Panasonic prosumer AVCHD camcorder, AG-HSC1U.
 

Panasonic prosumer AVCHD camcorder, AG-HSC1U.

hi-res. photo:
http://panasonic.biz/sav/news/070117/AG-HSC1U.jpg

Japanese press release:
http://panasonic.biz/sav/news/070117/070117_02.html

I'm buying this one for the on-board stuff and HDMI testing with Blackmagic Design's Intensity board.

The Japanese news release page indicates that they will be making a "stationary" (corrected from me saying portable) deck with HDSDI based on this.

It's your fault
 

Kaku! You know, it's your fault that I'm a P2-dude now; it was your posts and sample clips of the HVX over a year ago that got me hooked with testing the HVX - and now I'm one of the biggest proponents of the P2 system.

So here it is a year later and once again you're teasing me with yet another soon-to-come-to-US-shores camera that just like the HVX, shows amazing promise. Damn you, Kaku - cut it out!! (big laughs)

That would be a cool adapter camera.

Sorry Robert, it's just my nature, keep buying.

I really had some frustration with trying to connect HVX200 to my G5 at that point and wasn't working out well then I left HVX200. But now I look back and watch the stuff shot with HVX200, it is really nice. HDV seems to go lower resolution when the cam gets busy, but DVCPRO HD doesn't seem to be. Is it true everyone?

I put together little clips from HV10 and HX200 here.

But with the prosumer AVCHD camera might be pretty interesting to have around. I just want to see how AVCHD performs for fast moving objects.

The idea on SD card is good, the cards are already popular so the prices would even go down in the future. But this cam seems to miss external control like LANC. I tested the consumer version at a shop and the manual focus seems to work okay, can't really focus fast in wider range but I can probably use the onetouch auto thing, also the focus assist magnifier thing worked pretty well.

Another questing would be converting the clips to whatever FCP can edit. I took a transport codec file from Sony's AVCHD cam (from the DVD), transcoded with MPEG Transport to HDV and it seems to work fine (the FX1 days, it was transcoding poorly, but the time has passed and Squared 5 seemed to worked it out.

I didn't read the press release well, but the portabel HDD storage comes with the cameara. I wonder how much they're going to charge for this cam.

Thanks for the picture. That shows up nicely the poor placement of the microphone which I read about in a review. The reviewer said that it was pointing up which helped capture every breath or hand movement of the person filming and overhead airplanes but was very poor for capturing something in front of the camera. Or words to that effect.

That being said, I'm sure that most pro's will have some other source for sound when using a camera like this, I know I do. But I have always liked having the peace of mind of knowing that I have a second (or third) sound source in case there is a problem with the main feed.

Otherwise this looks interesting

In Onodera's review, he mentioned that the quality is poor for fast moving objects or camera work. I won't buy it until I found how poor or well.

The irony about this camera is that it lacks the pro features found in the old consumer-level GS400 (focus ring, zebras...). And this camera has a AG prefix, so it's supposed to be pro.

Just incase some of you haven’t seen it; we do have a thread for it.
http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=85746

Anyway, the package is going to retail for 2100 dollars and because of the Canon HV20 I suspect at least a 100 dollar price drop. The picture quality of their consumer NTSC version, the SD1 is a whole lot better than the Sony SR1 and the PAL version of the SD1 possibly had better electronics because its been reported to be as sharp as the Canon XH-A1 although the resolution is not as good. Since this professional version have even better electronics, there is a possibility that the picture quality exceeds HDV. That’s coming from a camcorder that shoots in 13MBPS.

I got to test this model.

Functionalities look all the same but they tuned the color to match HVX200.
The design was a lot better than the consumer (same shape but different material and colors). It looked like the G-shock looking SD videocam that they have, grey and black.

Caution: Pro is mainly just marketing
 

I understand that Panasonic is trying to cash in on the pro market's curiosity with AVCHD. The HSC1U will not be any better, quality wise, than the sd1. It gives you a few more features and the ability to dump your cards to a hard drive, but Panasonic also isn't saying that you can record directly to the hard drive, so this may not be a hybrid system.

Think about it: 41 minutes on a 4gb card in the camcorders highest quality. It doesn't matter the efficiency of AVCHD. Highly compressed high definition is just that... highly compressed. This means compression artifacts, which no doubt will be seen in video with lots of motion, like HDV.

If they want to really entice us professionals, let's see a real pro AVCHD camera with the codec's max quality of 24 mb/s with at least 3 1/3rd inch CCDs, not 1/5 or 1/4 inch. Manual controls, presets, good zoom lens, etc. and a true hybrid system. If this is priced around 4K, it will draw my interest.

Certainly it does not have "pro" functions.

They probably couldn't get any better wording.

My testing with Xacti HD1 on my bike was pretty good, so I'm always anxious for solidsate videocam.
I tested the onboard with HSC1U but it picked up vibrations too much.
For fast panning with fast object in front of grassy area, it does not break up like HDV(besides JVC that I haven't tested), but entire picture looks more compressed (gets harsh looking like highly compressed JPEG). Overall, it does amazing job for recording on miniSD, but pros won't depend on HDV nor AVCHD at this moment (again, not certain about 720p on JVC).