Detailed Review of Panasonic HDC SD-1
 

The careful Japanese reviewer whose name is machine translated to "Small Temple Trust" has published his report on the Panasonic HDC SD-1. A machine translated version is available at:
http://tinyurl.com/ykzgu3

You beat me too it ;). Been sitting on that site for an month waiting for the review.

Here is the link to the actual page:
http://64.233.179.104/translate_c?hl...006-17,GGGL:en

Looks interesting. What does everybody make of it? There are a few concerns there, but I can't decipher them. I also can't tell what they thought of the camera compared to the Sony AVCHD models.

While the low light performance has yet to be established, from the 106Mb m2ts file in that review, looks remarkable similiar in definition and latitude to my Sanyo!! Maybe the image stabiliser is better: that's the let down on the Sanyo, though I note that the Panny shots in that clip are tripod based.

So glad to see some real unedited raw footage and...

Well this confirmed my initial fear of having such lowly res CCDs. What is the point of 3 CDDs when they are such low resolution? In my opinion there is no comparison to the 1 Chip of the Canon HV-10 or even the Sony HC3, etc.

OK, OK the colors may be more accurate by a little bit (of noticeable at all), but resolution is way more important to the overal image quality. Give me half a CCD with high res than 10 CCDs with such ridiculously low pixel count.

Very sad. I was really looking forward to the first ever Solid State HD Camcorder (consumer model), but then again Panasonic have never been one to use high res sensors...

I wish Canon would come out with the AVCHD camcorder with the exact same sensor and lens as in the HV10, but put it in a nice small body and use SD cards and allow the full bit rate of 24Mbps AND the full 1920x1080 resolution that AVCHD allows (no 1440x1080). That would be somethng... :)

P.S. Not to mention the crazy price of US $1499 for this camcorder AND the huge size! Bigger than the Canon HV10! Well done Panny...

Compared to the SR1, the SD-1 doesn’t have a focusing ring and a microphone input and the SD1 has a constant bit rate of 13MBPS while the SR1 has variable bit rate of about 15MBPS than can probably go up to 18MBPS so it shouldn’t be surprising for the picture quality of the SD1 to not be better than the picture quality of the SR1 because of the lower bit rate but the SD1 does have an optical image stabilizer and it is a lot more compact than the SR1.

Not a bad little camcorder but the price should be around 1200 dollars since its competing with the HV10.

I think the size is fairly similar. You make it seam like its a lot bigger.

More like $499. You see the plastic on the fold put port cover. But let me ask, as this is hard to read the translation:

Are they actually saying it is lower resolution then the Sony, or is that based off off the resolution of the pixel shifted chips?
You can get real resolution out of pixel shift, if the manufacturer chooses to offer it.

Those downloads are reseting everytime I try to resume them, I am going away and I doubt I will have time to download them all. So, can somebody tell me, is there any low light footage to prove the statement that Sanyo is them same, because Sanyo is bad, maybe they are shooting even lower light?

Is there any properly done footage of high contrast, the shots we saw earlier seem to indicate it is better than Sanyo HD1a? But much depends on handling of camera exposure and filters in these (and also the effect of latitude of Earth on sun brightness).

Is it really saying that noise is better than Sony AVCHD cameras, or am I misreading that?

I would love it, as long as the above issues are not a problem and price is half.

Given that it's a translation by software, what you are reading is likely very far off from accurate; we've seen this time and time again.
The images/footage posted are not raw images, if I'm understanding the translation correctly (and I'm probably not) so who knows what compression/encoder/software was used to create the on-line versions.

The M2TS downloads are raw footage.

Ouch. Based on the "With Adobe Premiere Elements+VAIO Edit Component to compile the image which photographed and have knocked down and mix to 2ch. As for bit rate 15Mbps. You encode WMV type with 10Mbps VBR" and the "Editorial staff note: As for the animated picture sample, H.264 when photographing (.m2ts) with, the WMV type which is encoded with 10Mbps VBR. As for playback environment because it differs depending upon video card and driver, OS and the playback software, guarantee of playback of the animated picture which is published is unable to do." comments, I'd assumed they'd gone into Premiere Elements to convert the footage.
I hope it's my decoder making those downloads look as poor as they do?

The fact that the camcorder’s CCDs are ¼” makes the price somewhat justifiable doesn’t it? The low light capabilities should be very good. Panasonic kept the pixel count that low to increase the light sensitivity even more.

Either Nero, Divx or VLC should have a priority in fixing the playback issues.

Anyway, CES is just around the corner so if you don’t like the camcorders that are out already then you may like some of the camcorders that may be showing.

The speed of your computer would only affect framerate of playback, not quality of frame content. However, if you have a poor decoder/cheap decoder it could affect quality of image.

Spot,
I took that to mean that they encoded the WMV that way. The M2TS files that I have seen are raw as far as I can tell. There are other raw MTS and M2TS files posted around the 'Net and the video look similar. I would love to be wrong because I'm not impressed with the resolution.

Just as long as you are aware this is a 3-sensor camera and the Canon is a one sensor Bayer filter camera. So the Canon's resolution is actually a bit less. Which is not to say it isn't a great camera...if it only had audio input!

