I ask this here, if you allow me (no dedicated forum for panasonic consumer cams).
I have copied 2 lines from this camera's specs:

1 Opnameformat 1080 / 50p : MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 (originele formaat), HA / HG / HX / HE : MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 (AVCHD standard compliant)

What is meant by 'original format' and 'AVCHD compliant' (and what stands HA, HG, HX, HE for?)
Are these MPEG4 AVC/H.264 movie files the same as in the canon HF S series (I mean with regard to importing them in any NLE software)?


2 Opname mode 1080 / 50p (28Mbps / VBR) , (1920 x 1080) / HA (17Mbps / VBR) , (1920 x 1080) / HG (13Mbps / VBR) , (1920 x 1080) / HX (9Mbps / VBR) , (1920 x 1080) / HE (5Mbps / VBR) , (1920 x 1080)

I thought the 24 Mbps that for example the canon HF S series give us is the max. bitrate for AVCHD. So where is the 28 Mbps in this cam suddenly coming from?

A good question as the published AVCHD spec only goes up to c24Mbps (I think). This looks like a Panasonic development to support what they call Full HD 1920 x 1080/progressive recording. According to their web site it saves the image in this format and does not down convert to 1440 x 1080. See here:
HDC-HS700/HDC-TM700/HDC-SD700 | HD Camcorder | Panasonic Global (http://panasonic.net/avc/camcorder/hd/hs700_tm700_sd700/)
and check the sidebar What`s Full HD.

The other formats are AVCHD compliant. It will interesting to see which NLEs, players and monitors are able to display this new format.

Is there a way to put a letus on one of these cams? I think the threads on the front of the cam are 46mm which is odd.

I have the HS700 US standard. All I can say is that I've taken the 1080, 60P footage into Adobe Premere on a Mac platform and it seems to identify it as so. The time line edits fine and plays fine. However, I haven't tried to "down convert" the footage to DVD or Blueray specs as yet.

AVCHD is a specification based on H.264 encoded video. Part of the specification is a max bitrate of 24MBps. Another part of the spec is no progressive 1080, only interlaced 1080. But H.264 itself can handle higher bitrates.

So what Panasonic is saying is that the camera offers several options that meet the official AVCHD spec - at various qualities/bitrates (so yes, the letter codes signify these, similarly to the Canons).

Then, in addition, they offer an "out-of-spec" option of 28MBps 1080P60, which is 'original' (i.e. unique) to Panasonic.

Some NLEs (eg CS5) can edit this footage already - more will soon I'm sure. Where there are constraints presently is in how you would play the 60P footage back. On the computer is fine, but you will have to convert it to have it play on DVD or BluRay. The best option presently would be one of the hard-drive based 'media boxes' - the ones with the latest chips can handle 1080P60.