Can someone upload 1 minute of AG-HMC40 footage untouched
 

I'm trying to decide on purchasing one of these, and I would like to have a nice sample of its footage at the highest setting (PH) in 1080i, so I can load it up in Vegas and Premiere and see how it responds, and how it looks on my TV set. Just a 1 or 2 minute file uploaded to Mediafire or anything like that would be great. I googled AG-HMC40 footage but all I got was a lot of Vimeo and YouTube links, but I want pure footage transferred from the camera, not recompressed. I'd really appreciate it if somebody could do this for me.

Thanks

I can't get to it anytime soon, but I'll see what I can do maybe next week. I've got plenty of space with 1and1, so that's no problem (although the upload will take a little while with my slow-ass DSL).

Btw, I can tell you flat out, that properly shot footage out of an HMC40 will look absolutely great on your TV. With good lighting, the HMC40 can easily hold it's own with far more expensive camcorders.

Thanks, Robert, I actually bought it and I received it today, so I have some test footage already. Looks really great, although not as good as my Canon HF100. It may be a matter of taste in colors, but to me Canon produces the best colors I've ever seen, even for a consumer camcorder. I also like how easy it is to choose a white balance setting in the Canon as opposed to the Panasonic; in the Canon, you have about 6 presets that are rather easy to reach and they help you get the right WB fast, but the Panasonic is more difficult to adjust, and it defaults to blueish, which can be seen especially in shadows. It makes for a fantastic sky color, though.

Overall, from the footage I just shot, I can tell it's a great camera.

You can adjust the color and gamma of the image acquired considerably with the HMC40. It's pretty robust for control of image acquisition - grab the manual and do some experimenting, to get the color you want from it. I'm sure you can match the HF100 or come awfully dang close, if you want. I'm surprised that you find WB difficult with the HMC40. I find it really easy to set manual white balance with the camera (only takes a few seconds).

All in all, if you setup the HMC40 next to an EX1, with ideal lighting and both cameras properly adjusted, I'd be mildly surprised if the EX1 produced a noticeably better image (in any format). It would be close, I'm sure.

Hi there, whats the deal with AVCHD is it highly compressed opposed to HDV? and if so, why is there such an issue regarding powerful pcs to edit it? I REALLY want to get the HMC-40 but just don't wanna get caught out.

The Reason is...
 

..and I'm sure better minds can speak to this but in my experience, AVCHD is very highly compressed, yet it uses a larger bit-rate so the camera is capturing more image information. ( I base this from comparing my HDV Sony HVR-HD1000U to my Panny HMC 40)

When I capture my AVCHD, I first have to trans-code o my Mac to Apple ProRes 422. Not a pain per-se BUT, (and I do mean BUT) the end result file is huge.

How huge? My last wedding I shot took up 3 16GB cards, and on my hard drive the converted footage is over 200GB.

The weird thing is, honestly, I can't really see a big difference in the quality of the footage between the two cameras, but then I am still a newbie...

I have both a HMC40 and an HF10 ..... I'm trying to understand why you think its harder to set WB on the HMC? It's just pushing the WB button to cycle through the presets, or applying a slightly longer push to have the camera read the ambient light and adjust accordingly.