New: Canon PowerShot TX1 -- hybrid HD
 

http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/21/c...-and-hd-video/

It does uncompressed video though (bad!). But the price is lower than the Sanyo HD2.

I hope competition will drive down the price of the HD2.

The future is bright!

But it's sooooo ugly...


Nice price tag though.

Hmm, might need its own dedicated forum here... maybe.

Just to point out this is NOT an uncompressed camera. 720p 30p would only fit 72 seconds on a 4GB card. I think the compression used is jpeg which may or may not be like the Blackmagic jpeg codec. We do not know what bitrate is going to be used for this Canon jpeg format. It is very very far from uncompressed however. To me based on the 13 minutes of reported record time for a 4 GB card it seems as though the bitrate is somewhere just over 5MB/S which could be a little low for a intraframe based codec.

Traditionally they've always used Motion JPEG, writing .AVI files. I doubt this one is any different.

Is this saying that 720p mode is around 40Mb/s. What codec is it using?

http://64.233.179.104/translate_c?hl...006-17,GGGL:en

Re-edit:
Whoops, an bit late.

Argh - US only
 

Ther goes my plan for an vacation cam(cord)era. Corresponding to Camcorderinfo it is a US/Japan product only.

I am somewhat annoyed that most of these hybrid cams are 30 fps only, as this makes my life more difficult here in PAL-world.

This is also a 30 fps model, but since it uses MJPEG it is far easier to convert to 25 fps than any of the long GOP codecs.

Seems that Canon do not like us europeans ;^( and I have to find another hybrid camera for my vacation. Sanyo Xacti C5 are selling well here, so it can not be a market issue.

Clearly this has to be superior to the Sanyo. Same 1280x720/30p BUT with a higher pixel count sensor AND much better codec. MJPEG is awesome. Yes sure the record times are lower but SD cards are so cheap. Each 4GB Card will hold 13mins or 26mins for a 8GB card.

I am looking forward to the some sample clips from it.

This site has some more information. The Link was posted on the engadget website as well.

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0702/07022203canontx1.asp

I gotta say 13 mins. on a 4 Gb card seems a bit low. Certainly, 4 Gb cards aren't that expensive anymore and for those 200 bucks you'll save compared to the HD2 you can invest that in storage, BUT who wants to swap cards every ten minutes?

I mean lets face it. These cameras are for the casual filmers on occasions like weddings and holiday trips. I would reckon the average wedding takes more than ten minutes.

52 minutes of video equals 16 gigs for this camera
60 minutes of HDV video equals 13 gigs

That’s a much higher bit rate than HDV

AM I MISSING SOMETHING?

The whole point of the HDV format is to use the same recording media and same bandwidth as the DV format that came before it. Therefore, HDV had to be 25mbps and 13GB per hour. This little camera doesn't have that restriction. That's all you're missing. Neither does it have a variety of HDV format-specific features, such as stereo sound, or timecode, or an instant archival medium, or backward compatibility with DV cassettes.

So I guess this 500 dollar camera will give you much more detailed videos than the JVC HD110 which uses 19MBPS.

It would be amazing if the bit rate is indeed this high but for a 500 camera, it seams unbelievable.

Frankly I don't think bit rate has anything to do with quality or detail in an image. I've seen some very high bit rate stuff that looks like garbage, and some low bit rate stuff that looks amazing. As far as I'm concerned, it's all in the encoder. This thing is *no* replacement for an HD110 or any other HDV camcorder. It's just a digicam that has an interesting video mode if you ask me. Definitely in the Sanyo HD1/HD2 league... not that there's anything wrong with that...

I have had many Canon digital cameras and their know that the MJPEG codec is VERY good. It has none of the horrible bulky macroblocks found in MPEG-4 and other compressors in digicams, the Sanyo HD1 included.

Yes record times are low but well worth the super image quality IMO. Of course the the image quality won't be higher than HDV! But compared to other digital cameras and the Sanyo HD1/HD2, it will be a lot higher! Hopefully...

I totally agree with Chris. Bit rate by itself has little to do with quality or detail. There is much more that goes into play than just bit rate as the primary factor in determining/evaluating picture quality. Canon will be using some variant of MotionJPEG, a very good and well established compression scheme. MJPEG codec can be VERY, VERY good. Plus, added to the Digic-III circuitry and the legacy that Canon usually knows very well what they are doing while watching carefully the competition (let's not forget Canon is known for NEVER the first one to jump on any new-tech bandwagon and always waits for new stuff to mature a bit), I think the TX1 can far surpass the quality of the Sanyo HD2 and open the window of a lot of things to come. Canon has waited a long time to come out with a product like this, with over one year of carefully studying the pros and cons of the Sanyo HD series, and getting everything right to make a better design. The TX1 is a glimpse of the future. The Hybrid Cameras both capable of shooting both high quality stills and HD Video directly to RAM cards is, the shape of things to come. Also, if this camera uses the full raster of the CCD to downsample the full 16:9 image area of the CCD to a 1280x720 recording for Video capture, that can bring A LOT of detail to the image (the exact opposite of most cameras today using 3CCDs that have low-res imagers and then use pixel-shift and upsampling). I think this will be a great product... and if it shoots progressive @ 30fps... even better! :)

I think this camera deserve its new Section/Thread under something like Solid State Recording or Hybrid Cameras...

Kudos again for Canon!