For some reason I can not play the raw footage on my MacBook but am I right in concluding that you all think that this is a too expensive camera, especially compared to the Sanyo HD1a which does almost the same job at half the price?

The SD-1 has three 1/4” CCDs. The HD1a has only 1 CCD, 13MBPS compared to 9MBPS.

If the Sanyo had a CMOS chip and a much higher bit rate then the camcorder would have been close to the Panasonic’s, but as is, the HD1a doesn’t even come close to the quality of the SD-1 or DX-1.

Speaking only for myself, I would say that specs are interesting and informative, but the purpose of an HD camera is to produce video to be seen on an HDTV. Getting the AVCHD clips to play is a problem all by itself, but so far on my Sony 60 inch model, what I have been able to find and sort of play looks soft.

The Sanyo HD1 is obviously in a different class from cameras costing twice as much or more (and that are twice or many times as big), but the quality of its video, when shot in good light and seen on a good HDTV, is quite amazing. So far, I haven't seen AVCHD clips that are a lot better, and the Sanyo 5MP stills are actually better.

A good example of what it can do (not mine) can be seen at:
http://hd1a.com/2006/reichstag.MP4

If the Panasonic SD-1 proves to be a lot better, I will be the first in line to buy one (as you can tell from my parking on the Japanese web sites to find the first review). So far, I am underwhelmed, as I have been by the Sony versions that I have actually seen, and hooked up to an HDTV. The Canon HDV looks a little better, but I am too old to go back to tape.

I am hoping that Sanyo, or others, will have something interesting to show at CES. I'd be happiest with a Sanyo that had an f 1.9 lens, like the competition.

The SD-1 does come with a 4 gig memory card and the price is for the Japanese market, so the US model may actually be a bit cheaper.

Panasonic was trying to get good video first, and then put a still camera mode as an added bonus. Sanyo on the other hand tried to have good video and pictures at the same time which is why they added to many pixels on the CCD. With that size CCD, the HD1a would have worked marvelously in low light situations if it had fewer, larger pixels. It shouldn’t be higher than 2.5 to 3.0 mega pixel. 2.0 would have been very good.

The 600 hundred dollar price for the Sanyo HD1a is a very good deal by the way, so I hope my posts don’t sound like the Sanyo HD1a isn’t worth having.

I was hoping that we could see a camera on the market this year for $1,000 which would do great HD 720p , 60 fps under all conditions including low light. But from what I am reading even the Panasonic doesn't seem to be a very good deal. I still am considering buying the Sanyo because it's so cheap and I have seen some really great footage. But the Sanyo is very bad under low light conditions and the autofocus is dreadful. And the footage I've seen was only good when it was filmed with a very steady hand :).

I still own a Panasoniv AV 100 camera ( http://dylan.tweney.com/images/dsnap.jpg ) which is a great SD camera. I like the size of the camera and I can't wait until Panasonic, Canon or Sanyo come up with this size HD camera that shoots on SD. (No tapes for me, too unconveniant and no HDD , too much recording noise)

Currently it looks like the SD-1 offers lower resolution compared with the Canon HV10, Sony HC3 and even Sony's AVCHD cameras. I assume the low-res 3CCD+Pixel shift scheme is to be blamed. At the moment I don't think it can compete with non of the above cameras, especially with its high price tag. But I assume that in two years, AVCHD + Solid-state memory will be the way to go for the consumer market (Assuming that 16 GB SDHC will cost around 80-90$).

Check out this review. Might sound to good to be true!

http://www.simplydv.co.uk/Reviews/pa...c_hdc-sd1.html

How can I play M2TS files on my MacBook?

So it seems the best thing to buy on the market! Why was there so much doubt then? It might be twice as expensive as the Sanyo HD1a but this is the one we need to buy right now! I will check my creditcard :)

Cliff,
I would wait if I were you. Right now, there is nothing for the Mac for playback or editing. Heck, even the PCs are having trouble playing the M2TS and MTS files although Elecard has a converter suite that will convert AVCHD into high bitrate MPEG2. Also, a comprehensive review has not been done on this cam yet. All we have so far are subjective comments and a few files from which it is hard to judge quality. Low light videos I've seen look promising but, again, it is hard to know just how good since we don't know the light level they were shot in.

BTW, I was able to read the metadata from the Watch Impress videos using the Elecard Converter Studio. Those files are raw AVCHD which should answer a question raised earlier in this thread. All the more reason to wait for comprehensive testing as the video quality of those files is not as good as I was expecting from AVCHD.

Because of the low pixel count ¼” CCDs, It’s really not surprising that this camcorder has much better low light qualities than the SR1 but I would have liked the reviewer to compare outdoor footage to indoor footage because the SR1 has a higher bit rate than the SD1. If the footage of this camcorder is better than the SR1 in outdoor shots as well then you can definitely consider this a better buy than the SR1.

I’m a little confused about how are you able to focus with this because the reviewer says it has manual focusing but I hope its not as inconvenient as the HC3.

I saw someone selling this camera on ebay and they include this:

http://panasonic.jp/dvc/sd1/img/spec_huzoku.jpg

am I correct that the COMPONENT cable is not included?

Is a D-component cable common and can I buy it elsewhere?