New: Canon PowerShot TX1 -- hybrid HD

[Hse Kha]

Yes I know all that Chris. HDCAM is now even 4:4:4!

I meant the Canon Digital STILL Cameras, like the little SD series, etc. They don't have a particular format other just the MJPEG codec wrapped with WAV audio into an AVI container. I wonder if they aren't even YUV at all and RGB???

[Chris Hurd]

Aha -- HDCAM SR is 4:4:4, not HDCAM (which is 3:1:1 if I recall correctly).

Sorry I can't answer to the question of color space for the video mode of the little PowerShot digicams.

[Wayne Morellini]

Jpeg has three different pixel formats, depending on the % level, 4:2:0, 4:2:2 and 4:4:4, but I don't know if that transfers to forms of MJpeg. But going from the bit rate, it is way more than 6:1.

Panasonic is moving to AVC-Intra, and that would be an descent option at 35mb/s. I wish companies like this would offer 35mb/s at all resolutions (including SD).

[Aanarav Sareen]

As an FYI:

I'll be in Vegas at PMA, so if I get a chance to play around with the camera and capture some footage, I'll post it here. Should be a good pocket cam.

[Wayne Morellini]

Aanarav, while you are there, there might be some other cameras you might like to capture footage on? Their should be an Sanyo HD2, their might be an h264 Ambarella based HD camera, or more, and their might be one of those Samsung H264 based HD cameras. I can't say much more, but also have a look at what the cheap Taiwanese/Chinese manufacturers are doing, if they are there at all.


Thanks

Wayne.

[Aanarav Sareen]

Wayne,

I'll take a look. I may have to purchase some extra SD cards, but it will be interesting to see what these cameras are capable of.

- Aanarav

[Wayne Morellini]

Thanks for offering. You maybe able to fit it all on one, two second clips of normal light and motion, of dark light, and of dramatic motion, should do it. Long clips take an long time to download anyway, they can wait till cameras turn up.

[Alexander Wrana]

Originally Posted by Wayne Morellini

...their might be one of those Samsung H264 based HD cameras. ...
Thanks

Wayne.

Yeah, I remember Samsung announcing that Samsung SC-HDX15 camcorder in January 2006 to go on sale in summer of that same year. Well, I'm still waiting.

Looks like this time they announced the Samsung SC-HMX10 for September 2007. I'm sceptical.

[Wayne Morellini]

Notice that AVCHD raised it's head after the announcement. Now there is a delay of an year or more. Admittedly, this could be an manufacturing delay from the part they used, or to incorporate AVCHD standards etc. But what happened to the previous model?

[Balazs Rozsa]

Originally Posted by Hse Kha

I would LOVE to see video clips from this little camera. Anyone know a place to find one? Lots of Canon sties have images but no video! Not that I can find anyway...

Very probably you can predict the quality by looking at the video quality from the other Canon still cameras. Almost all of the current cameras can record 640x480 30 fps, some times 1024*768 15 fps. The bitrate of the TX1 is higher in proportion of how much more pixels the 1280x720 format has over the 640x480 format. So probably they use very similar encoding, only with more pixels. You can see a lot of samples on the internet for the VGA sized videos.

I regularly shoot video with a PowerShot A610. I prefer it to my normal video camera because it is not interlaced and on the computer screen it looks much sharper. Part of the sharpness may come from the fact that the camera uses a lot of pixels and the optics is also made for much higher resolutions. The most disturbing artifact is the aliasing at diagonal edges. I wonder maybe this is the result of using not all the pixels when shooting video. With CCD and CMOS imaging devices using not all the pixels of the device is a common way of achieving higher frame rates. Using pixels that have dead area between the pixels can result in aliasing at diagonal edges.

The TX1 uses the same DIGIC III chip as all the other new Canon cameras. So most probably all the other still cameras could have that high definition mode with very little effort. My problem with the TX1 is that its lens starts at 39 mm. I hope Canon will enable this high def video mode on one of its wider lens cameras that can use a wide conversion lens also. I plan to buy a new camera anyway (Canon) and the high def mode would be a very nice bonus.

[Balazs Rozsa]

About the TX1 data rate one interesting thing is that the Varicam uses 50 Mbps effectively for 30 fps which is not that much higher than 40 Mbps for the TX1. True Panasonis choosed a little bit reduced resolution for that rate.

[J. Stephen McDonald]

Some of us on another digital camera forum have been pondering the rumor that a soon-to-be announced successor to their S3-IS ultrazoom camera, will have an HD video mode. If this happens and it has a 12X or higher zoom, with the telexes and WA lenses that can be used with it, it could be an interesting second video camera to carry. The S3-IS has the same type of M-JPEG video mode for SD and it is highly-regarded for quality, although it has a hungry CoDec for memory-card space (about 8.5 minutes per gigabyte).

[Wayne Morellini]

Originally Posted by Balazs Rozsa

About the TX1 data rate one interesting thing is that the Varicam uses 50 Mbps effectively for 30 fps which is not that much higher than 40 Mbps for the TX1. True Panasonis choosed a little bit reduced resolution for that rate.

50mb/s for SD, but this is three times the pixels, 150mb/s (if, 4:2:2) should give similar quality in 720p, or around 108mb/s in 4:2:0 720p. How much is DVCPRO HD in 720p, was it 70mb/s? It is just cheap as compression, would be good if it was smoothing better like AVC Intra/Inter, Mpeg4, even Mpeg2.

[Balazs Rozsa]

DVCPRO HD in 720p is 100 Mbps for 60 fps. For 30 fps this is 50 Mbps.

[Wayne Morellini]

Sorry, I thought it was different. Still, the compression factor is nearly double that of the Canon.