hear my comparison, this is it:
http://www1.flyupload.com/get.php?fid=2129094
(1st up the hv10, followed by 100mc)

Next, I compressed and normalized the sound using Vegas' graphic dynamics. I do this usually to have close-to-0dB speech audio and lower noise values, when its important to the project. There are no ugly surprises, although it is a bit harder to obtain settings that create not-to-obvious gain effects.

Again, sample:
http://www.filecrunch.com/file/~2yjoch
Voice is up to around -3dB, noise is down to around -43dB, which is okay I guess.

My conclusion? I hesitate, leaning towards a 'go'. I wish I was more sure, because I love the rest of the cam...

Hope it helps a bit, I would like to hear what you think.
Regards,
Pieter